to be upset that at a party my 10 year old and friends were lefy unaccompanied in a cinema??

[bebopper]

First post so forgive any mistakes!
My 10year old was invited at the last minute to an 11year olds party on Sunday - cinema and pizza hut. On smiling terms with her mum and dd friends with child - so accepted happily.
What I hadn't realised is that the girls (four of them) were taken to the cinema and left unaccompanied for a two and a half hour film whilst the mum went shopping! I was a bit gobsmacked to be honest- ok this was a Sunday afternoon but even so, I think it was a bit much!
What do other mums think- am I right to be a bit cross and should I talk to her about it?

YANBU at all. If the mother had told you it wasn't supervised you could have given your child a pep talk (e.g. only go to the loo with someone else, etc) but as it is, this was a big first for her and she wasn't prepared for it. I'm sure she was absolutely fine about it, but still...

The few 10 year olds I know don't go to the cinema on their own. Not saying this is right or wrong but I wouldn't take it as read that a child of that age did have that freedom - so the mother should have checked in with you.

No point in saying anything to her (not that I think you are suggesting it).

Always polite to check when dealing with somebody else's child; I'd be very happy to let my own dc do this, but would not automatically assume that other parents would feel the same.

I think it's totaaly fine and you need to trust that you taught your kid well and she'd know what to do if she was stuck. New to this - what's YABU mean pls?

I think cinema alone with pals at 10 is ok but .....
NEVER MAKE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT PARTY ARRANGEMENTS!!!

Years ago, my then DS2 who was 11 got invited to a sleepover by a boy in his class.

No problem, I agreed without hesitation.

I picked him up the next day, a little crumpled and deflated.

It turned out the sleepover had been in a tent in the garden.

Fine, it was July.

However, the boys had been sent out there at 11pm, the back and front doors locked and not opened again till 9am the following morning.

The tent had fallen down at some point, there was no light, they had no torches, so no chance of putting it up again, and even when they knocked on the doors-no one came.

I was ok about the fact he'd had to wee in the bushes, and had to sleep under the stars but was really upset that they'd not even been given a bottle of water to drink and no one had checked them.

F*ckwit parents

I think the Mum should have let you know they were going to be unaccompanied by an adult. I think I would be okay with my DS going to the cinema with 3 friends on his own. (He is 11.) It has never come up though! He walks to the school bus by himself, and I leave him at home for up to an hour alone, so... I think it would be ok. And as for going to the loos - if he has to go into the men's loos by himself I stand outside and listen for him. My cousin used to work in a rehab with a lot of paedophiles and she says public toilets and the scouts have a deserved reputation. She should know! Sorry any scouts on here... we just had a scoutmaster convicted of horrendous child abuse here. Oops, going off topic, but essentially I don't think it's unreasonable of you to be annoyed that this Mum didn't check with you before leaving the children by themselves. After all, you know your child and what they are used to/mature enough to handle.

I should think that you ought to be very sorry about remarks about the scouts, it makes all the perfectly normal leaders who want to put something back into society think 'why bother'.
DSs also have to manage public loos by themselves at some point.

This is one of those 'it depends' questions.

We live in SE England. DS1 is now 11. I would now leave him in a cinema with friends, but a year ago I probably wouldn't have...

Certainly not at the huge multiplex about 6 miles away anyway - it's in quite a rough area, in the middle of nowhere and there are always lots of teenage gangs hanging around in the adjacent bowling alley and amusement zone. Even if would likely be OK, he would probably have been a bit nervous on his own at 10.

However I'd have had no qualms abut leaving him with friends in our very local 60-seater cinema which is slap bang on the HIgh Street.

The other mother should have thought to mention it really, but if you have a very mature/ savvy child you don't always remember/think about these things.

At 11 my best friend and I went to London on our own. We got the bus (90 mins), had a brilliant time looking round hamleys, harrods etc. Got the bus home. This was over 20 years ago, so no mobiles. We were fine!

Not allowed in the cinema at aged nearly 11 without adult supervision?!?

Lamorna My dad gave up being a scout leader because he found the climate of suspicion and over-regulation so oppressive. There are many children being deprived of the leadership and support of an exceptional man as a result.

