Mama, what's "robbery"? Not a conversation I wanted to have.

SOOOOO, I took the boys shopping for a while today. We were in Walmart and I was letting them try out the 2-wheel bikes for fit before DH assembles the ones SIL bought as a gift. An employee rushes past telling me there is a robbery in progress and to go to the back of the store near the exit immediately. I'm trying to get the boys off of the bikes and they don't want to go until I answer them about what a robbery is. I finally just said, "Look, there's a man with a gun at the front of the store wanting money. Move it NOW." They got off and grabbed my hands and we walked to the back of the store as directed while the questions just flew. It was only about 5 minutes before a call came over the intercom saying that cashiers should return to their registers and customers could return to shopping, thank you. Still, it's a long 5 minutes when you're not sure what's going on other than that shots haven't yet been fired.

Essentially, I told them that sometimes when people are in bad situations and desperate, they do crazy things like going into a store and scaring people into giving them money. I told them it doesn't happen often and they don't need to be scared but they do need to follow my instructions so I can take care of them. I added that since the lady knew what was going on, we're going to follow her directions.

They haven't asked any questions since we left the store and they only asked as we were leaving if the scary man was gone and remarked to each other about how robbery was a crazy thing to do.

I don't recall covering what to tell your kids in the event of an armed robbery in any of the parenting articles I've read so I just winged it. I really hope they aren't scared the next time we have to go to Walmart.

 

Wow! How scary! I'm glad everyone is ok! :hug:

 

Yes, definitely a scary situation. Did they catch the person?

 

How scary! :hug:
I think you handled the situation very well!

 

Yikes! Debi, that's awful! :hug: I think you handled it fine. I don't know what the heck I would say.

 

Oh, no. That's really scary, Debi. So glad you are all okay.

It sounds like you did a great job addressing it with them. :Clap:

 

I don't know but I doubt it. This particular store has a bank in the front so at first I presumed the person was robbing the bank. But, when I looked at a local news site, I found two reports in the same area of pharmacies robbed at gunpoint in July. Might be more of the same. I'm thinking that if they'd caught anyone, it would be all over the news.