> Here is one for the "What are they thinking?" department:
> Like all husbands, I spend a lot of time sitting in the car in a parking lot waiting. I see young parents drive up, take the toddler out of the car seat, deposit them on the ground and then take off. They are leaving a toddler to tag along behind. Usually the kid is only about ten feet back, but the parent is hurrying into a store and sometimes they never look back. There are usually two lanes of traffic to cross in front of the store, and there goes Mama, who is easily visible, followed by a kid who doesn't even come up to the top of a fender. I say they are "usually" ten feet back, but sometimes the parent is 40 or 50 feet ahead.
>
> On the way back out, Mama is pushing a buggy or has both hands full, often talking on a cell phone, and the kid is chugging behind, along trying to keep up.
>
> When my kids were young, the parking lot rule was to hold their hand until they were seven or eight years old, and parking lots then were not as big or as busy as they are now.
>
> I have seen kids less than two, pretty much on their own in parking lots. At that age they tend to dart off in any direction. And the parents are not even looking!
>
> It gives me cold chills.
> Howard

Agreed.

I still say to my kids (who are nine and eleven, and for whom this is not physically possible) "Would you rather stay with me, or would you like to ride in the shopping cart?"

They always, always, had to hold my hand, or have a hand on the cart if it was full and I had to push it.

Kids do foolish things - they run in front of cars, stop to pick things up and look at them, go with strangers -

te "scary!" ach