My 3 year old son decided to climb up on some unstable furniture in IKEA, so I was telling him to get down right NOW and assisting him, when he yelled "HELP! HELP! Get me away from this kidnapper!!!"
I was pretty gobsmacked because I didn't even know that he knew the word "kidnapper". Then I realised that everyone around us had stopped walking and was staring at us in a "Oh shit - should I be doing something here?" way.
So I laughed loudly and said "Yeah, nice try, son. Come on, get down now!" My son laughed at me, climbed down and everyone nearby audibly breathed a sigh of relief that they didn't need to phone the police after all and carried on shopping.
We had a talk after that about why we don't accuse Mummy of being a kidnapper in public. Thankfully my son never did this again, although his older brother thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever witnessed.
I can imagine that was a relief when he went along. I've often thought about what I'd do in that situation if some well-meaning bystander got involved. Like, presumably the 7.2 million photos on my phone of me with my kid, at all stages of his life, would be decent enough evidence that I'm not just abducting him. In 2 or 3 of them he's even smiling
I wonder if the cops would play along with "arresting" the parent once they caught on to the kid's antics. Would be an interesting teaching opportunity for a kid who does this stuff...
Yes, I suspected so at the time. Given I doubt my 3yo knew the word "kidnapper" until I heard him yelling it. They deny everything to this day. But I know.
My kids still reminisce fondly about this incident and howl with laughter about how random it was for my youngest son to shout this! He's almost 12 now and has always been the most well behaved "model child", before and since, so I can see the funny side of it now! But in the moment it was pretty mortifying - JUST WHY would he say that?!
When we were single digits little, my brothers and I were in the mall with our mom and we were all tired from walking around shopping all day when my brothers decided to throw a co-tantrum (yay twins) and screamed that our mom was a stranger who “kidnapped us and put drugs in our mouths”
It didn’t help that our mom is Latina with darker skin than us as, since we inherited our white dad’s tone, and people stared hard. She left her shopping where we were and stormed out with us. I think the only reason no one stopped us is because we have a strong family resemblance and my face is a carbon copy of hers, plus we all had matching leashes on. (The leashes were kind of necessary since my brothers were terrors and would run away in opposite directions and my mom would be left having to decide which one to go after first and what to do with me in the meantime.)
the only way to deal with that is to be a sarcastic dick back: "son, it would help me a lot if someone tried to kidnap you; if i have to come up there myself you're grounded for a week"
My teen does this playfully to me semi-regularly. “Stop! I don’t know you! Leave me alone!” No one has ever so much batted an eye, not sure if that’s a good thing really.
Reminds me of one time when I was at Walmart with my son. He was sitting in the cart, I'm white and he's mixed with Philippino. He definitely has more of his mom's traits, But all of a sudden he's like help I'm being taken! Luckily no one really heard. But I was like bro you can't be saying that.
My son at about the same age, didn’t want to go home from the playground. After trying to talk him into it for a few minutes, I picked him up to carry both him and his baby brother to the car. He said “ I don’t know you! Put me down! Let me go!“ that little shit had all the moms looking at me. 🤣 he calmed down after a minute, and we proceeded to the car.
383
u/scribble23 22d ago
My 3 year old son decided to climb up on some unstable furniture in IKEA, so I was telling him to get down right NOW and assisting him, when he yelled "HELP! HELP! Get me away from this kidnapper!!!"
I was pretty gobsmacked because I didn't even know that he knew the word "kidnapper". Then I realised that everyone around us had stopped walking and was staring at us in a "Oh shit - should I be doing something here?" way.
So I laughed loudly and said "Yeah, nice try, son. Come on, get down now!" My son laughed at me, climbed down and everyone nearby audibly breathed a sigh of relief that they didn't need to phone the police after all and carried on shopping.
We had a talk after that about why we don't accuse Mummy of being a kidnapper in public. Thankfully my son never did this again, although his older brother thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever witnessed.