I judge...

Elsa1984

I judge parents at the pumpkin patch I went to today. It's extremely popular in our area and is cram packed with people. An easy place where a kid could get separated from parents....or kidnapped.

There are tons of different activities at this place and they are scattered all over, making it hard to see from one area to another.

I judge all of the parents that weren't keeping an eye on their kids. I was amazed at how many people were sending their little ones (think 6 and under) off to different areas alone. And the parents that would tell a kid that looked about 5 or 6, "watch your little brother", and then would walk off to hit the confession stand 150 ft away leaving their 5-6 year old to watch a 18mo-2 year old on the hay bale pyramid. Standing in the concession stand line with their backs to the pyramid. All it could take is the older one (who was playing with a friend) to go around the other side of the pyramid or crawl through a tunnel, and someone could have grabbed the little one within a matter of seconds. There is plenty of areas for someone to hide before getting out of there because its so busy....it could have taken less than two minutes for someone to grab and go. There were countless people walking with their little ones trailing behind them...not even bothering to look behind to see if their kid was still back there or hold their kids hand. On the way to the tractors, we were following a couple and their 3-4 year old was trailing like 15 feet behind them. We followed them for probably 200ft, not once did they look behind to see if he was still back there. At first we didn't even know they were his parents, and he was so into his hot chocolate he didn't know they had turned towards the pumpkin scrubbing area and he kept walking straight. We got another 50-ish feet when he looked up and started panicking. My SO told him he would help him look for his parents and the kid got happy and calmly walked away with SO. My SO could have easily walked out of there continuing to tell the kid they were looking for his parents and there wouldn't have been a struggle. But SO took him and Gator and went on the hunt for his parents, they didn't even know he had ventured off. SO was shocked...and they treated him like he was some bad guy, when he was returning their kid. People were leaving their kids in the corn bin and standing in the espresso line....not even looking towards the corn bin to see if their kids were leaving the area. 

It was crazy. A kidnappers dream location....hundreds of people, and practically nobody was keeping an eye on their kids.