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.

disregard my reply, i like this one better 🤣🤣🤣🤣

If it bothered u that much u would have got up in the night and checked, u can’t blame them for yr ocd.

Are you one of the teenagers?

🤨

You think I should randomly set an alarm in the middle of the night to wake up and make sure my teens haven't opened a locked door and not shut it again?

You think that's normal?

'If it bothered you so much' ...makes zero sense, how could I have been bothered by something that hadn't happened yet? 🤣

Not being comfortable with a door being left open every night is not OCD ffs.

I'm another one who has done this, not ideal but shit happens 🤦‍♀️ You're all fine and I imagine they won't do it again, given how you've reacted!

My daughter left the front door wide open one morning when she was in a rush. My handbag was next to it. All was well but it felt uncomfortable. DS has a tendency to leave the back door wide open. I've had a fair few cats sneak in and upstairs, popping out and scaring the hell out of me. I keep telling them how important it is to close and lock. We get a lot of burglars trying the garages and cars, not a good mix with forgetful teens.

A friend of mine lives in a terraced street in a pretty rough area of Manchester. She went away on holiday and managed to leave the back door (onto a shared alleyway) not just unlocked, but wide open, for the whole week.
Not a thing had been touched when she got home. None of us could quite believe it. We came to the conclusion the local wronguns must have thought it was a trap set by police (!)

I don’t know why people think you’re overreacting, I’d be really pissed off about this. If you can’t trust them to keep the house secure, collect up all the back door keys so they can’t use them, and just have one for you and one for your husband. Lock the door when you go to bed and take the key upstairs with you.

They were talking about the OP overreacting due to anxiety/OCD which was then making that anxiety the teens' problem.

I was pointing out that the anxiety/OCD was totally irrelevant anyway, and the OP was not overreacting.

How did I react?

Having a calm conversation?

Me venting on MN to other adults isn't the same as talking to my kids.

You vent with other adults out of sight, you're calm with your kids.
Lots of parents rant on here about stuff that annoys them, doesn't mean they're reactive IRL.

About 10 years ago, our NDN's son came in late from work through the back door and left it unlocked. When they all came down in the morning, there were 4 phones, a laptop and a handbag missing. The police said it was opportunist thieves going round and nicking easily sellable small items and an unlocked door made them an easy target. It happens. There were footprints in the flower bed in our garden so they'd obviously tried our door as well.

You talk about how OP "has reacted" as if she was completely over the top and she certainly wasn't. "Not ideal" is understatement of the year. OP has said where she lives and believe me there was a good chance they would not have been OK.

Absolutely, and this wasn't just an unlocked door. It was wide open.

Yep, if it could be left open, it was left open!