Grandpa Picks up Wrong Kindergartener and Now Parents Want World to Stop in Its Tracks

I would not have agreed to the mother’s foolish demands.

Our local media had the story. The reporter finished the report rather breathlessly with “there are four sex offenders in the community who could have done the same thing”. No, not really. Irritating. Hyperbolic reporting. And in checking to give a link to the clip, I also see the reporter now has a series on ‘protecting our children from predators’. (www.wpri.com)

When I was four years old, I was picked up from preschool by different people who were friends of the family who also had a child attending there. On one afternoon, nobody took me home as they all thought somebody else was doing that. Then came closing time and I was still there. Somebody came around after ring arounds on the phone.

I survived. I wasn’t even bothered.

The parent certainly has reason to be upset at the school because kindergartners need a little bit more hand-holding to make sure they get on the right bus or are picked up by the right person (I was placed on the wrong bus once in kindergarten because the school got me mixed up with another child – long story, but turned out okay). But I really don’t understand what the police or CPS have to do with this.

Maybe we can get the UN to lockdown the entire planet.

You can’t be too careful.

“baby-paramedic’s post raises the question I was thinking about: didn’t the kid realize it was the wrong grandpa? did s/he never say anything? even kindergartners should know who to be with. mine were taught not to leave with anyone besides the usual people without a safety word.”

It should have happened that way. It didn’t. In the best of possible worlds, parents will fail to train their kids to be careful enough and adults will make mistakes. No matter what we say “should” have happened, the other thing occasionally will, now and forever.

But what isn’t acceptable or just one of the vicissitudes of human frailty is treating such lapses as near-criminal incidents.

She is crying while reading from a paper. LOL, this is hilarious.
Why didn’t someone just stand up and tell her to suck it up, get over it because accidents happen. No harm no foul.

Parents worst nightmare is their kid being with someone they don’t know? Really Mr. Fear Reporter?

If anyone is to blame it is the kid for going off with the wrong person, but really who cares.

The channel 3 reporter who starts out with “…every parent’s worst fear, being left with a stranger” needs to stop. No this is not my worst fear, by far. If it was, I wouldn’t dare leave him at school, with a new teacher and school staff. Isn’t the new teacher a stranger?

I’m not blaming anyone here and I hate the *what could have happened* angle that’s always played, but why didn’t the boy speak up? He gets into the car with a strange man he doesn’t say “Who are you? My ___ usually picks me up. Take me back to school now” to correct the mistake? And I know he’s 5 but this is pretty basic.

I hate how helpless we treat our kids, like we can mix up these look-alike sacks of mute jelly bundled up in outerwear, strapped into the backseats of our cars. I would be most disappointed if my kid didn’t speak up right away and notice the change in car and driver. Taking all accountability away from the child and heaping it back on people who made an innocent mistake is parenting at it’s worst.

I also agree with Lollipop lover. I would be kinda pissed at my kids too like “Have I not taught you well enough not to go off with freaking strangers!?” I would feel like I failed somewhere. I try to teach my kids to speak up and stand up for themselves. I just think the whole situation is nuts. I blame whomever decided it was a good idea to make elderly Great Grandpa pick the kid up more than I actually blame the school. Obviously he did not recognize his own Great Grandchild.

If the school called me and told me my kid had been “picked up” by the wrong grandpa I would absolutely FREAK at first. But once alls well that ends well and finding out it was a mistake not a crime, then get over it and move on! Pressing charges for a mistake? Pointless.

This was not the only local news source that played up the number of offenders in the area.
Comments on the original story in a newspaper agreed that mistakes happen and someone going through the trouble of being approved for 1 child is unlikely to intentionally take another. (Unless as some joked the child they were OK’ed for was a pain.)
Years ago this would be treated as a funny story about grandpa. My 83 year old mom picks up a great-grand child once in a while only because he isn’t nearby.

This is an example of how not talking to strangers can backfire.
Its OK to talk to strangers but not get in a vehicle with one or at least say something to a teacher.

The great grandfather is not a *stranger*. He is a caregiver (or driver) and part of the school community. Stop portraying him like a creeper who “compromised” safety. He was given the wrong kid and no kid spoke up. Stop portraying him like a monster when he is an elder member of the community.

I cannot watch mother give a melodramatic rant about a mix-up at dismissal. Save your emotion, go volunteer at a children’s hospital or homeless shelter and get your priorities straight. Getting everyone to grab their pitchforks and point fingers at schools and security and demand changes? Here’s a change we should instead demand: Have a talk with your child that it’s not OK got go off with a stranger. Speak up and have a voice. You are not helpless.

SOA, quit judging everyone else by your own experience. Not all great-grandparents are decrepit. It may be that the ggpa was too old or senile to have been given this responsibility but you have no idea if that was the case. He could be a spry, quick-thinking, and careless 65 year old. You just don’t know and can’t judge. My mother-in-law was *raising* her husband’s teenaged great-grand-kids when she was 68, now she is 77 and still perfectly capable of raising a kid who can walk, obey instructions, and take care of his own toilet needs. She can outlast me in a lot of physical activities and show no signs of mental unclarity.

Yes, people were careless. Nobody said this was the ideal situation.

Andy, it’s a thing where you teach a code word, and the kid is told never to go with anyone who claims to be sent by his parents but doesn’t give him that code word — obviously not something that would normally be used in context.

I wasn’t the one who brought it up, I was quoting babyparamedic. Since I homeschooled my kids when they were young enough to not be able to figure out who their adult friends were, I never felt the need. But it’s a pretty common thing.

