To think it’s not ok for Dh to nip out to the shop

Nah.

YADNBU. She's not formally "at a friend's" she's playing nearby at their house. It's the same as if they were playing outside on a (safe) street, you are still responsible for being there. We live on a compound atm and my kid is always roaming around and in and out of the other residents' houses (we know them all) which is fine, but unless I have actually arranged for another parent to be responsible for him I would never go out and DH wouldn't either. Your DH is just so thrilled to make his responsibilities another woman's problem isn't he.

Tell him to buy his fags on the way home.
I wouldn’t want a 7 year old coming back to an empty house either.
But the easiest solution is to make sure your dh has the contact information of where his 7 year old is then he can let them know he is popping out, and make sure it is only popping out, not an hour on the beach contemplating his naval.

It's responsible to teach your daughter what to do if you're not there. You know, like in an emergency when something unplanned happens and you have no choice?

Plus what @AnnoyedAsAllHeck said.

Nope

😅

As long as he checked with neighbour first I can’t see the issue

That's not the point. The point is that he should have the number of the friend's mother in case of an emergency. The fact that he doesn't have it, and you were late for work rather than just giving him the f'ing number shows that you wanted to control him and make him wait to go and get cigarettes until you got home.

You and your DH need some communication lessons. He needs to learn that going to the store is going to the store and not a sightseeing trip that takes an hour. You need to learn that not everything can be your way and your rules.

I get it. It’s not about the waves, it’s only partially about the cigarettes.
It about being the only fucking grown up in the room, yet again.
Having a vagina doesn’t mean we’re more aware of danger, in the same way, having a vagina doesn’t mean we’re better at cleaning or laundry or hoovering or whatever.
You know what, we learned how to do this shit, so we didn’t end up living in an untidy, dirty space. Not because we have vaginas and thrive on it..
I might disagree with your level of concern/desire to have your kid watched. I literally don’t know about this stuff or what’s appropriate because I am child free.
But, I hear what you are saying beneath.
Why, why, why, don’t they give the same amount of shit we do?

How ? If the shop is 5 minutes away ? How big is the shop ?.
TBH when I was 7 I was nipping to the shop, could he have left a note ? Assuming 7 year old is NT and can read ?

This. There is such an obvious solution.

I knew that smoking kills, but I didn't realise it was as quick as that.

This is insane.

Poor guy just wants to go to the shop while his daughter is on a play date.

The daughter is walked back by a supervising adult, surely she wouldn’t leave her there if the house was empty and locked. Even less so if the dad had died, which is frankly the most ridiculous escalation I’ve read on MN (at least today).

So if you're at work and your dd came home from friends house to find sadly her dad has died would she know what to do?

YANBU. Cigarettes can wait.

My mum was a teacher.
All the teachers had the same whistle in school, so when I heard that whistle at home, I knew it meant get myself home immediately.
Why you and your husband are working - and badly at that - around your daughter and not the other way around, is a question for the ages.
Who’s in charge, again? I can’t tell.

The fuck? And maybe if her dad doesn’t feed her, teach her to cook. And if he doesn’t do baths and teeth brushing for his 7yo, it’s not neglect, it’s mums job to make sure they know how to look after themselves for when neglectful dad is parenting. And if his job is lunches and he forgets, mum needs to work out a contingency plan and have the child know what to do at school if her dad hasn’t provided… Jesus Christ, Is it not a vastly better idea to just try and have him not be neglectful?? 7yos should not come home to an empty house. They shouldn’t come home to an empty house even if they’ve been carefully told that’s what’s happening and they absolutely should not come home to find themselves alone with no idea where everyone is or if they are ever coming back. The answer here is not teach your child to cope with neglectful parenting.

I don’t understand these sorts of posts.

Of course he should have dealt with this himself. He could have called the friend’s mother. This shouldn’t have even been a conversation.

How useless is this man?

That poor grandmother has to walk them back and forth every single time they want to go between houses? And if she does do that then she would have been with them if they got to your house and saw that your husband wasn't there. Couldn't he have just stuck a post-it on the door that said "hey, ran to the shop I'll be back in 20 minutes?"

Exactly. This is just a weird fuss when there are practical ways to address it.

I agree with you OP. Although there may have been alternatives (texting, nipping round to let them know, leaving a note on the door) he didn’t suggest any of these things and wasn’t planning on doing them.

His suggestion was that he could just leave without telling them, and potentially not be in and not be reachable when your daughter returned. This would be unreasonable imo and I agree that it’s fine to point that out.

I think if you posted about taking a neighbours child home to find nobody in and nothing having been said to you, everyone on here would think that was unreasonable 🤷‍♀️

He could call around to dd friends house and say I’m just nipping to the shop I’ll be back in 20 minutes do you want to come with me or get you anything?

Btw do you have dd friend around yours as well?

Sorry but you don’t sound on the ball at all if you don’t know when your 7 year old might come home and don’t actually know where she is at any given moment. I’m an Xennial too so probably a bit more relaxed with parenting like you but 7 seems young to me to be given that much freedom - and if as you say the other family are even more lax, would they even notice if your daughter was not at either house and had wandered down to the sea to find her dad?

I agree with previous posters though, this particular scenario could have been solved in seconds by you calling the other mum or sending your husband the number..

This kind of loose arrangement was the norm in the not so distant past. It’s a great thing that sounds like works very well for the OP and the kids.

It just takes a little more in modern times with contact information being shared. I