POV: A barefooted small boy wandered alone in Punggol & no one stopped to help him. As a mum, that broke my heart.

On Jun. 20, Gisele Woon was walking to One Punggol with her daughter when she spotted a little boy who had fallen onto the road while chasing a ball.

What shocked her most was that the toddler, who looked to be aged one or two, was completely alone.

Although several people had apparently seen him before she did, no one stopped to help, until she stepped up.

She asks: "Shouldn't it still take a village to raise a child?"

By Gisele Woon, as told to Chloe Loh

Alarm bells went off in my head

My daughter and I were on our way to One Punggol when I first spotted the boy.

He looked to be aged one or two years old, and was even smaller than my already petite daughter.

He was barefoot, holding a ball, and completely alone.

My first thought was: Why is there a toddler on the road by himself?

Suddenly, he tossed his ball into the air, tried to catch it, and stumbled onto the road.

The moment I saw that, alarm bells went off in my head. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was very wrong.

Before I could fully process what had happened, he got up and started running further down the road.

Looking back, I think my instincts as a mother simply took over.

Though I was pushing my daughter's stroller, I immediately rushed over and managed to catch him before anything happened.

The boy had no idea how close he came to danger

After I caught him, I tried talking to him, but he simply looked at me blankly. He didn’t cry, nor did he seem frightened.

That’s when I realised that he had no idea how dangerous the situation had been.

To him, it was just another game with his ball.

Although he couldn't answer any of my questions, he was willing to follow me and I decided to help him look for his parents.

People noticed him, but nobody stopped

The incident took place along the stretch of road between One Punggol and Waterway Point, and for those unfamiliar with the area, the two aren't exactly next door to each other — there's a fair bit of distance between them.

As I walked around with the boy, I asked nearby passersby if they had seen him before.

To my surprise, several of them told me they had seen him walking from the direction of One Punggol.

If they knew where he had come from, didn’t it mean they had noticed a tiny barefoot toddler wandering around alone?

Yet, none of them had stopped to check if he was okay.

Shouldn't it still take a village to raise a child?

To my relief, I later managed to reunite the boy with his family.

But even after everything was over, the experience stayed with me.

Being a gracious society

We often talk about being a gracious society, about being family-friendly, and about looking out for one another.

But when a tiny barefoot toddler can wander onto a road without anyone stopping to help, I can't help but wonder how close we really are to those ideals.

Maybe people are worried about overstepping, or maybe they're afraid of what others might think.

Or maybe we've become so used to minding our own business that we assume someone else will step in.

But someone else doesn't always.

Sometimes, helping is as simple as asking a question like, "Do you need help?"

Or, in this case, "Where are your parents?"

If everything is fine, you've only spent a few seconds of your time.

If it isn't, those few seconds could make all the difference.

What if it had been my daughter?

As a mother, I couldn't shake the thought that it could have easily been my own daughter in that situation.

And if she ever were, I would hope that someone, anyone, would stop and help her.

To this day, I still wonder why more people don't or won't.

And I'm not saying this out of anger, but just genuine confusion and sadness.

I decided to share my experience online, and my post on Instagram reached more than a million views in just three days.

But what really surprised me were the responses.

Many people shared similar stories of children getting lost in crowded places or wandering off unnoticed, and in almost every story, it came down to one stranger who decided to stop and help.

One mother told me she had briefly lost sight of her child in public, but nobody offered to help.

Others shared that they had been the only ones to step in when they spotted a vulnerable child, sometimes while looking after their own children at the same time.

Reading those stories made me realise this wasn't an isolated incident.

I know how difficult parenting can be, and how quickly a child can wander off. This could happen to any parent, and that's exactly my point.

I hope this experience can start a bigger conversation, one about what it really means to be a community, and how we show up for the most vulnerable among us: our children.

That little boy came frighteningly close to being seriously hurt, but what changed the outcome that day wasn't anything extraordinary.

Someone simply stopped.

I hope that the next time any of us sees a child who looks lost, alone or in danger, we'll choose to do the same.

Sometimes, all it takes is one person willing to stop, ask a simple question, and help.