From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is KCRW's program of stories and documentaries, and today two stories about accidental parents,

people who find parenthood thrust upon them, like the perpetually traveling rock and

roll father who overnight has to take over the raising of his

10-year-old daughter by himself. You know I had to help her when she cried I had to go out

and play ball with her. I had to do things that a dad would do. I had to do things

that a mom would do. Having a neighbor tell my dad, like, she might need to start wearing a bra

now. But to begin the program there's this story about three children found living like

characters from a modern day Grimm's fairy tale, left to fend for themselves when the

grown-ups around them are gone.

All their care and feeding is taken over by a four-year-old girl.

Psychologists have this expression called the Parentified Child. girl. and the responsibility for both of them falls on the kid.

And it really seems appropriate that this word,

parentified, sounds a lot like the word terrified.

Because think about putting all the burdens and pressures

and anxieties of a parent and putting them on a four-year-old,

the consequences can be pretty dark.

Dan Gornstein of New Hampshire Public Radio has this story about one particular girl whose first instinct is to take care of everybody.

Our story begins just after twilight in a small New England city on a kind of busy street in a two-story

house where a six-year-old girl named Lexi...

This is our house.

And the little brothers George...

...