Public Restrooms Are No Place for a Child to Be Unsupervised

Woman in Public Restroom Needs to Be More Considerate

I am writing to you about an incident that occurred in the SuperWalmart on Sunday, April 22, 2007 around lunchtime. My three children and I had left church and stopped there when I needed to go to the restroom. I escorted my 3-year-old son, 5-year-old daughter, and barely 8 year-old son to the bathroom. I had the two smaller ones in the stall with me and the older child was using the bathroom separately and had exited to wash his hands and wait for me. This is when a woman confronted my son about why he was in the women's bathroom. Needless to say, my little boy was a bit taken aback and told her that his mommy had brought him in there and told him to wait. I did not hear any of this going on as she did it quietly enough that I would not notice from the stall. She gave him a very disapproving look and said, "What?" at which he repeated himself and stepped away from the sink and yielded to her.

I would like to let this woman know (and any other person who has a problem with a child of the opposite sex in a public restroom) that a child's safety is way more important than your feelings on the matter. My son is in the 2nd grade and just turned 8 a few weeks ago. What is a parent to do? Leave the child, unattended, in public while they go into the bathroom? Adam Walsh, son of the famous John Walsh who is a champion for child safety, was merely one year younger than my son when he was taken from a public shopping center and brutally beheaded.

So maybe this woman thinks that I should have let my son go into the men's room while I waited outside? I would point out that Matthew Cecchi, a 9-year-old boy from California had his throat slashed from ear to ear while his aunt waited for him outside a campground restroom at a paid camping area beach in 1998. This solution is unacceptable and still does not answer how a mom is supposed to go to the restroom, herself, or take younger children if a family restroom is not available. This woman assumed that my son was much older because he is very large for his age and over 5 feet tall. She was wrong and all she managed to do is make a little boy feel like he was doing something bad and offensive.