“Since I homeschooled my kids when they were young enough to not be able to figure out who their adult friends were,”

At what age would that be? 2. My daughter totally knew by kindergarten her grandparents, my friends, and even my coworkers. At least those who I would ever consider sending to pick her up from school. I am sure that I knew people who had never met my daughter, but I certainly would have never sent them to pick her up at school no matter what the emergency.

http://nypost.com/2014/02/26/elderly-man-brings-wrong-child-home-from-school/

This article has a few more details.

Schools need to stop caving in to hysterics. There is no need to make life more difficult for all the other parents at pick up. I wonder what this school would do if a parent demanded a book be removed from the school library?

In my personal experience, I have found people who have made honest mistakes in the past, and learned from them, to be much more reliable than people who are terrified of making a decision.

Why on earth did the little boy go with Gramps! Did he go willingly or was he dragged? And where was Gramps’ actual grandkid? That is very weird.

I agree the mom’s demands are wrong, but honestly, I don’t blame her for being shocked. Especially if she was looking for her AWOL kid in the interim. That is about the weirdest thing I ever heard of.

I don’t deny that 5yo is young for some kids to be left on their own to follow the bus procedure. There is nothing wrong with expecting the school to have a policy that considers the developmental age of those kids.

Since the mom had no idea her kid was AWOL until they called her, I’m assuming he was supposed to get on a bus and nobody noticed that, a, he was not on the bus, and b, the other little boy who was supposed to be picked up was not picked up. Now I want to know how much time elapsed between the time Gramps picked the boy up and the time they called to inform the school of the mix-up.

Two comments:

1. How can it be “terrifying” when she learned of the incident after the fact?

2. Perhaps she should have taught her son not to get into strange cars with people he doesn’t know, even if an authority figure told him to do so.

OK so the printed news story has interesting details. The grandpa was 79. He was supposed to pick up a similarly-dressed boy because the child’s mother was sick; it was not the normal routine. The boy said something to the grandpa as soon as he started driving the “wrong way,” and then the boy refused to get out of the car, at which point the grandma got a good look at his face and called the school immediately.

Sounds like the grandpa may not have spent a lot of time with the grandkid or for whatever other reason didn’t pick up on cues that would be obvious that “this isn’t my grandkid.” It sounds like there was a family emergency and the parents did what they could under the circumstances.

The mom is going overboard, probably because others are encouraging her to, because it makes a good story I guess. I absolutely don’t blame her for being freaked out at first. But the fact is that her boy was never in any danger, and she knows it. Police and CPS are not necessary. A change in pickup policy probably is necessary.

@SKL
“Why on earth did the little boy go with Gramps! Did he go willingly or was he dragged?”

Probably because the whole pick-up procedure is bureaucratically choreographed and kid has already been brainwashed to follow procedure without speaking up, no matter what.

“Amanda, it sounds like the little boy was wearing a mask hat,”

Ahh okay, I’ve never heard of those being referred to as simply “hats”. I’ve always heard them called ski masks or balaclavas.

“Have kids gotten dumber since 1975 or is the bus procedure much more difficult now?”

I started riding the bus at 5, in 1990. No one was guided to the buses. I remember that the first day I got on the bus to go home (we had different busses coming and going), I was nervous that I would get on the wrong bus. So I said to the bus driver; “I live at [my address]. Is this the right bus?”

But, I can see how fear of letting your kid talk to “strangers” and all these school procedures have resulted in this, and are leading to LESS SAFE situations. Unfortunately when the glaring flaws in those are pointed out by incidences like this one, people call for MORE procedures and less talking to strangers, rather than realizing that’s what got them into the situation…

All kids are not the same. Sure, probably most of them can do the bus thing, but obviously not all.

I always walked to & from school. Byt in my elementary school, there were only 2 buses: our school’s bus and the “Nearbycity” bus. They looked very different. It was pretty straightforward.

When my younger siblings went to a bigger school, the teachers would take the younger kids out and have them line up on the number for their buses. The teacher would make sure each kid was on the right number before the buses collected the kids.

It is not strange to expect a school to think ahead, knowing that there are kids who might make a mistake. Immature kids, distracted kids, special needs kids, and even normal kids wanting a little adventure. My sister and I hopped on a school bus when we were little because we were going to visit a friend. My sister claimed the visit was cleared with our parents, but in fact it was not. Stuff happens. It is easier to take simple preventative steps than to deal with the aftermath when a kid ends up across town.

“Probably because the whole pick-up procedure is bureaucratically choreographed and kid has already been brainwashed to follow procedure without speaking up, no matter what.”

Yeah, but this kid was a BUS rider with his two siblings. Getting into a car, without his siblings, with an old man he never met, isn’t his normal dismissal.

From the NY Post article:

“Derek’s wife Angela panicked when Everett didn’t get off the bus with their other two children.
“The principal gets on the phone, and tells my wife ‘There’s been a mix-up, your son went home with another kid’s grandfather,'” he said.
Angela runs a daycare center out of their home so she couldn’t leave to pick up their frightened child, so the school sent him home on a school bus.
“They put him on an empty school bus, scared to death, and sent him home alone,” Derek fumed.
“That was their answer to getting my son home.”

How was he sent home alone? Are school buses not driven by bus drivers?

I’m just curious about why they didn’t use the child’s NAME. Sure, 5 year old boys might look similar, but do they have the same name? Why wasn’t it as simple as saying “Jonny Smith your ride is here”.

