A shop owner has hit out at parents who use his comic book store as a ‘pseudo child-minding service’ leaving their kids unattended there for hours at a time.
Matt West, who runs ‘Miwk’ a comic and collectibles shop in Reigate, Surrey said every summer holiday he sees a spike in the numbers of parents leaving their kids in his shop on their own.
He has now reached his wits end after being faced with unaccompanied children crying, fighting with rolls of wrapping paper and breaking stock.
"It is bizarre," he told Surrey Live.
"We live in a time when people are paranoid about leaving their kids, or about people talking to them, so leaving them in a shop for an hour or so seems odd.
"My daughter is 13 and I don’t think I would ever have done that with her. It’s not that we don’t want people to leave their kids for five minutes to look around, but it’s every case on it’s merits."
Children aged between seven and 12 are being left for anything up to, and in excess of, two hours, he said.
His account of some of the incidents this summer, outlined in a frustrated Facebook post, included the following: "A guy left three boys in the shop saying to them he was off to Morrison’s and would be back in half an hour, stipulating ‘We’re not buying anything!’
"By the time he’d returned, the kids had been thrown out of the shop.
"They had been fighting with tubes of wrapping paper at the back of the shop, then started kicking soft toys about before breaking two mugs.
"They were sent out of the shop and told to wait outside by the window for their dad to get back.
"When he got back he was furious with us for throwing his kids out of the shop and refused to pay for the damage they had caused saying it was ‘not down to him to keep an eye on them’."
In another incident, a mother left three children for 90 minutes, while she went to the dentist.
And last year, Mr West said he had to call the police when a mother left her children, one as young as seven, for more than two hours. When officers called her, she was in Croydon.
"We’re not unreasonable here," he added in the post.
"We get regular kids popping in after school or during the holidays to browse and kill some time. We’re fine with that.
"But we are not a child-minding service. Knowingly leaving your kids in a shop while you do something else is not fair on them or us.
"This coupled with the news last week that kids were left in a car in Morrison’s car park on a hot day unattended suggests there is a problem in Reigate at the moment, most likely related to the school holidays.
Read More
Top Stories from Mirror Online
-
Student makes UK rich list overnight
-
Captain speaks out over cruise ship fall
-
Harry and Meghan’s secret holiday
-
Seaplane crash tycoon’s £41m fortune
"We don’t want to appear unwelcoming. We’ve never made any secret of the fact that we regard the shop as a sanctuary for the bullied, strange and unusual, socially anxious and emotionally dispossessed.
"This is still the case and will always be the case.
"Just, please – find another solution for childcare because our front door is by a busy road, almost always open and we are busy running a shop… nobody is watching your kids."
The post has already been met with encouragement – and disbelieving horror – by the majority of people who have commented on Facebook.
Mum-of-two Nathalie Webb, from Cobham, who blogs as This Surrey Mummy, said leaving young children to their own devices sounded like "the most bizarre thing in the world".
"You wouldn’t drop your kids of at M&S or The Entertainer and say ‘I’ll be back in an hour’," she said.
"I would never dream of leaving my kids like that. I would like to meet these parents who do think it is suitable. It is no different to leaving them on a street corner or in the park. It’s very odd."
Source: Read Full Article