I was just getting dinner out of the oven when #1 son came knocking on the kitchen window and presented a crying 6 year old boy.

After talking to him it turned out that his mum had gone shopping and packed him off to his friend’s house.  He’d changed his mind halfway to his friend’s house and decided to go back home only to find that his mum had already left.  Knowing that his dad didn’t finish work until 8pm he walked to his grandparents’ house which is a few doors away from us but a good 10-15 minutes walk away from where he lives.

His grandparents weren’t in so I got him to take me to his dad and uncle’s house on the off chance but there was nobody in.  So next stop was the friend’s house he was meant to have gone to but there was nobody there either!

Dreading the thought of having to phone the police to come and take him away until his mum or dad could be found, I asked him if there was anyone else he could go to nearby.  Thankfully there was – an auntie.  So he took me to his auntie’s house which co-incidentally happened to be a house I lived in when I was a kid and luckily his cousin was there.

So this lad was returned safely to his family but how different it could have been.  A 6 year old shouldn’t be walking around a housing estate by himself – anything could have happened to him.  Lucky he ended up here rather than being intercepted by a gang of feral youths or a kiddie fiddler.  With all the stories in the news just lately about kids being abused and murdered, what was the lad’s mother thinking leaving a 6 year old to walk to a friend’s house while she went shopping without even checking if the friend was in or that he’d got to where he was meant to be?