Then again, I have only watched the video – which answers no question about the logistics issue.

I would also like to know why nobody is saying:

“This is a good reminder for parents to talk to their children about not going with someone they don’t know” etc.

The more I read about this situation, the more I wonder “is this a special ed child?” I can’t for the life of me understand how a normal intelligence (not even particularly bright) kid that is now more than half way through kindergarten, would get into a car he doesn’t recognize, with a man he doesn’t know, without his siblings when he always rides a bus without asking questions that would tip someone off to the fact that something was wrong. Would he not at least say “hey where are my siblings?”

@Donna “The more I read about this situation, the more I wonder “is this a special ed child?”

I thought that too, but he knew when gramps didn’t turn toward his house and spoke up then and also refused to get out of the car when they arrived at the grandfather’s house. . . . This is a weird story.

It is a weird story: for example what happened to the kid that was supposed to be picked up, didn’t anyone notice he wasn’t? Did he get on a bus and go to a stop/house where no one was home?

If this had happened to me when I was little, my parents would have had me take that gentleman a plate of cookies because…well, just because. As a thank you for driving me back to the school, as an acknowledgement that he was inconvenienced by my mistake, and as reassurance for him that everyone was fine.

And then we would have had a grand old time with the story for years and the focus of the story would have been how silly I was not to pay attention and how nice the old man was to take me back where I belonged.

The worst thing I can imagine for my children is that they would grow up to be ‘fraidy cat nincompoops, like the mother of this little boy.

As for the great-grandfather and whether he should be taking care of the five-year-old, the child should not need much care at that age and had darned well better be a big help to the great-grandparents.

So what about the kid who didn’t get picked up because of great granddad’s mistake? They must’ve been bored out of their mind…

and yes some Parents take advantage of them for free daycare like that mom I mentioned I knew who had the 80 year old great grandparents being free daily daycare. That is just not cool.

In response to SOA’s comment, “Why is great grandpa picking up a kid anyway? Aren’t they a little old to be responsible for young kids solely?”

My children’s great grandparents are very healthy in mind and body, and in their 70s. They are certainly able to pick any of my children up from school and bring them home, or to their home to play for a while.

Dolly, Actually it doesn’t sound like it was much more than around the block. This is a small town. It is not like it would take hours to get home from school and they realized it immediately upon getting there.

Gramps may not be the chit-chatty type. He is of an age where many men didn’t really interact with their own children much. Since others were home, his role could have exclusively been chauffeur. The attributes that I look for in a taxi driver are not the same as I look for in a babysitter.

Dolly, maybe mom knows everyone on the school and is the belle of the ball, but WANTED her family to pick up the child. Maybe she is going to be ill for more than an hour or two and wants Jr. to spend the night elsewhere and, like every sick person I’ve ever known, doesn’t want to spend lots of time arranging things with several different people. Maybe she lives with gramps and she just wanted the kid home. Maybe it doesn’t matter because as the parent, it is MY decision who picks my child up from school and the other moms just have to deal with it messing up the flow of their day if that person doesn’t do it exactly right (and then they should go home, remove the stick from their butt and be happier people).

And my grandmother’s 87 year old friend is still the caregiver for her family. Her grandchildren and now great grandchildren fly her around the world (one lives as far away as Australia) to help out and babysit (meaning she is babysitting some great greats now). My grandmother, on the other hand, is younger and can’t take care of herself. You are jumping to way too many conclusions based on the fact that this is a great grandparent. People age massively differently.

Dolly, no, the guy is 79.

I’m pretty sure some world leaders have still been in their jobs at that age.

Donna: Yes, you can decide who picks up your kid, but yes, if that person messes up royally (which this guy did) then you have to accept that someone is going to bitch at you about it and take you to task for it.

You can control your own life, but when your bad decisions mess up my life, I darn well get to say something about it. So in this case, I at least would be on the mom’s side about her being pissed off over the whole situation. I would not be going to the school board or calling CPS or calling the cops, but I would be bitching that mother out for letting someone incompetent pick up a kid when that person cannot even recognize if they have the right kid or not.

I don’t think it is a simple mistake. He had to get out of the car, sign the kid out, get the kid, put the kid in the car and then drive the kid home and never in all that time noticed it was not the right kid. The article said even when the kid did say something about this not being the way to my house and not getting out of the car, the Great Grandpa still did not realize he had the wrong kid till that man’s wife came and looked at him and said “That’s the wrong kid.” So I am going to go out on a limb and say the man has vision, hearing or cognition issues and therefore it was a bad judgement call on the mother’s part to have him pick the kid up.

Amanda: In our city, you are not neighbors with every grand parent or great grandparent that might happen to have a kid at the same school as your kid. They could live completely across town. Its a big city.

I bet that the great-grandpa is going to get charged with kidnapping.

The police were called. They can’t just let it go, or they will be seen as being “soft on crime” or whatever.

Let’s just pray the SWAT team that is charged with executing the no-knock warrant and raiding his house at 5:00 am doesn’t shoot gramps to death for holding a coffee cup.

SOA, what makes you think this kid had to be signed out? School-aged kids don’t need to be signed at the end of the school day.

And why do you insist that the sick mom must have known her grandpa was likely to make a mistake? Or that someone else’s kid would follow him like a sheep and get into his vehicle? I mean, to me, that is the freakiest part of this whole thing – the kid got into a stranger’s car, instead of hooking up with his siblings to at least ask if this was OK. Now that would freak me out, but not for the reason some think.