If they werent watching Debbie Does Dallas or Saw 35, I think you should just suck it up and accept your dd is growing up and that's what they do at around that age. They have to spread their wings and be allowed to do stuff like this.

I know libelulle, so many won't come forward because of that. My DS got a lot out of it and has helped out with leadership now that he is older, just because he wants to put something back. Posts like somanymiles make me so angry and I wonder how many hours she gives up in the week to volunteer for something. I know an electrician who was a paedophile, I do not surmise that all electricians are paedophiles!
People want more male teachers in the primary school and when you get posts like somanymiles are you surprised it is mainly female?! Men can just enjoy working with DCs and yung people.

YABU

I have let my 11 year old go to the cinema unsupervised with friends.

Seriously - it's silly to worry about a group of pre-teens being left to watch a film alone. In other countries children of this age are walking miles to school, supervising younger siblings and - fuck - working (the poor buggers).

I think it is hard to let go but I think a cinema trip where the children are delivered and collected and are in a group of 4 is fairly safe.

I am old enough to remeber the Saturday morning pictures where children way younger than 10 or 11 went every Saturday without parents supervising.

went into town all day with mates on bus from age of 10...i know things were more relaxed in the 80s though..

My mother was obviously very irresponsible, she let me and my friend get the bus to town and back to the cinema and take my younger brother when we were 11yrs old. She left us to walk to the bus stop, get off in the right place, handle the money, pay to go in and find seats and reverse it all at the end.
We didn't feel there was anything odd or brave about this, just a bit fed up at having to take my brother. I really can't remember if anyone needed to go to the toilet.

I have left DS in the cinema while I go shopping and then collect him from outside at the end of the film, he was 10. He preferred it to trudging around the shops with me.

He knows not to go anywhere with anyone. If I'm perfectly honest though I think if I had a daughter I would be more wary. I feel girls are more at risk. Perhaps that is misjudged.

YABU. At 10yo, I used to get the train from London (waved off by my parents at Paddington) to Cardiff (greeted by GPs at Cardiff Central) on my own.

I also once got a plane from America to Heathrow at 10yo (it was diverted to Frankfurt for a while because of bad weather. My mother was frantic! I was fine).

I used to get the bus to school (2.5 miles) from about 8yo I think, with DSIS in tow (about 6yo).

I know times have changed, but unaccompanied in the cinema at 10 - what's the problem?

My dd went to the cinema with friends at that age. You are being over dramatic.

We are talking about letting our 11 year old go to the cinema with friends soon, however I would always check and never presume other parents thought it was ok.I wouldnt be happy about this either.

It's a difficult one because clearly some of us would be barely aware that there COULD be an issue with this at this age, whereas for most of the posters here, they would at the least like to be consulted, and quite a few would assume that there would be an adult attending.

I don't think either you or the other parent was BU really, even though I fall into the 'what problem?' camp. I guess we all need to check what the arrangements are, every time, or accept that our children are sometimes going to be thrown into situations we wouldn't have put them in ourselves.

I would like to have known what the arrangements were when my children were this age. I wouldn't have been bothered in the slightest with DC2 but DC1 has AS and might have become panicky so I would have appreciated the opportunity to talk about what to do if a problem arose.

I think at this age it's reasonable to expect other parents to let you know if they're going to leave kids unattended, as some of them might be new to going it alone. So I think YANBU to be upset that she didn't tell you.

I find it very strange that anyone would think that a 10yr old boy is safer on his own than a 10yr old girl.

So do I Lamorna, IME Girls tend to be much more sensible at that age than a lot of boys can be, theres not so much of the "show off" vying for top dog slot that tends to go on more so with boys, potentially putting them more at risk than girls, you've only got to walk around our town, the gangs of girls are shopping & chattering & comparing make-up etc, its the boys who are the ones daring each other to skateboard down the middle of the main road, or grab hold of the back of a bus whilst being dragged on their push bikes....see scary amounts of that sort of daredevil behaviour from groups of young boys, but never from the girls

I think that girls are more inclined to act on instructions too. I can imagine that if a girl has been told to go to the toilet with a friend she would do it, whereas a boy is more likely to say 'I'm not asking someone to go with me'! (he probably wouldn't say it, he just wouldn't do it).