Teens left the back door wide open all night!

[TheDoorsOpen]

Came down at 8am to find the dog was in the living room with the light on and door not shut, she's always locked in the room.

Thought it was unusually cold downstairs and go to the kitchen to find the back door wide open!

Ran upstairs to check my younger 2 were in bed, they're high-school age but still panicked.

DH had locked up at about 10pm, took dog out, put her to bed.

The teens (17 and 19) are up and down all night and I suspect let the dog out again.

I'm absolutely livid. We live in a densely populated terraced street. We could easily have been robbed or bloody murdered in our beds (a little dramatic, I know)

How the fuck do you just wander off to bed in the middle of the night without shutting the door??

I'm seriously pissed off at them and both are denying it was them.

I have chronic anxiety/OCD and I can just see this is going to be my new thing to lay in bed worrying about now.

I’d be really annoyed too as I need to feel safe in my bed (and also wouldn’t want the dog out or the cold coming in). But unless they do it all the time it’s just one mistake. Tell them it’s really important to shut and lock all doors before bed and they need to double check. Problem over

Frustrating, but not the worst thing in the world, use it as an opportunity to teach them to check all doors and windows are shut before going up to bed quick walk through takes 30 seconds.

We have accidentally left our front door wide open for a whole day and it has been unlocked overnight a few times. Just raise the issue with the teenagers as a chat but certainly not worth having a row about.
I think it’s great that they get up and let the dog out.

I think you’re seriously overreacting. And I would have said that without you mentioning your OCD. Yes it’s annoying, but nothing actually happened.
You mention them leaving a window open previously and the cat got in. Again, not a big deal. Your idea of “not letting them go downstairs at night” is ridiculous and totally over the top.

Get a Ring camera on the door and a room camera in the kitchen. You are right to be concerned. People minimising the risks on this thread have no idea how bad things can be in a high risk area.
you can chose whether or not to be alerted by the room camera when someone goes downstairs, just having it there will be a reminder to them to behave responsibly.

Mine have go e out leaving door unlocked on numerous occasions, but leaving it wide open is an epic fail. I feel for you..
On the other hand, your neighbourhood can't be that bad?!

We have bifold doors on our lounge and a few weeks ago we went out all day and they were open. Didn’t even think about it until we’d been out a few hours and I asked do and none of us had closed them No harm done

That's not necessarily true. People are always posting on "Nextdoor" (a local based online forum) with ring door bell/CCTV videos of people in their gardens at night, peering through their windows and generally acting very suspicously. There was a man filmed in one area recently climbing over garden walls and looking in people's windows at 2.00am, then pushing their doors - presumably to see if they were open. Admittedly I live in a large city with a lot of strange shit going on, but the OP says she lives in a densely populated area. I really wouldn't want to put it to the test!

If I can't trust them to do a simple thing like close thw door I'm going to have to tell them not to go downstairs at night.

That’s a complete over reaction.
You can’t tell a 17 and 19yo (an adult!) they aren’t allowed to go downstairs at night in their own home 😳😳

By any means, tell them they forgot to close the door.
Remind them the house got cold. That anyone could have come into the house.
Thats it. One of them made a mistake. It happens.

You’re getting the cool gang response here but I would also be pretty angry at my teens too. I don’t have OCD or anxiety but like to be safe and secure, like a normal person in an urban area.
I live in a nice area with good neighbours- if anything that makes the chances of being robbed more likely. Foxes are a huge problem here and literally stand outside the back door so I’d be unhappy about that too.
So YANBU.

............my new thing to lay in bed worrying about now.

You don't need to lie in bed worrying about anything.

Get some help for your anxiety.

People don't wander into random houses and murder the occupants FFS.

Dh has left the front door wide open and gone off to work (I was already at work) and it's stayed open all day. he's done the same with the car parked on the road.

I do wonder though that actually wide open, someone would assume that there were people around and not go near.
And the dog would at least have barked I imagine.

This

I did that about six months ago.

Couldn't believe I'd been so fucking stupid. I could have had my house ransacked or been midweek or anything. Unbelievably stupid.

Gave myself a right good taking to.

If DC can't be trusted to lock up I'd suggest DH brings the back door key up with him after he brings the dog back in.

I'd also get cameras. Amazon are advertising blink on sale just now. Worth a google. I have them all round outside plus one as a cat cam downstairs. Puts my mind at rest. Easy to install.

I’m not sure I’d be happy to have a camera specifically spying on me in the house tbh.
I mean, by any means, the OP can do that.

But the impact in her relationship with her children (one adult, one nearly and adult) might well be negative and very long lasting.
As an adult, I’d struggle with the clear lack of trust for a single mistake.

Exactly.

When you've locked up your house and go to bed you feel secure.

Now that feeling has been "broken "

For people who live in safer areas.... you've no idea what OP is feeling.

We often forget to lock the door and I often find it has blown open during the night. I think the chances of anyone walking in and murder us in our beds is zero.

It was a potentially dangerous mistake but everyone's OK. I'm not someone who can go on and on about something when everything's OK. Tell them how important it is to lock doors and then move on. No point crying over spilt milk.

Think it's important to rmemeber that yes, you could've been very unlucky and been robbed but you know that there aren't just murderers hopping over fences and testing back doors every night on the offchance that one is open and they can get stab happy right??

Agree. I would be absolutely furious and even more so that they both deny it. They are teenagers not todders, time they grew up

I don't think you're overreacting. If they can't be trusted to secure the house or tell the truth then you'll have to lock them in, like toddlers.

Actions = consequences.

To be honest they’d just find another stick to beat you with. It’s the MN way.

Glad nothing happened and I hope your teenagers are more careful in future.

Check out "availability heuristic" and "negativity bias". People don't post footage of nothing happening, which is 99.999% of the time. Your chances of being burgled on any given day, even if you leave the door open, are really very small indeed. As you say, you live in a large city, so there is always going to be something going on, and if you scale that up to a whole country or the entire world you can easily imagine that any or all of those bad things might happen to you.

So people would 100% walk in if the door was open ... and yet the door was open and no one walked in?

By all means have a talk with your teens and point out that they need to be more careful, make sure they grasp the seriousness of the situation and maybe talk about strategies to make sure it doesn't happen again.

But being livid and imposing ridiculous strictures is OTT.

But the chances of someone walking in and stealing stuff is quite high.