"what a horrible mother:" how a call from a "good samaritan" derailed these mothers' lives - small room air purifier

Before the police, county prosecutors and child protection agencies took over her life, Monique was considering dinner.
She wants roast chicken.
She just left a birthday party and drove home with her two daughters.
When she walked into the parking lot of a grocery store near their home, her 4-year-old daughter was taking a nap.
Monique hesitated.
She doesn't want to wake up her daughter to take her to the store, where she may be as grumpy and difficult as other people who wake up too early.
On the other hand, Monique is hungry.
"I will look at her," said her eldest daughter . ". She was 8.
She has an iPad and she can text her mother.
In Maryland in January.
Gentle, 45 degrees.
A few minutes later, Monique stood on the checkout counter at the grocery store and heard someone calling her name and asking her to go back to the car.
When she got there, she found three policemen around and asked if she was the mother of the children in the car and yelled at her, "Do you know how dangerous this is ? " Two male officials had a long job of looking for proper charges, while female officials continued to berate Monique, who was stunned by standing next to the car as her daughters cried.
An hour later, when a police officer asked where Monique's husband was, they were still there waiting to be released.
She told him they were separated.
"Well," he said, "you need to ask him to pick up the baby so we can arrest you.
This is the same for a young New England mother, Dawn: The moment of convenience, followed by shock.
When she remembered that she had no toilet paper, she had just picked up her daughter from the daycare center.
Her daughter was exhausted after a day, tied to a car seat, and was busy enjoying her first happy meal ever.
Dawn stopped before a ceremony aid, locked the door and sprinted inside.
Three minutes later, when she returned to the car, a woman stood by the window, and the daughter of Dawn was still waiting comfortably.
"You are disgusting," said the stranger . "
"What a terrible mother.
I already called you.
I have your license plate number.
I'm here waiting for them to arrest you.
For Courtney, the decision to stop was not spontaneous;
For a couple of days, she has been trying to put a door in front of the fireplace and put her 3-year-
The old daughter who is more and more curious about it.
After visiting her mother on weekends, she drove back to New York. in-
She knew she would pass by a shop where she could buy it.
Five minutes before she got there, her daughter fell asleep.
"She got a little cold," Courtney told me . ".
"I just wanted her to take a break.
It's 70 degrees, but I know it's only a few minutes.
She opened the window and stopped in the shade.
She stayed in the store for no more than 10 minutes.
When she noticed something strange, she was on her way back to her car.
A woman, a stranger, standing near the hood of her car, a shop employee on both sides of her, all staring at Courtney as they approached.
She went through moments of fear.
What happened to her daughter . . . . . . But no, her daughter is fine.
She was a little excited to sit in the car seat, but it was OK.
Courtney opened the back door and adjusted the little girl's blanket.
There was a shopping cart near her car and she pushed it a few feet away from the booth.
She opened the door, went in and checked the text.
Women and employees have been standing and looking at her and saying nothing.
"It's so strange," Courtney later said . ".
"I always thought they would say something to me, but they never did.
That night, after her daughter went to bed, she mentioned it to her husband.
She asked him, "When you run errands, let a child wait in the car for a few minutes and the window is open. Doesn't that matter ? " He did not know.
It doesn't seem to be worth worrying about.
Of course, there is nothing more worrying than their daughter's cold.
A few days later, Courtney's husband went to the lobby of their building and was stopped by a New York police officer.
If he was Courtney's husband, the officer asked his name. He said yes.
The officer said his wife needed to call the police about something that happened in the parking lot.
Courtney was confused, but did it as instructed.
"I just feel like I need to explain," she told me . ".
"I thought it was a mistake.
She talked to the police officer for about 30 minutes.
The police officer asked her to describe what had happened.
She told him about the afternoon, explaining that she opened the window and stopped in the shade, explaining that it had been raining all the time, and that it was overcast, that she only went in and looked for one thing, I hurried back in a few minutes.
She could hear the officer typing while she was talking.
He asked her to wait a moment.
Then he said with no emotion: "According to what you told me, at this point I would say that 90% of you are likely to be arrested.
The case against these three women remains pending (
Name and some identification details have changed).
As I have described, these details are sad and strange.
It's strange that I probably didn't believe them three years ago.
At that time, I realized that the children died after being forgotten or trapped in a hot car, but these were rare tragic events that seemed more like a terrible forgetting than any criminal act.
Strangers may pay attention to any advice they think is overlooked and be prepared to engage the authorities and provide harsh, harmful comments on that basis, which seems absurd, an overkillthe-
Modern parenting technology is a mix of the top spoilers in East Germany's Stasi.
And it happened to me.
At the end of my trip home to visit my parents, I asked my parents4-year-
When I ran into a shop, the old son was waiting in the car alone.
He needs headphones to watch the video of US coming home.
Someone took a shot of me leaving him, walked into the store, came out, drove away, and quickly called the police.
In the end, I was accused of committing a crime for minors-which most people think is an allegation of buying beer for underage teenagers-and, with the help of a lawyer, I can only pay for it through family generosity, 100 hours of community service and parenting classes were arranged.
