I saw this on Drudge a little over a week ago Family dog kept watch over missing 2-year-old overnight:
A missing 2-year-old boy in Elgin was found Saturday morning after Kershaw County deputies say the family dog kept him warm and safe all night.
Pretty cool dog. It was cold out that night, too, with temperatures in the 40s. They don’t say it in the copy, but you can see from the video that the area is very rural. It looks like the kid was in a wooded area. Also one of the commenters on the story claims to live in the area and says the boy was farther from home than the story suggested. Hard to know if it is true, but it has a ring of truth to me:
Witchytiger
The child wasn’t “across the street”… I know this because he was found on my street, and he was actually found about 1/4 of a mile down from his own house…
But how did this happen?
Matthews said the boy’s mother, 25-year-old Jacklyn Marie Jacobson, and her boyfriend Jose Gloria told investigators Tyler went to get some juice and didn’t come back.
Hey kid, pick me up some smokes while you are out!
I know Captain Capitalism will be shocked to learn the father was not part of the household:
…the boy’s biological father is in the Army and stationed in Hawaii, and is currently on his way back to Kershaw County.
When reviewing the story for this post, I found a new one: Missing Elgin toddler seen wandering neighborhood again
The mother of an Elgin toddler that went missing a week ago and her boyfriend were arrested and charged with unlawful conduct toward a child Sunday morning.
I had a serious problem with my first son running away when he was 3. He would do it at every single opportunity, even waking up unusually early. We had all kinds of interior locks but because we were living in a rental there were only so many things we could do and there were 4 doors leading outside.
I had to call the cops on my missing son at least 4x. One time he was missing a whole 20 minutes and it turned out he was in someone else’s house.
I am quite lucky they never called CPS on me. Thankfully I haven’t had that problem with any other kids.
I am not saying this woman wasn’t at fault or negligent, but I am saying that not *every* case of a runaway child is neglect. Some of these kids can be extremely crafty.
@Paige: We’re going to have trouble with our son for that, too. He’s only 15 months old and he’s already making a dash for it every time the doors open. At the church nursery during Mass yesterday, apparently he was trying to push aside the couch that blocks off the back door of the nursery so that he could escape. What can I say? The kid takes after his father and values his freedom pretty highly.
Regarding the original post, the big issue I see regarding the father being missing is that it’s extremely unlikely that the father would’ve given up looking for the boy overnight, with or without helicopters with infrared technology (which the police stopped using at about 12:30 AM, according to the original article). If it were just the dog I’d have gone to bed and waited for it to come back in the morning. For my boy, I’d be out there with a damn candle all night if I had to.
Also, this story shows us yet again that dogs are awesome. Our son is very well bonded with our dogs, and I’m very happy for it. His their kid almost as much as ours, and I’m glad for it.
Paige, I think the deal here that differentiates your son’s behavior from this kid’s is that the parents apparently knew the kid had “gone to get some juice.” I don’t think I’d send my four year old son off to Hy-Vee with a few bucks yet, to put it mildly…..
I’m all for giving custody of the boy to his dog until his father is able to take full custody. (joking, OK, the father’s parents get custody at this point….and mom and boyfriend lose their dog)
While I understand that some kids can really be a challenge that way, I think this becomes a cop out for irresponsible parenting. Paige you have 5 kids with a 6th on the way as I recall. You are married and your kids have a stable home life. One kid pulling a Houdini on you is understandably seen through a different lens.
The mother either jettisoned the father while her second child was still an infant and shacked up with a new man, or (my guess) has a new baby daddy in the house. Her life is in chaos, so I’m not inclined to give her a pass when chaotic things happen to her kids.
“[Sherriff] Matthews said the boy’s mother, 25-year-old Jacklyn Marie Jacobson, and her boyfriend Jose Gloria told investigators Tyler went to get some juice and didn’t come back. … He said the boy’s biological father is in the Army and stationed in Hawaii, and is currently on his way back to Kershaw County.”
Makes me REAL happy about my prospects for getting remarried and having kids while in the service, let me tell you. (You’re right, at least the kid can count on the dog.)
“Went to get some juice” could be just going out to the kitchen for a juice-box. Of course, a sane parent would not let a 2-year old pick out their own drink. So it would be obvious when the child attempted to get outside. And when the child did not return in a matter of a minute or two, a sane parent would go to investigate.
Perhaps the boy was playing “hide and seek” with the adults, too.
However, let’s face the facts: the stepfather clearly did/does not place the same value upon this boy as his father very likely would, and the mother is likely willing to give up the child in order to keep her new “boyfriend” *. In the old days it’s likely a neighbor would have taken the boy in and kept him. In the really old days, the boy might be dropped off at the monks to take care of.
