Signs of Child Abuse: How do you deal with it?

[Lurker]

We were at the mall yesterday and after awhile I got tired so I told Princess I had to seat on a bench for awhile with the babies. So there I was playing with the babies in the stroller when a dad comes along with his daughter (a 2 year old I think) in a stroller and asked me if I could watch his kid. I was going to say No but the dad took off without waiting for my reply. (I think he wanted to smoke outside, the bench was near the door.) I was really ticked off cause no Dad should leave their kid with a stranger even if the stranger seems nice and is playing with his babies. (We were playing pull the socks, they love it.) The kid said Hi to the babies and didn't say Hi to me. I said Hi to the kid and she just looked at me and continued looking at the babies.

Anyways, I noticed that the kid has a bruise on her eye. I looked at it more closely and it was a "blackeye", (swollen) as if somebody actually punched the kid on the eye. The kid looks like she has been crying her eyes out cause she was sniffing and rubbing her nose on her jacket. I continued to say Hi to the kid and she won't say anything to me. I think I said HI a dozen times until his dad came over and said in a ticked off way, "Aren't you gonna say HI?" The kid just bowed her head. The dad goes "that's not nice." I was afraid he was going to hit the kid I blurted out "It's ok she said Hi to the babies! She must be shy, eh?" The dad goes ticked off "Shy, sure!" He sat for awhile and goes "Thanks buddy!" and left with the kid in the stroller.

Man, my heart goes out to the kid. I don't know if somebody actually hit her or she was in an accident but the dad seems ticked off with something. I hope I didn't make it worse by talking to the kid and she won't speak up. I wanted her to open up to me but didn't.

Anyways, I told Princess about it and she had tears in her eyes and goes I wonder how many kids out there are in her situation. She hugged and kissed the babies. I tried to make her smile, so I said, "Ok stop crying, they might think I made you cry." (When I get uncomfortable I try to make it into a joke. ) She smiled at me. I go "I wanted to do something, try to have her speak up but she won't." She goes "Now you are making me cry some more."

I just don't know what to do in that situation. It's none of my business but that kid has a "shiner" in her face and I couldn't do anything about it. A dad in his right mind won't leave their kid to a stranger, right? So I concluded there is something wrong in that picture. I hope I'm wrong, that the kid got that bruise from an accident not from her dad's fist.

We are praying for that little girl. I'm depressed now.

[Crucifer]

no Dad should leave their kid with a stranger even if the stranger seems nice and is playing with his babies.

Because they mightn't be his babies...

This sort of thing gets me riled. People are so irresponsible with their kids, it's like being back in the middle ages (where lots of infant deaths were in fact due to infants rolling into fires etc.)

Praying (as ever) for this kid and all children in this world who aren't living as they should be living, and have a right to be living.

Ours is a dark world for the very young...

[vison]

If you see him again, try to get his license plate number or some way of identifying him. You probably won't, but just in case. Child services should be told, for sure.

[axordil]

Would a child's face bruise up and swell up like an adult's if they had been punched in the eye by an adult fist? The relative size of the orbit and the hand involved make me think not. The bruising would be, I think, more on the cheek and occipital ridge, wouldn't it? Not saying there wasn't something going on, but the specific causality sounds dubious to me. Kids do run into things face first...that's we still have cushions on the corners of our glass table, and why we didn't bring our coffee table out of storage until six months ago.

It's a hard call. Some kids really ARE that shy, ESPECIALLY around strangers. And some parents have other stuff on their mind, not always happy stuff, when they're out doing things with their kids.

Leaving a kid with a stranger, though, even one with kids--that's just not something that people DO anymore, is it? Or have I succumbed to the seemingly all-pervasive fear too?

[vison]

I don't know of any era where a man would walk up to a perfect stranger and leave his kid. Not unless it was a life and death situation, and this doesn't seem to be that.

I have never taught my kids to be "afraid" of strangers. I think it's one of the worst thing you can do to kids. Most kids are hurt by people they know and ought to be able to trust: scoutmasters, Sunday school teachers, coaches, uncles, fathers, mothers, etc. You should teach kids what specific things to be wary of, not just "anyone you don't know". My kids know that if they are in trouble, they should go to a woman and preferably a woman with kids. Why? Because that's the most likely kind of person that will be wherever they are. And without wishing to be a male-basher, generally women are more aware of what's going on with kids, even if it's not their own. Mothers tend to be watchful of all children, and grandmothers are, too. This is true, and is not intended to be an insult to men. It's just nature, I guess.

"Experts" say: go to a police officer. Yeah. There's a cop at every corner, eh?

Nothing is stupider than children who run shrieking (and I've seen it) when a stranger speaks to them.

And if the kid is too young to understand warnings, then the kid should NEVER be out of your sight if not your touch.

The guy Lurker wrote about did WRONG. It was abandonment, plain and simple.

[axordil]

Abandonment has a rather more long-term tone to it, at least to my ear.

Still, it sounds like a strange situation. But many situations with kids are. I really can't advise, because I wasn't there, and so much of it boils down to the "vibe" you get from the people involved.

[Frelga]

The bruise could be an accident. I agree, it is common for a small kid to have bruises. It is common for a small kid to be shy around strange adults, and it's not the same as fearing a stranger.

But just dumpling a child on a complete stranger, without even asking how long he plans to be where he is is NOT OK. Doesn't necessarily amount to child abuse, I don't think, but in the U.S., at least, the guy would be in trouble with the law if you reported him.

[solicitr]

But that reminds me of the poor Danish tourist in NY who left her child in its stroller outside the shop: common practice in Copenhagen. In NY she got arrested and her baby taken away by CPS.

[vison]

I guess she won't be visiting New York again.