I don’t understand why blame is necessary at all here. But if it is, why blame the lady who’s too sick to get up and drive to the school for her kid? Think about it. She too could be very shook up. We still don’t know what her kid was doing while Gramps was supposed to be driving him home. Perhaps he was scared or worse. If I were the mom lying sick in bed, I’d be so frustrated that I had to hand off control and watch stuff happen. Have a little sympathy. I’ve been so sick that I had to keep my kids home from school because I have nobody else to take them. Sometimes there is no good solution to a problem.

Maybe the mom didn’t call the granddad. Maybe the mom called someone else and that person sent the granddad. Who the heck knows. Crap happens. If you can’t deal with it, stay home, stop interacting with the world and for god’s sake don’t have children.

And he didn’t screw up royally. Screwing up royally would be if some harm had come to either child. It didn’t. The kid simply got home a few minutes later than planned. Not a big deal unless you want to make it a big deal. Heck, the mother wasn’t even inconvenienced as the child was put on a bus a delivered to her. So basically he just screwed up.

The situation was not ideal, but the mother is making mountains out of molehills.

The idea of complaining to another mom because YOU think she shouldn’t ask favors of her grandfather is truly bizarre. Especially when the only reason you know anything about the grandfather at all is because your child made a mistake.

Again, Dolly, why the heck do you think she wants you to pick up her child? She is sick. She wants the child where she wants the child, not at your house where she then has to call someone else to go pick up the kid and explain where you live, etc.

And, I’ll apologize to her for sending gramps (not for gramps accidentally picking up the wrong kid for which she is owed an apology) when she apologizes to gramps for not teaching her kid not to get into the car with strangers.

Nor is there any indication that she over relies on her grandparents. SHE WAS SICK, not at the spa getting a massage. Based on the facts, I’d say gramps doesn’t do a whole helluva lot of parenting of this kid.

Dolly, I think you’re going off the deep end on this one.

Well anyway, at this point it should be time for everyone involved to have de-escalated enough to laugh about this little incident. Like every other hilarious incident that “wasn’t funny at the time.” Unfortunately if the cops and CPS are involved, that nice therapeutic step will be indefinitely delayed. :/

yeah, the whole thing is a little bizarre. It does seem like the school’s pickup policy is odd if someone is picking him up as a “one off” and the process involves the picker-upper picking the kid out themselves.

I think the Mom should be happy that the police didn’t get involved. Police cars can scare kids — my son (a little older than K) had a collision with his bike and a car in our neighborhood pool parking lot and his handle bar scratched one of her doors. Her first call was to the police, then us. By the time we got to the pool, he was petrified because he knew she’d called the police and thought he’d end up in Jail.

Of course, this kid didn’t do anything wrong but police can be scary if a situation is confusing already.

I suppose her issue was that this confused Grandpa was the same one that drove him back to school, but at that point he was already safely back.

I disagree completely, Andy. I never raised my daughter in fear and, yet, I can’t imagine her getting into this car without asking a million questions, even at 5. It wouldn’t be fear of kidnapping motivating her, but I do think she would be highly curious as to who this person was, why she wasn’t taking the bus and where her siblings were. She may have asked the questions while climbing into the car, but there is no way she would have just sat silently like this kid appeared to do until gramps went the wrong way on the road.

I think that this kid’s reaction is one of a child who has never been allowed to think for himself, not the reaction of a child raised in a free range home.

It also makes sense for Gramps to drive the kid back to school, since he still needed to pick up the other kid who was presumably waiting there without a ride. It is a much better answer than having them wait around for a bunch of 3rd parties to get around to it. That would have been much scarier.

I don’t see anything wrong with what the school did after learning of the incident.

Before that, I’d just want to know how it happened that the little boy was able to go get into someone’s car when he was supposed to get on the bus. Someone on staff should have at least asked the boy if this was someone he knew, or something. And they should have known he had siblings who would normally be with him. So I’m glad the school did an investigation, because I don’t blame the mom for wanting to know how it happened. If only so she could coach her children better.

A lot of people are dumping on the kid, but it seems he used reasonable thought process. First off, the other kids lives 3 doors down from him, perhaps the G-pa was semi-known to him. The mother (in this long diatribe against the school: http://www.norwichbulletin.com/article/20140225/NEWS/140229611/?tag=2) says that the kid was waiting in line for his bus to be called and the G-pa said “Mom is sick, I’m picking you up”. The G-pa is within the safe confines of the school, not on a curb, so the kid opts to go along. Apparently he immediately talked about going the wrong way, etc.

Anyway – that speech by the Mom is a whole ball of anger. She calls the school principals “incompetent leaders” – to some applause. There might some bad blood there before all this.

I hope for her sake that they don’t ever find out what real “disaster” is.

While I agree that the parents did overreact in THIS situation, I disagree that we should allow small children (even in grade 8!!) to walk home alone. Or, did you not read about the little 10 year-old who was found murdered after walking home alone from a friend’s house? Unfortunately, NOBODY who saw her walking alone or the creepy pedophile circling the blocks several times overreacted. And because they were like you, thinking that they didn’t want to be perceived as “overprotective”, that child is gone, and probably went through hell before he killed her. When I was 14 I was almost kidnapped. Thank GOD, I overreacted and got away.

@Anne,

So even teenagers shouldn’t walk home alone? I think you found the wrong website. You are looking for Paranoid Parents.Com.

