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4-year-old Takes Mom's Car For A Midnight Spin

Be very careful what you teach your child to do...

Spin Midnight For Car Moms Takes -year-old

First of all... teaching a four year old how to drive is a bad idea - at that age you only increase the desire to do it more instead of settling it and I am sure he thought about it all day. You must admit though - the kid is one brave one. It is a good thing they did not have a truck.

4-year-old Takes Mom's Car For A Midnight Spin UFO & Writing Art Education Sciences

Can I express my sincere doubt about this? A 4 year old..driving..Anyhow this can not be consider a issue we should be worried about as it is unlikely to happened again ...

Spin Midnight For Car Moms Takes -year-old

As far as this story's validity, it has not shown up yet on snopes.com a/k/a Urban Legends. Friends, we're missing a bigger issue here, IMO. How in the world was a 4 year old able to leave his home in the wee hours of the morning? And why were keys to a vehicle accessible to a child? Didn't the parent(s) have proper safeguards in place to prevent something like this from happening? Scary- just plain scary!!!

Spin Midnight For Car Moms Takes -year-old

It doesn't matter whether this ever appears on Snopes. It is true. It has been on all the news here in Michigan, with an interview with the mother, and showing the 4-year-old. There is no doubt.

It happened in a small town, where perhaps not everyone locks their doors at night. The child got up in the middle of the night (mom was asleep as far as I know), picked up the keys off a table, and went and got in the car.

I have known many, MANY people who put their keys on a table, hang them on a hook in the kitchen, or in the case of women, leave them in the handbag. How did the child get the keys? Pick them up, just like mom does.

Why should parents have "safeguards" for something like this? It never entered anyone's mind that a child would do this. We might consider that a 10-year-old would do it (we once had a neighbor child do something LIKE this), but by that time we have told them over and over not to play on, in, or with a car. A 4-year-old? He was just plain precocious.

4-year-old Takes Mom's Car For A Midnight Spin

I agree with Nighthawk. Personally, I leave keys on the table, on the nightstand, wherever it is feasible to leave them so I can retrieve them later. My 18-month old has found them before and I find him walking down the hallway jingling my keys. The key issue here is that the parent gave the 4-year old the opportunity to experience 'driving the car' and that opened the door in his mind that 'driving the car' was ok and acceptable. I have a 10-year old and am contemplating allowing her to sit in my lap and steer the wheel a bit while I control the pedals. Once I do that, does she get and feel more comfortable about trying it herself? Absolutely! There was no reason to teach a 4-year old how to drive a real car. Get them a fake one and let them have fun with it, and realize that the toy car is for them; the real one is for mommy and daddy. End of story.