Woman Asks If She Was Wrong For Calling Police On Her Neighbour's Kids After She Saw Them Playing Outside Her House Unsupervised

There are times when we do things with the best intention however, they are not always interpreted by others in the same manner. As a result, it leaves us wondering if our action of choice was really wrong or the other person is being simply unreasonable? 

Redditor Lost_Consideration90 decided to seek advice on this matter and took to the platform Am I The Asshole? to ask people if she did wrong for calling the police on her neighbor's kids as she was worried for their safety?

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OP wrote: 

I heard kids playing on my porch, so I told my kids to get their socks and shoes on because it sounded like their friends were outside playing already. My daughter opens the door, and two very small children jump off of my porch and run towards the road, which made me nervous right off the bat because they were so small (~3m and 4f)… But they stopped and came back when they saw it was just my kids, and I realized that these were two kids that I had not seen before at all in the neighborhood, and there was no adult insight supervising them.

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She added:

I tried to ask them where they lived, where their grown up was and if I could walk them home, but the boy kept yelling at me that he knows where he lives, at the mountain(This doesn’t make sense, we live 2 hours away from the closest mountain, but he’s also around 3 lol). So I called the non emergency police line and explained the situation.

Two cops showed up about 20 mins later and found the mom about 10 houses down. She kept glaring at me as the cop was talking to her. When they left, she meekly starts calling her kids, who are just straight up ignoring her, and I said ‘I don’t think that’s going to work, I think you need to come get them.’ She glared at me again and took 10 mins to wrangle up her kids and go home.

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The story does not end here and OP then shared details of what was bothering her the most: 

I’m not sure if this paragraph is going to add any context, or if it’s just gonna make me feel better to type it out because it was weird but here goes. The little girl wouldn’t talk to me at all, probably shy, but the little boy was weirdly demanding and disrespectful, even for a three-year-old… He told me to get him water, and I did to which he screamed at me for not bringing him a big bottle of water. Then at one point when I was waiting for the cops he told me that he was going in my house to get more toys to bring out and I told him ‘no you’re not’ and he straight up looked me in my eye and said ‘yes I am’, and was going to just walk in my house… I don’t know if this is just offhanded weirdness, or if maybe these kids are just allowed to do whatever they want in their house? It honestly just kind of floored me, because my kids would never talk to me that way, let alone a strange adult. He also told the cop that he ran away because he felt like it?

Anyway, when I told my best friend and mom, they agreed with what I did, but when I told my bf he brought up that the lady might’ve been glaring at me because they might not be fully legal here, and I may have put them on blast..

I’m definitely not trying to get anybody deported, but I’m also not trying to babysit two small unknown children for free all day.. So, was I TA here?

Most of the people assured the OP that what she did was in the best interest of the kids' safety in fact many pointed out that there could be more than meets the eye.

Anonymous strangers weighed in by declaring:

• NTA – Not The A**hole
• YTA – You’re The A**hole
• ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
• NAH – No A**holes Here

After receiving an overwhelming response from people, OP shared an update on her post. 

Update: Thank you everyone, for your advice and awards! I didn’t expect to gain any traction and I took my kids on a nice secluded forest walk, and came back to a bunch of comments. After my bf got home we talked about it more and after reading a lot of your comments, my bf said that he didn’t think I was in the wrong to call, he just thought that could be the reason she was glaring. He’s glad I took care of the kids.

I did also end up calling CPS after an overwhelming amount of you pointed out the signs of abuse/negligence. I gave them the name of the officer I talked to, the time and the area so they could get the lady’s name and address.