Anne, if a small child manages to be in grade 8, I think it’s safe to say they have the mental capabilities to walk home.

Andy – I am a quiet, shy introvert. My daughter is more talkative and outgoing but not a raging extrovert. I highly doubt thay I would have gone at all as I didn’t like strangers. My daughter could go either way. Sometimes she is very shy and sometimes not. If she did follow, she would be asking a million questions.

In my experience with kids of similar age, it seems very odd to me that he didn’t ask anything and just followed a stranger silently. I would expect him to be either very reticent to go or more verbal if he did go.

I’m with Emily–I can so see some kindergartner boys playing a game of switcheroo.

The whole thing is ridiculous. Yes, I would find the situation upsetting, but not disastrous.

This is so funny, and it’s such a shame it seems neither family is going to get a good laugh out of it. Great granddad deserves a medal for helping out….

To the ‘age’ thing, my great aunt was still raising kids for various members of the family, not just picking them up after school, at age 80. She’s now 92, past that finally and still sad about it.

As for the kid knowing not to get in a stranger’s car, yes, they should have protested more. But at that age my Midge, anyway, in spite of all warnings to the contrary, quite likely would have gone with any old grandfather type because she was extremely social, and would have assumed fun things were likely about to happen :-). Guess I was lucky nut jobs who harm kids are extremely rare…

Sorry, but I just feel like strangling that mum!

Had my husband’s parents gone to school to pick up my kids (which would never have happened, sadly, because of the language barrier) we could have had fun like this. Granddad would just have picked whatever kid looked Eurasian, because he didn’t get to see the kids much, and to him all half caste kids looked like his grandchildren :-).

He would then have taken them anywhere he could find for Chinese food, which might be some kid’s idea of a nightmare, I guess!

“can someone tell me what a ‘US flag status’ is?”

Sure. It is whether you are expected to fly the flag at full height, or half-mast (or, in theory, not at all).

Half-mast is for mourning … which can be national (we just lost a president), state (we just lost a governor) and even local (we just lost three firefighters).

There is a web-site for folks who care: http://www.dailyflagstatus.com/

🙂

@Mark – ta, that was really interesting 🙂

The switcheroo comments reminded me about a trick two girls at my school tried to play. The three of us would have been 5 or 6, and we all looked enough alike that people routinely confused us (darker skin and long blonde hair is unusual), especially with those wide brim hats on.
We got our hair done up the same (plaits I think) one day, then decided to see if we could swap places. I chickened out because I didn’t want to get into trouble, but the other two girls switched places in the bus/car waiting areas.
In that case they didn’t manage to succeed (I don’t remember how their ruse was discovered, but it was fairly late in the game), but I do remember they both got a “detention” (had to wipe down the tables was the usual punishment), and we all got a talking to about why it was important to go to the right place after class so we got home safely.

I had completely forgotten about that until other people mentioned it.

What a twat! She is seriously a trouble starting idiot! Was the child not smart enough to realize that the man picking him up was NOT his grandpa or anyone he knew? This stupid mother is just trying to get attention, and she is at that, from a media with lack of interesting stories. Ugh!

The Last Psychiatrist has a great analysis of this kind of Angry Mom character posting for the audience: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/02/or_you_could_just_nuke_the_bit.html She isn’t really so concerned about her kids’ safety, her mission is to display for all of us what kind of a person she is. The key phrase is this:

“But why isn’t this just a case of a mom reacting angrily to her son getting hurt? Why can’t it just be that she wants to protect her son? Because the prepositional phrase is absent: protecting him from what?”

When my son was in preschool, I had a toddler and an infant. On days we didn’t ride bikes to school, I used to leave them in the car for the three minutes it took me to collect my older one from his classroom. Then the director of the preschool read me the riot act for endangering my children. So I told her I was not about to take a sick toddler or a sleeping infant out in the rain to pick up my son. She told me to call the office when I got there and they would bring him to me. The FIRST time I called her, they brought me the wrong child!

Stupid overreaction. No one was ever in any danger. The mom is understandably freaked out, but now she needs to chill out and get a grip.

Why didn’t the kid who got picked up by the wrong adult say anything before he even got in the car? It would have avoided a lot of hassle.

He clearly doesn’t know great-grandad. Isn’t that reason enough to cause a fuss and resist? At least that is what I would’ve taught the kid.

Julie: The difference is you immediately noticed that was not your child they brought out to you. Great Grandpa did not notice till he got the kid already home and even then did not notice till his wife came over and said “That is not the right kid”.

Some kids are just either super meek and won’t speak up to adults or are super friendly and will just go with anyone. And you can’t always change that with training. My mom used to babysit a girl like that. She would just walk off with anyone. Many times in stores her mother would lose her and find her walking around with some random person just chatting away. And honestly if that person said “Okay get in the car” she probably would have. No matter how much her mother told her not to do that, she always did. So this kid could be like that or be the super meek kind of kid that just does not speak up to adults.

Either way the kid is 5. So he holds the least amount of blame here. As his parent I would feel like I failed at teaching him not to get in cars with strangers, but I still put more of the blame on Great Grandpa for being that unaware of things and the person who thought letting Great Grandpa who is obviously not the most aware to be the pick up person.

I would have told the woman, next time call me and I will drop the kid off for you because Great Grandpa does not seem good enough to even be driving if he is that unaware. At first I thought it was a case of maybe the car rider line and the kid just hopped in his car and so Great Grandpa drove off. I would not blame him as much if that was the case. But this man sought this kid out and took this kid by the arm, put this kid in the car and then drove off and spoke to the kid and never once realized it was the wrong kid till his wife told him so. If someone does not see a problem there with his hearing, vision or cognition then you are fooling yourself.

