Dd1 is off school being sick

[lucysmam]

She's 12.

She says she'll be fine alone while I go to work this afternoon (dinner lady then afternoon ta).

I'm going to sort someone to be with her but wondered if, at 12, you'd have left your dc home alone for max 4 hours?

I would with my 12 year old, but she's got a condition that causes sickness on a regular basis anyway so she's better at self managing it than most adults I know and certainly better at it than I am. She's also used to being left on her own for periods anyway. My other child at the same age- not a chance even if he was fighting fit! It's all down to the child.

If you can’t look after your kids even when they are ill, I guess the message is you really don’t care very much about them, that almost anything and everything comes before them.
You are by default making the child feel pretty worthless. Yes if you are a surgeon and peoples lives are hanging in the balance, or a high court judge, the impact on others could literally be life saving/changing. Possibly this is the exception. Even then we have roles like that, we have to question why our kids are taking such a back seat when it comes to our priorities in life?

Yay how to make working parents feel shit. How to make single parents trying to avoid the benefit trap feel shit. I guess you wouldn't be extending that attitude to working fathers though.

My mum once left me when I had the flu and went Christmas shopping. Later that day I was rushed to hospital with what turned out to be meningitis. She felt awful that she had left me.
I was 18 though :o