I live on the outskirts of a small town. Our neighborhood is made up of acre+ lots with trees between homes. It’s rural, quiet, and the kind of place where kids are always outside, neighbors know each other but remain private, and yet we all keep an eye out for one another.

In the handful of years I've lived here, there's only been a few times we've needed to help out a neighbor kid, so it's not something that happens often but we're happy to be close by to help when needed.

I have a 2, almost 3 yo who is extremely independent. He will do a temp check (open the door and stick a hand out) before getting dressed to go outside. We joke that he's someone's grandpa, he is always working on a project or tinkering with something. He hates being inside. He has his own tools. He has full conversations, and is likely mildly on the spectrum. He will look right through people trying to talk to him unless he's VERY comfortable with them. He was 18 months old when he said he didn't like strangers trying to talk to him in the store, he wanted me to talk for him. So I do not make him engage if he's not comfortable.

It snowed the last few days, but it’s April and the weather is beautiful despite the snow on the ground. I was upstairs doing laundry and called down to him to ask where he was going. He said he was going to get a bunny and would be right back. I assumed he was talking about a toy. So I was anticipating him coming back up but kept an ear out.

What really happened though was he saw a real bunny out the window and went out the front door to find it. He was properly dressed and scouring around our deck. Less than five minutes later, my neighbor (who lives next door) appeared in our driveway. She said she heard him crying “for a long time,” but we later pulled Ring camera footage and confirmed that he went outside at 7:41, and she arrived at 7:46. It was less than 5 minutes going down to the second, he didn't start crying immediately either.

I was notified she was there and I immediately made it outside to find him distraught and I was struggling to understand why he was so upset. He was dry, he wasn't hurt, he wasn't locked out. I asked him and he said he couldn't find me, so I left it at that. Then she looked me dead in the eye and said she was a mandated reporter and would "have to report this."

My kid is outside 20 times a day, in and out. There's no water, traffic, chemicals, to get into. He's either hammering nails into a board, unscrewing something or digging in the dirt. We are 200 ft from the road. When I say he's very capable, he will check a ladder and let us know he needs a "holder" cause it's wobbly. He watched a YouTube tutorial on drywall repair one morning and kept a mental shopping list of everything we needed until we went back to Home Depot. And then we repaired our drywall together. He is so intentional, yet we do still keep him close and keep an eye on him. He's two. But an old man two. I do not let him outside unless I'm keeping an eye in him, so this is not a typical scenario but I'm not freaked out by it.

I ran outside immediately. The whole thing was resolved within two minutes of her arriving. I was shocked that her first instinct was to tell us she’s reporting it. She has never interacted with our son before, despite living next door. We’ve had tension in the past with her dogs using our deck as their bathroom, and we’ve made complaints about it because that's where our toddler plays, but it's always been polite and directly to her and her boyfriend. It's not like we have ever called it in to the city or something. So part of me wonders if this was some built up irritation with us and she jumped on an opportunity.

Looking back at the ring camera and confirming how he was out there for less than 5 minutes and he at no point attempted to come back inside, he tells me he was crying that the bunnies wouldn't let him catch them and not fear. The fear crying started when she tried to coax our son inside, but he didn’t go near her. Watching the videos he told me she was “a stranger and dangerous,” and honestly, he was rightfully uncomfortable. I asked him if she tried to pick him up and bring him in, would that have been ok? And he said, no strangers are dangerous.

He's not wrong and I was not framing my questions to him to paint her as the villain. I was watching the ring clips with him and asking what's happening.

The interior door was open, he wasn't locked out, he wasn’t cold, hurt, or in danger—he was just crying because the bunny ran away. And now a stranger is standing between him and the open door. He was crying for me at that point because she was standing there.

Ok, so he's fine. I'm not freaked out that CPS is coming to my door. I've been a foster parent. I know they're just doing their job and it's a non issue.

Here’s where I might be the asshole: I’m annoyed that she escalated something unnecessarily and caused the situation to be scary for my son in my mind. If it was raining, cold, he fell, he was locked out, it was 10-20 minutes alone, he was wandering in her yard or the street, he had a knife in his hand, or ANYTHING that was justifiable, I would absolutely agree with the report. But she's one of the only neighbors without kids. I want to let the rest of our neighborhood know that she's wearing her mandated reporter hat first and not her friendly neighbor hat.

It matters because kids are riding their bikes past her house, they're riding four wheelers, they're running around in groups. We pick kids up and drive them home if their hurt. We fix a wheel in the road if it's broken. We let a kid in the house if they get locked out. It's not all the time, but you want to know that your neighbors are going to help if you needed it and not call you into CPS, right?

I'm selling my house this summer so I don't need to be friends with her. Can I tell all our neighbor friends that after this encounter, I'd be worried she's potentially going to report them to CPS if she comes across a crying kid?