Your Bride lays a hand on me or anyone else she would find her butt in jail too for assault charges. I would think a grown adult would know better.

Well Dolly,
You said you would be bitching at her, and giving her grief about her grandpa. All she has to say is you are unstable, as seen by your actions, and my bride was defending herself. And considering how absolutely looney tune you are, I doubt anyone would back up your version.

Commenting late, but seriously …

My Grampa would have been 80/81 when my daughter was in kindergarten. He was delivering meals on wheels at age 88 (often to younger house bound seniors). He was perfectly capable of a school pick up.

“Worst fear” -really? Mom’s worst fear is her kid going home with a classmate’s great grandfather? Not that her kid will be snached by a pedophile? or drown? or get childhood lukemia? Is her worst fear that all men are pedophiles? Wait, maybe her worst fear is that her kid will be hurt or killed in a car accident and driving with a senior is statistically more dangerous? She might be on to something.

SOA “royally crewed up?” –
What? Royally screwed up is giving a kid medication or food when you are AWARE they have a life threatening allergy. Royally screwed up is leaving your kid in a hot car all day because of change in routine. Horrible, tragic MISTAKE This was not tragic. Kid is fine. The grandfather didn’t let him ride in the front with no seatbelt (the way my my Grampa let me in the 70’s). The great grandfather didn’t hurt the child. Hech, the school (readonably) didn’t send the police to go get the kid. They told him to drive him back.

How about empathy? The mom that’s flipping out couldn’t go get her own son because she runs a day care and could leave. How about understanding that sometimes, you might need to depend on some help with getting your kid home from school. If her kid got sick/injured while at school, presumably, she would need someone to pick him up OR someone to cover at her day care…

Warren: You are the one advocating violence. So I don’t think I appear as the unstable one. Just saying…..

Do you think I am stupid enough to go somewhere alone with your wife? I would be having the talk with her right in front of the school administration. There would be witnesses.

I listened to the whole speech she gave the school board — boy she was proud of that. At the end, she said that the school administrator, when with meeting her acknowledged that the changes made to the dismissal after this were like ‘shutting the barn door after the horse is out’ and the Mom added “you bet your ASS it is”. Boy, she was really waiting on that line. But yes, clearly the Administrator shared that viewpoint because she’s the one that said it!

I can only presume this mother has led a very charmed life. When something actually bad happens to you or your family, you tend to not throw words like ‘tragedy’ ‘horrific’ ‘disaster’ around for things that aren’t.

@SOA — that’s all great, that’s your perfect world scenario. But the world is made up of different people, different personalities, different necessities, different resources.

As someone already pointed out, the irate Mom runs an in-home day care. If her child was ill, she would not be the one that was able to go get her child — she would have a plan B. Sometimes even plan B isn’t available.

None of us know why the Great Grandpa was dispatched (as opposed to someone else). None of us know the Great Grandpa. Maybe he is not suited to perform this task, but maybe until this happened, no one realized that. My father suffered from Alz late in his life. There were things that occurred that did make us realize “hmm, something is going on here”. But until those things happen, well they haven’t happened.

My takeaway from the whole thing is that the school had a dismissal system that some parents claim was already criticized as being poor. The school made changes to it. The kid is safe. All is well. Lessons learned all around (school, grandpa, kid that went with grandpa).

The end.

Dolly, I could see being upset with the choice of Gramps as chauffer if there had been a car accident or a child left to die in a hot car. But in this case, no harm was done. There is no reason to be so nasty.

I don’t know what the guy’s mental capacity is, other than the fact that he was able to drive to the school, go in and retrieve a child without attracting any attention, buckle the child into the seat, speak to the child about why they’re going somewhere other than the child’s home, and drive home (and back again) without incident. And the fact that everyone involved in the decision to send Gramps to the school, i.e., the people who know him best, believed he was trustworthy enough to drive his actual great-grandson around. And the fact that the story says he was “known to the school” and yet his driving kids around didn’t strike anyone as concerning. And the fact that he has a driver’s license.

I do know that 79 is not that old. Yes, there are some 79-year-olds who are going senile, but that is the exception rather than the rule. Many people that age still have all their faculties.

And also, younger people make mistakes too. I have heard of many parents of young kids accidentally leaving one of their kids behind, for example. I mean, how do you do that? And yet it happens.

During ths process, her plea for safety goes viral, her son’s name, street, and town are now known to all. And we know she operates a daycare out of her home. Does she feel safer now with her personal information all over the world?

Haha! Now ALL the senile, peanut-carrying great-grandpas will be heading her way to pick up kids.

“You can’t say “Oh we should trust other parents and have a community” and then at the same time say “I only trust family to pick my kid up even if said family is elderly and not that familiar with my child so he gets the wrong kid.””

I didn’t say that. I have other parents pick up my kid. I also have my mother pick up my kid. It depends on WHY I need my child picked up by someone other than me. If I am sick and want my daughter to go spend the night at my mother’s house, I certainly don’t want to call a classmate’s parent to pick my daughter up and then call my mother to arrange for my mother to pick my daughter up from that friend’s house just because my mother doesn’t know the pick up procedures and may piss somebody off.