In return, the county prosecutor decided not to pursue the matter.
After I wrote a story about what happened, Monique, Dawn and Courtney all contacted me individually through social media to seek guidance as they went through the details of the case.
Legal Aspects.
Social Services.
The shocking personal pain from reasonable and wise decisions has turned into a condemnation of your parents by a completely new person.
In the face of the logic and statistics of the actual danger, these situations occur from time to time: Children are far more likely to die or be injured in mobile vehicles than in stationary vehicles;
If a child is to be kidnapped, the culprit is often a family member, not a stranger.
However, parents continue to be harassed and arrested by allowing their children to play in unregulated parks, walking alone to a friend's house, or waiting in the car for a few minutes.
My generation has been plagued by the danger of strangers since childhood, and continue to wander darkly in the parenting environment-the "unsolved mystery" mutates to "catch predators" is a big threat in the first place.
A news cycle filled with statistically unlikely horror stories is bad enough for a tired mother or father, nervous nerves and all the people.
To make the current situation worse, it seems that the atmosphere of judgment has penetrated into the consciousness of the state.
With regard to raising children, there is a moral compulsory education, like all forms of compulsory education, which is far from the track of paranoia.
In the months of my ordeal, I tried to see myself as the stranger who had seen me --
Not a running mother, make a judgment call and play with the requirements, but a criminal that poses a threat to the safety of my own children and should deal with social problems as soon as possible and anonymously.
How do I see the distance between myself (
Anxious, usually overprotective parents)
How did this stranger see me?
Threat to my child)
Is the most surreal side of the experience.
I am unable to close this gap, and I am still crossing it even after my article has been published.
After the article began to spread, a friend sent me a mock congratulatory email.
"Oh, Kim," he wrote.
"Do you know how much you did for your child? in-
I laughed when I read it, but it was a painful laugh. He was right.
We experience each other in thumbnails, status updates, and sound clips.
In the case of real emotional pain, the actual pain-not the disputed fact-is almost always overlooked.
I was very curious about this stranger: Who was this person who wanted to prevent pain but only caused it last summer, and I was interviewed by TV news magazine about my experience. (
I was right after a lightning bolt hit your house. . As a lead-
In my clip, the show made a short feature where a baby doll was left alone in the car seat on a hot day.
I think it makes a cry or other distress signals.
Passers-by faced the "mother" in a hidden camera, telling her how wrong her child was to leave her, how she could not do so, how the police were summoned, the mother herself sees their concerns as a violation of her personal rights.
Recently, I have become more and more interested in these female alarm people like me, just like my victims of this new type of harassment.
When I think of them, what I feel is not anger, but sadness and regret, because we know very little about each other's lives.
I see these kind people slow down in the parking lot, resist the anonymity of modern life, want to help, but not sure what to do, how to reach out or participate.
I saw them trying to deal with this uncertainty in the most brief moments and then reaching out to get the phone.
We are raising our children because it is easier to call 911 than to talk.
* Courtney was one of the first people to contact me via Facebook information at the end of August.
She wrote: "I found much needed comfort in your article as I was going through a very similar thing.
This is an incredible process.
I willingly surrendered yesterday.
I was asked to do this for the first time three weeks after the incident)
But I found out I had to have the fastest opening date.
This is a nightmare.
"A few days after the police officer interviewed her over the phone, her lawyer told her that she was charged with crimes against children and that she needed to go back to New Jersey self. report.
In a small room, a police officer took pictures of her with electronic fingerprints.
A few days later, she was approved by the court on Labor Day.
She knew her lawyer was away at the time, told the police officer as much and asked why the date was so fast.
That was when Courtney learned that she was classified as a violent domestic criminal.
I am very familiar with all this.
My experience has also progressed in a nightmare way, with no logic, no clear causal relationship that we expect in our waking lives.
Courtney's new opening date is the first day of her daughter's kindergarten.
"This is one of the hardest parts," she said . ".
"Missed the first day she went to the court to prove that I was not a mother who was negligent.
"She hired a babysitter to have a close friend go with her and then go back to the judge across the state line.
The case was not heard that day, or the next time she appeared.
It dragged on for a few months.
Eventually, Courtney received a year's probation under supervision, during which she needed to drive a hundred miles a month to meet a police officer.
She wants these meetings to be fairly routine, with questions about her daughter, her family life, and perhaps a drug test.
She was surprised at the first meeting when the female officer seemed very eager to look into her case in depth.
Courtney said: "She asked me what I did and she seemed disgusted when I told her I was a stay --at-home mom.
That's when she gets nasty.
She asked my husband how he felt about it all and whether he agreed that I had our baby in the hot car while he was trying to support me.
Courtney explained to her that this was not the case and that her daughter was not a baby but three years old. Instead of being abandoned, she left for a few minutes with the window open.
The officer shook his head, tightened his lips, and looked firmly into Courtney's eyes.
"I will never do that," she said . ". “Ever.
Courtney left the building wobbly and felt as if she had gone through a second trial.
She told me: "She has decided on the kind of person who has the child waiting in the car . ".
"I can't say anything to change it.
