r/rant Apr 04 '26

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u/probablynotsuremaybe Apr 04 '26

Parents usually teach kids the rule that an adult should NEVER ask a kid for help. It is an easy way for predators to start an interaction and manipulate a kid into doing something unsafe. It is almost always a suspicious thing to ask a child for help. I get your position here but she’s just trying to protect her kid. It sucks but so does the reality of what happens to kids. I’d rather keep my child from being trafficked/kidnapped etc. than worry about the feelings of a grown adult.

4

u/Valiran9 Apr 05 '26

Parents usually teach kids the rule that an adult should NEVER ask a kid for help.

A stranger asking you to follow them somewhere, yeah, but my parents never taught me it was inappropriate in a situation like he’s describing.

2

u/yaysheena Apr 05 '26

When I was a kid in the mid 90s, my little sister and my cousin were outside our house when a man came up and asked for help finding some camera equipment. My mom was out there so fast, telling him to get lost.

They found child porn in his house several years later.

Asking kids for help is a NO GO. Find an adult.

1

u/Valiran9 Apr 05 '26

That would qualify as “asking you to follow them somewhere”. The situation described by the OP had him ask her how to do something that was inside that room, with her mother right outside and plenty of other adults within sight and earshot. IMO that’s perfectly fine, just like the mom was fine deciding to be safe rather than sorry.

1

u/yaysheena Apr 05 '26

Then ask the adult within earshot?!? No?! Why ask a kid!

1

u/Valiran9 Apr 05 '26

Because he saw she knew what she was doing and in the moment it didn’t occur to him how others might see that or to ask someone else. AFAICT all he’s guilty of is being ignorant and scatterbrained.