Wow!! “Band-aid” solutions. How about this “mom”, you teach your kid to distinguish between his (great) grandfather, and someone other kids. The extent to which the mother brought this issue is ridiculous. Everyone else is at fault, except her.

DON’T rely on other people to protect your child, because “shit happens”. I think the old school ways need to be drilled into parents heads, especially like this ignorant mother. The BEST way to protect your child, is to teach THEM how to protect themselves. That is fact. Stop being lazy parents. Raising is child is hard work, it’s meant to be. If you don’t want to put the time in helping and teaching your children, don’t have kids.

It was an honest mistake. This “stranger danger” is just one of the dumbest concepts ever. WE are ALL strangers. So if we go by this mentality, that mother is dangerous. The school principal is dangerous. The police are dangerous. etc…

That being said, GREAT grandfather? Not knocking him, but that’s pretty old. It’s understandable how he could have easily mistaken the kids, and who would be walking who? lol

@Mike in Virginia: kindergarteners are more than capable of figuring things out on their own. So long as they have been taught early enough. In my day, it was a normal thing to see 5-6 year olds walking to school (usually with siblings or friends, sometimes by themselves). Or taking the school bus on their own. But we were taught early how to do those things on our own. What to watch out for, and what to do if certain situation arose. I’ve gotten lost as a kid. But I knew well enough about “bad” people, and “good” people. I went into a store, told the person behind the counter I was lost, and if I can use his phone to call home. I called my mom, she talked to the store owner, and then he told me how to get home from there. I never cried or freaked out. I was a little nervous, because I was a bit of shy kid, so took me some mustering to talk to the store guy. But after that, I realized “I can do this”. And every new challenge met and conquered, gave me more and more confidence and knowledge. Knowledge IS power. No matter how old you are.

Children aren’t dumb. Far from it. But it all depends on how we teach them, and what we teach them. By the age of 3-4 they are capable of learning many things. Mine was groomed old school from the age of 2. He’s 7 now. But has stopped holding my hand when walking by the time he was 5. The only time he anyone hold his hand while walking, is when crossing the street. We even let him walk ahead of us. He knows perfectly well, not to run off, and to always keep within visual and audio distance. That’s about 10-15 feet for him.

I always stress this, the best way to protect your children, is to teach them how to protect themselves. NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE, can ever be around them 24/7, 365 days. Except themselves. Most kids I know from 5-7 can totally figure out who they know, and don’t know. Their survival/street smart instincts are much better than a lot of children. But only because their parents (friends of mine, and like minded adults) taught them how to.

If you have in your head children are weak, and can’t figure things out on their own, you end up instilling that in them. Making them insecure, with little to know confidence. And they will always have the parents’ paranoia in them. Parents like this set up their children to fail right from the start. And then blame everyone else when they do.

I don’t like the word “stranger”, it has a negative connotation, especially these days. We are all PEOPLE, and not all people are the same. And most, don’t mean any harm.

It is funny that these people are willing to let journalists – complete strangers who are known voyeurs, known panderers, known users of other people’s personal information for profit – into their private lives without hesitation. (No offense, Lenore, I know you’re a journalist.) I don’t know about you guys, but when I see a TV camera around, my first instinct is to duck out (mainly because I’m probably having a bad hair day).

Though I had a little incident of my own a couple of weeks ago, in which many people recommended I contact the media and start a stink. A public library which we do NOT use has sent my 7yo daughter to collections over a fine for materials she did NOT borrow. Their explanation is that someone must have entered my kid’s library card number online and ordered the materials or however that works. In other words, THEY had a security breach. So I’m told that either I have to pay the fine, or file a police report claiming someone stole the card (we still have the card), or they will put this item on my kid’s credit record after she turns 18. Yeah, I was hot. But I’m not looking for my 15 minutes of fame. I would rather get it resolved in some reasonable manner, privately. Though the idea of airing a cute photo of my lil vampire (toothless at present), as part of a shocking “think of the children” story, does sound a bit amusing.

Well said EricS about the whole teaching your kids what to do and how they are capable. Very motivating.

Oh Dolly, you show me a state where someone feels threatened by another, is not allowed to take action to defend themselves?

You really are that ignorant aren’t you?

You get in someone’s face they have the right to protect themselve’s. They do not need to wait for you to swing first, they just need to feel threatened. And with a lunatic such as yourself, hell being in the same county is risky.

Warren: Bull. Let’s ask the lawyers on the board shall we? So if a woman was talking angrily at another woman in broad daylight in a school building with several other school administrators and witnesses standing near by and the woman was completely unarmed and not making any threatening gestures, would a court of law and the police say the woman being talked to had a right to get violent in that situation because she felt “Threatened”???

Because sorry Warren, I think you are going to lose this one. If that was the case, then you would see people getting beat up on the streets regularly every day because people have arguments and heated discussions every day and no, it is not considered okay to put your hands on them because of that.

Right….I was not asking for you to answer, we have several lawyers that come on these boards, I would like to hear who they think is right.

I can say the person that looks at me as I pass him on the sidewalk was “Threatening” me but that does not make it so. I would be held accountable should I turn around and shoot him or taze him or punch him.

Just having words with someone is not threatening them. As someone who loves to argue and does not care what people think of him, I would think you would know that. People can argue and berate others all the live long day. It is not against the law. Or are you anti-free speech now? Oh but that is not very free range of you is it?