* “Boyfriend” is such a ridiculous word for anyone without a ‘teen’ in their age. It’s a childish term, like so many other pieces of childishness in the modern world.
It’s scary when your kids play pranks on you. When my kids were 4 and 6 we were picking up my car at a repair shop. I did not want them to go into the repair shop (grease pits), so I asked them to do some “window shopping” in the adjacent equipment shop. Once back in the equipment shop I could not find them and the staff had not seen them. After a couple of minutes I realized that they might have gone to the shop’s toilet, which proved to be the case. They had been spying on me and were having great fun watching me looking for them.
Confession time? Sweet. 😀
When my son was the same age, he also escaped. Some men came to pick up some furnishings we were donating to the Salvation Army, and they didn’t pull the door tightly shut.
When they left, I was taking DS to the toilet (he was potty learned at 18 months — I do share my secrets if you need them. LOL). I, then, had to go to the toilet, and because that door (to the toilet) doesn’t close well, DS banged it open.
I figured he went into the lounge to play, and wasn’t too concerned — he can’t reach the doorknob of our front door (now he can; he’s also unusually tall for his age).
So, I’m doing what I need to do, and I hear a female voice go: Hello? Hellooo! And I call out “yes? I’m in the toilet! Just a moment!”
And wouldn’t know know, there is DS, sans pants, wearing my shoes, holding the hand of a neighbor who said “Looks like he escaped!”
The day he could reach the knob (which was about a month ago), I was in the shower when I heard someone calling, and I jumped out. And wouldn’t you know that my son was buck naked, running down the footpath? Luckily, a neighbor caught him and brought him back.
We taught him that he cannot go out without us (and the neighbor told him he cannot go out without shoes. Apparently, he said “Hey Mate! You aren’t wearing any shoes!” to my buck-naked kid, which stopped said kid up short so that the neighbor could bring him back.), and we put a hook and eye above our heads on the door so he can’t get out.
But I think that there’s a big difference between this young pair and what’s up with the kiddo AND my DS just being clever (and naked).
oh, and that’s a good dog. 🙂
Some kids are definitely escape artists. This kid was probably fleeing for his life. Poor boy. Poor dog – I hope someone took in the hero pooch too.
The saddest thing is that CPS will now spend all their time and resources trying to reunite this child and his sibling with his neglectful mother and her new luv. I hope his father comes home and gets custody.
It’s extremely difficult to adopt in the U.S. now because of increased demand (caused by lowered fertility as a result of deferment of maternity), abortion, nearly universal acceptance of single motherhood, and a push for birthparents’ rights. Would-be adoptive parents have to be able and willing to reveal everything about yourselves and have their relationship dynamics/parenting ideas be picked over endlessly. They have to take classes. They have to be fingerprinted. They also have to put forth large amounts of cash. But any crackhead can leave the maternity ward, stumble home to her hovel and blearily read the “It’s a boy!” sign tacked to the front door. Seriously, I bet if they queried maternity floor nurses, CPS could pretty accurately predict where they will be needed in a few years.
” Tyler went to get some juice and didn’t come back.”
We used to live in a quasi-rural area, and we had a guy living not far from us with a 3-yo boy. His girlfriend would come over and bring the kid candy, and send him outside so they could be alone. We found that kid ouside at all hours of the day. They were fortunate it was a safe area.
Poor kids. You always wish there was something you could do to help.
This ‘mother’ should be paraded around town with full shaming regalia.
As for her boyfriend, he should be handcuffed and visited by the boy’s father.
Now that the kids have been removed from the home, the mother should be evaluated by an objective observer who is not a bad mother apologist (fairly impossible, I know – we are all bad mother apologists now). If the situation is as bad as it appears, her parental rights should be swiftly and irrevocably terminated. Custody of the boy should go to his father, and we can pray that he will be more responsible and have some sort of family support system to help him. If he or his family does not want or is not capable of taking care of the child, he should be placed immediately for adoption. I guarantee there are a fleet of parents who would be eager to raise him and willing to jump through whatever hoops necessary to be allowed to.
The infant is another case. If the boyfriend is the father and he is found unfit, the baby should be placed for adoption as well.
Ultimately, this comes down to what do we value more: the children’s right to be safe and adequately parented or adults’ rights to their children. We as a society have chosen the latter for so long, I’m not sure if we even know how to advocate for the former anymore.
…and Paige wins this thread’s race to exemplify Dalrock’s Law.