[Teremia]

When my oldest child was a tiny baby -- maybe four months old? -- my husband and I were invited to give talks at UC Santa Cruz, a beautiful campus with lots of hills (relevant info, just wait).

The conference provided a babysitter, a sweet undergrad, to wheel the baby around while we gave our talks.

At the end of mine, terrible terrible wailing baby cries.

Turns out the sweet babysitter forgot to buckle the baby into the stroller, and when they went down one of those hills (told you they'd come into the story), my daughter slipped right down under the front bar of the stroller and rolled down the hill!

She was a bald (but cute) baby, and her head was so scraped up by this accident that she looked like Mikhail Gorbachev -- remember his scar?

OK, it's been 15 years since then, and the scar has faded since, but that was traumatic all around (the babysitter was so upset I was distracted from my own upsetness by trying to comfort her).

PLUS -- and here's why I tell this story -- for weeks afterward people gave us strange looks when we were out and about with the poor marred baby. My husband got suspicious comments at the store: "Baby has a lot of accidents, huh?"

Just to say, babies do get banged up, poor things, for reasons other than abuse!

But of course I never left a kid with a stranger. On the other hand, if this dad was desperate for some reason (terrible need to go to the bathroom? I'm grasping at straws here), choosing the fellow playing sock games with his baby twins was not the worst decision ever. MOST of the time, daddies playing sock games with baby twins are not murderers or kidnappers, and thank goodness for that.

[axordil]

Indeed. There are thousands of stories one could spin behind the incident, thousands of configurations for the ice below the surface of the water, of which we see only the peak. Some are quite ugly, others less so, and some are fairly innocuous.

I suppose the thing I wonder is how many of us parents have done something that might elicit a raised eyebrow from well-meaning strangers-- if not quite a full-blown visit from CPS--because of the circumstances in which they saw it. My guess is one hundred percent. That of course is the problem with detecting actual abuse--unless you're in the field, and even then, the egregious cases are the exception. They make headlines, but should they make policy? I don't know.

It would be instructive to see some statistics on how many tips to CPS end up leading to action of some sort after investigation.

[anthriel]

I always feel bad for those CPS workers who make the wrong judgements. I mean, kids DO get banged up, in the natural course of just being kids. But if a CPS type determines that it is not abuse, and it IS... wow. There are some jobs that I could never handle...

[axordil]

The only thing worse than a false positive is a false negative. That's pretty much universal whenever they are both possibilities.

[solicitr]

The only thing worse than a false positive is a false negative. That's pretty much universal whenever they are both possibilities.

The whole Anglo-American legal tradition would disagree. "Innocent until proven guilty" and its many restatements are vital.

[Primula Baggins]

However, CPS and similar agencies really can't operate strictly by that standard, Solicitr: if no one could act on the basis of anonymous tips or an agency worker's judgment in the field, children would die. That's far worse than the occasional error of judgment that interferes with parental rights, no matter how painful those cases can be.

[axordil]

I was actually thinking more of medical tests...but it is interesting how the whole CPS infrastructure developed outside the tradition of common law, for better or worse.

[Primula Baggins]

Well, in common law children were more or less property, and what parents did with or to them was the parents' business. There really can't be a basis in common law for the more evolved idea that sometimes the state needs to interfere in the "sacred" parent-child relationship—that the parent is not necessarily the sole judge of what is good for the child.

[axordil]

The motivation for doing it is fairly clear, I agree. But the end result is strange, because in many ways kids ARE still treated as chattel. We just went through making a will, and a huge chunk of it involves assigning guardianship and making contingencies for our son in case something happens to us. One of the things we have left to do is to get blood relatives who might otherwise be considered "default" guardians to sign off on OUR choices (a contingent one), one of which is a friend and not family at all.

[nerdanel]

I would just flat-out have asked the kid how she got the bruise. It's definitely possible that she was somehow playing too hard and hit her eye, or got into a scuffle with another preschooler, slipped and fell, etc. But if it turned out that the parent had anything to do with it, I would have no problem with reporting him. From what little I know about this man, I already strongly dislike him.
- Left kid with complete stranger
- Potentially to go smoke (i.e. NOT a good reason to leave your kid with a stranger)
- Took off without even receiving the stranger's PERMISSION to leave the kid
- Came over and spoke roughly to his kid (this is the sort of thing subject to misinterpretation by strangers, but in light of the other things the guy was doing, I feel okay about casting it in a negative light)
- Potential cause of kid's black eye (if so, a major issue)
- More attenuated, but: may also smoke around kid (if so, also a major issue)

[Frelga]

I would just flat-out have asked the kid how she got the bruise. It's definitely possible that she was somehow playing too hard and hit her eye, or got into a scuffle with another preschooler, slipped and fell, etc. But if it turned out that the parent had anything to do with it, I would have no problem with reporting him.

Nel, if the kid wouldn't even say hi to a stranger, she probably wouldn't be able to answer the question either. Even if she did, she was only two and probably could not reply coherently.

Then again, there was the time when Lufu's cheek collided with my head when we were play-wrestling (he was older than two, of course). It didn't leave a bruise but it could have. (He left a bruise on my chin once by accident, forgetting that he was too tall to jump up at me. ) And there was a time or two when I had to pull on his arm hard to get him out of the harm's way, which again could leave very suspicious-looking bruises.

And it's really hard to say that a false positive is better in this case, from what I hear about foster homes.

I also recall in the physical punishment thread, some posters describe their experiences in terms that cried out to me, and yet they felt that there parents loved them and tried to do what's best. It's a hard, hard choice.

I think if I thought of it at the time, I would have challenged the father when he returned. Whether the child is abused or not, just dropping her on a stranger is really NOT A GOOD SIGN.