"I wish I could say the judgment that surprised me.
Parents always regard their children as a kind of self.
Expression, but recently parent-
Children's brands have become louder and more uninterrupted.
What we let our children do or eat, or where they learn, or what they see, is usually purposeful, is what we think about ourselves and what we think about our children.
Or rather, what we want others to think of us.
Recently a friend told me that she met a friend on Facebook who posted a photo of her child reading chapter books on a road trip.
"Eight-hour screen
Free activities together!
The title is read ".
"Except for mom," someone wrote in the comment . ".
The post was deleted a few minutes later.
This is not to say that there is no lasting sense of love and protection in today's parenting.
But this information is generated by our almost uninterrupted public review of ourselves --
Scrolling exists.
Whether they are interested or not, today's parents always sell you with the advantage of a private personal choice in the past.
And shillings, followed by a rebound.
There are conflicting views and ideological struggles.
Debate on breasts
Feeding and junk food can free your fist
The degree of hostility.
Some people just don't like you and arm themselves with the same tools of attention. they are all very eager to let others know about this.
But when we see a parenting behavior that makes us feel wrong, where does that make us?
In the past winter, I saw a man who was very dark and had a close-
A short cut of hair grabbed his son, who is no more than 8 years old, and said, "your stupid conversation is no longer happening.
"He held his son's arm with his hand, and the boy held back and tried to take it away, while a young girl was soft-padded at their feet, shaking the water from her ears.
At this moment, I really want to do something, intervene and tell him that I saw what he had just done and found out that it was very frustrating for me to tell him, A child should never be humiliated in public.
But how does a person say such a thing to a stranger, how does he enter in a helpful or constructive way into an area where the relationship between the parent and the child is essentially a private relationship, and he will be angry in return, please let me know what to do.
Maybe he will feel humiliated and vent his anger at the child.
I was wondering his name, the state or country he came from, and of course I didn't contact the authorities there.
I don't know him or his children.
We are nothing with each other.
I turned my attention to my own daughter because I made a break up
The second decision that the cost of doing anything is too high.
The loneliness of raising children outside a strong community can be shattered;
For ourselves, we have all become worse parents than we wish.
** The last time I spoke to Courtney, she was released from the probation supervision department and successfully closed her daughter's case with CPS, it seems that peace has been achieved with herself and the woman who called the police.
Still, she felt more nervous than before.
Her daughter will refuse to wear gloves in the cold weather, and she feels people are watching and judging her.
Recently, when her family went to visit a friend over the weekend and they set up an air mattress for her daughter in the hallway between bedroom and walk, she became nervousin closet.
Her daughter liked this and shouted happily, "I can sleep in the closet!
When Courtney heard her voice, she felt nervous all over her body and warned her not to say that at school.
"I think I'm more worried about what people think," she told me . ".
Also, she, like me, is worried about raising her daughter in a world that often lacks human etiquette.
She told me that just the other day she took her daughter to the restaurant for lunch.
She tried not to give her too much food in the restaurant and brought a peanut butter sandwich and some cutup vegetables.
As a woman approached at a nearby table, her daughter was eating happily and pointing to the sandwich.
"You know it's a peanut --
"Free restaurant," she said.
Courtney apologized and asked if she was allergic and said she would move to another table.
The woman replied, "I am not allergic . "
"I just think you should know.
"After a while, when the girl began to cry, a waiter was sent to throw the problematic sandwich into the garbage.
Courtney told me all about it and I don't know if she's crying or laughing, this is my favorite place.
"I mean, what's the problem with people," she asked . ".
I think, "Is everyone crazy in the world ? ".
However, at these rare moments I feel hopeful that we don't seem to completely forget how to interact with others or talk to strangers from an open and curious place, not fear.
Shortly after I first wrote about my experience, I took my daughter back to another branch in the store where my own mess started.
When I finished shopping, we walked towards the checkout counter.
We 've been waiting for a few minutes and I noticed a woman struggling with her children in front of the next line.
She has three.
When the baby began to cry and the twins began to quarrel, she was wearing a baby sling and pushing the other two in the Big Red Car.
I think, preparing for the triple crash, remembered what a friend recently told me that while her daughter lost her temper at the grocery store, a stranger took out a cell phone and started recording
Obviously on You Tube, it's its own type of entertainment: other people's children cry.
Screams are getting bigger and bigger.
The team is growing.
In the face of this scene, I did what other people in the queue were doing;
I pretended not to see them, scanned a short line in the other aisles, silently hoping that I had just ordered the items I needed on Amazon and was obsessed with checking the time on my phone
When another woman was shopping alone, I was about to move to another line and she walked up to mom's shopping cart. I (
Probably all the people who can hear)
The worst is expected: recorded phone calls, bad reviews or unsolicited parenting advice.
This is inevitable and uncomfortable.
After all, we are all wandering judges.
However, the woman without a child smiled and casually asked if she could help, and then began to unload the woman's cart and play peek without waiting for an answer --a-
With the toddler.
The mother began to thank her, but she could not hear it.
"Really, nothing," she said with a smile.
"You are so busy.