Did i do enough to help this neglected child?
Running late to my yoga class recently, I noticed a small child sitting on the edge of the road playing with some grass, on the corner of a main road and another street.
Knowing I wouldn't be able to focus on yoga if I didn't check out the situation, I made myself even later by talking to him and asking him where his mummy was. He was very cute and friendly and said she was in the shop, pointing to it on the other side of a small parking lot. I told him to go to his mummy and watched him go into the store.
When I came out of yoga an hour later he was there again on the edge of the road and this time I took him to the shop myself and he went to his mother, who was behind the counter on the phone. I interrupted her to tell her I'd now found him on the edge of the road twice and to keep him in the shop.
Her response was to start verbally abusing the kid, so I interrupted her again and told her not to blame him and (very angry by this time) that he's the child and she's the fucking adult and that she's irresponsible.
After I left I called the local police who said unless they saw him in danger they couldn't do anything but that they'd call around and do a welfare check and I also reported to Child Protection.
I called the store and told the woman I'd contacted the police and child protection and her response was that she's "told him not to go out the door again" at which I lost it again, called her a moron and asked if she thinks that'll protect him from a predator or a speeding driver.
I still feel I didn't do enough, but I can't think what else I could've done. I'm seriously tempted to keep calling her at regular intervals to tell her she's being observed to check on the safety of her child and I'd really like some feedback & suggestions.
Oh, and before anyone leaps to this idiot's defence, I'm a mother and a grandmother and I know it can be hard to watch small kids all the time, but there's no excuse for letting a 4 year old play next to a busy road TWICE that I know of in one afternoon.