I just saw a news story where a 9yo boy was given medicine intended for another child, by school personnel, and he was hurt and hospitalized. Supposedly the boy even asked “why are you giving me these meds” and they obviously did not even check to see if they had the right kid. Now that is some crazy shit. And I assume these are professionals who are less than 79 years old and have a clear procedure to follow. :/ As far as I know, the parents haven’t demanded police and CPS involvement, though they have contacted a lawyer.

Warren, why is it that you must resort to talk of physical violence so often? You are the only person here, or anywhere online, whom I’ve seen doing this. It isn’t exactly civil discourse.

I don’t agree with Dolly on the ageism thing, but the whole “my bride” thing is actually more disturbing. I thought you had a kid in college, so have you recently remarried, or do you just have a weird way with words? And fantasizing about two moms having a knock-down-drag-out in the street?

Now I’m sure you will come back with either “I’m sorry poor you were born without brains” or “F you” but I shall try my best not to engage further with you.

SOA you are displaying another trait that is deplorable: Ageism. You are assuming that if a person is a great grandparent that they are incapable of caring for a child. Each individual is different. I live in a Sr. living community where there are people who are incapable of caring for a child. But—there are also great grandparents who go cross country skiing, hiking and zip lining. It is up to the parents to determine the capability of family members.

Well Donna,
Someone comes into my space bitching and lecturing about stuff that is not any of their business, then yes I can take that as a threat. I do not exactly know what your standards are, but I have had them clearly defined here in Ontario. Reasonable to one is not reasonable to another. It is all in perspective. Same as when it comes to perceiving a threat, citizens are not held to the same standard as law enforcement. And that is straight from the courts.

As for my facebook page, I guess that overrules the provincial law of common law marriage, in your legal opinion. I hope you do better research for your clients than just facebook. I would hope that you are much smarter than that.

And, Warren, your numerous obnoxious comments spurred me to see what you looked like, but you don’t interest me beyond the 5 seconds that took while I was on hold with the cable company. I have no interest in doing a full background check on you nor do I care in the least whether you are really married and have kids or not. I simply found it interesting that you gush about your wonderful bride here all the time and don’t even claim her as your wife on Facebook.

So now I am fat? Since when? How do you know whether or not my ass if fat exactly? If you want I would love to compare ass sizes against your wife. I bet mine might be smaller.

Warren, you live in your own little world. This is not the wild west. You cannot legally attack someone just for yelling at you or berating you. Especially when there would be other witnesses who would testify that I never laid a hand on her or said anything even threatening physical violence toward her.

If yelling at someone was a crime we would have a jail on every street corner.

Donna, because we do not use facebook to reveal everything about ourselves, it voids our relationship. You just proved how fucking much of an idiot you really are. What a joke. You and Dolly are a match made in heaven.

SKL – Read the comments section of any article that Lenore links on her blog. Warren posts numerous comments which are all of the same ilk as what he posts here so it is obvious that it is him. He uses his full name which is an uncommon name. While reading this article and seeing yet another post from Warren calling everyone on the planet other than himself a moron, I decided to look him up on Facebook to see if the picture I had of him in my head was anywhere near close. It was.

No, I haven’t searched anyone else. I’m not that interested. If Warren hadn’t posted a bunch of obnoxious comments under his full name, I never would have taken the 5 seconds to look him up either.

Warren – So you go to the effort of listing your relationship status, listing the name of the other person in the relationship and linking to her Facebook page, but specifically choose not to designate yourself as married because the act of marriage is some great secret that we all typically hide from our friends and family? Yea, that makes perfect sense.

Grandpa should thank his lucky stars he wasn’t here in the UK. He’d have been arrested for being a paedophile for sure and, heaven forfend, he had lit a cigarette while driving…I think even the Brit Police are now allowed to used terminal force when they are confronted by such a heinous ‘crime’.

Putting on Facebook that I’m married voids my relationship? In what way, pray tell? As far as I can tell, I’m still married (and not just because Facebook says so!).

This reminded me of something that happened to us. My mother in law offered drop my son off at his preschool school. Although I gave her detailed directions and instructions, she had never been to the school and ended up dropping him off at the wrong school. Some other school, several blocks away had my 3 year old son and had no idea who he was. My mother in law didn’t realize her mistake and neither did I, until hours later when his actual school called me to tell me that he was dropped off at the wrong school.
You know what? It was kind of comical. I wasn’t scared or angry. He was safe. He thought it was fun, even. My mother in law felt awful about it and was so embarrassed. She was worried I’d be afraid to leave her with the kids. It was a harmless mistake. She took him to a school, the one he said was his, the people working there let him in, and he was in no danger. It’s not like she dropped him off in a bar or left him in the middle of the woods.

After all the ageism and bashing of this grandpa, I found this story so refreshing:

http://myfox8.com/2014/02/27/elderly-woman-waves-at-students-every-day-gets-a-big-surprise/

@SOA – it was, again, not senile in this case to grab the wrong, incredibly bundled up child, it was simply a hilarious error.

I am glad all over again that this sort of overreaction would be unlikely to occur in GodZone. While it’s not the same distance, I cannot tell you how many incidences of parents taking the wrong child out of the kiwi house at Wellington Zoo are, and I suspect the same would be true of Auckland (kiwi are nocturnal birds, and their enclosure is extremely dark). I myself have grabbed random little kids I thought were my own, and others have taken mine. Fortunately those houses are not big, and mistakes are corrected outside. No one actually wants to take home someone else’s kid. As was not this great-granddad’s purpose.

Gosh, why do people bother with divorces and lawyers, when just putting the fact that you’re married on FB voids the entire marriage??

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