To leave Dd alone in hotel room?

[Shelby2010]

More of a WWYD really. We are going to be staying with Dd (18mths) in a hotel next month on holiday & then overnight for a wedding in July. How safe do MNetters feel it is to leave their sleeping DC in the room with either the listening service or a normal baby monitor while eating in the hotel restaurant or attending an evening reception?

Am I being very PFB to worry about how many members of staff could access the room (especially with programable card keys)? The fact that hotels do offer a listening service suggests that many parents are ok with this. I'm torn between thinking I'm paranoid and thinking that they always tell you not to leave valuables in you room except in the safe..... Help!

Wow Rhubarb, who's being judgemental now.

The McCanns made an error based on the fact that "it had never happened before and was unlikely to" there are still people have judged and condemned them for it...not one myself I think they were horribly unlucky.

People are quite within their rights to make the same decision based on the same probabilities but I for one would feel they were foolish if not negligent as it has happened before and been widely reported.

By all means do it but I wouldnt and the op was asking for opinions wasnt she?

Bogey ds does come first but that does not mean that i am only a parent, at times he fits in with what is happening on our lives and enjoys it adn i consider my enjoyment too not just his. is it ideal that he is up celebrating a wedding at 11pm no not really, it is ideal that we put pillows on the floor so he could sleep when he finally had enough 1145pm), no not really did we both have a fantastic time yes we did

i would never sit in a hotel room at 7pm at night and waste a holiday just becasue it followed his routine there is no need to when we can both enjoy being away from our routined life for a while. routine goes out of the window at weekends too so i can shock horrow enjoy my life and get a bit of a sleep in

I wouldn't do this the reason being that all my dc when they were small were not adverse to getting out of bed and coming to look for me. They also liked to climb up on furniture if possible.

Two things to worry about there - furniture falling on them and also in a hotel it's not unusual for there to be an unattended swimming pool on site.

Or presumably in your room in the dead of night chitchat.

My ds also choked on a milky star once, he made no noise at all, he just collapsed. What if I hadn't been in the same room? But you know what, I could have been cooking, or on the toilet and yes, he could actually have died if I hadn't been there. Would I have blamed myself for not being with him every second of every day? No.

You take a risk when you put the baby in its own room for the first time. You take a risk when you put that baby to bed and go downstairs to watch TV. You take a risk if you go out into the garden to have an evening glass of wine. You take a risk if your home is 3 stories with the baby's room on the top floor. You take a risk if you leave your baby with an unknown babysitter. You take a risk even if the babysitter is known.

There was a horrendous Mumsnet thread years ago where the poster discovered that the nice boy across the road who used to babysit her child had actually been sexually abusing her child.

There is always a story about when things go wrong. But if you had heard that story, would it have stopped you from having a babysitter? No.

You take a calculated risk when you invite someone into your home to look after your child. And yet you think you can judge someone for taking a different risk?

Babies can choke in their sleep even when sleeping right next to their parents and it might never be noticed. Blimey, I'm surprised some posters manage to get out of the house with their baby!

I have done in a small old fashioned hotel (less than 20 rooms) with a restaurant downstairs and a mortice lock on the door when my daughter was too little to climb out of a cot. I had a baby listening device at the restaurant table and popped up regularly. I don't think this is really different to staying at a large house.
However, I didn't when we were in a large hotel with a key card and a toddler, even though they had a baby listening service at reception. I was worried that she would wake up, let herself out and then wander the corridors getting more and more upset.

monkeymoma that's interesting - and a little sad. I think there is something about being on holiday (or on a break) that makes people - parents or no - take risks over things that they would never consider doing at home.

also the blind cords in my home are all cut, don't think I'ld get away with cutting up hotel property! doubt a blind cord death would sound like much over a monitor

TheRhubarb; Why not just get a babysitter? Leaving a baby alone in a strange place is not a risk you need to take. It's incredibly selfish, stupid and unneccessary so why do it? You're really going to trust that none of the hotel staff will take advantage and abuse them (far more likely than kidnap tbh), you believe they won't drown by filling a bath for themselves to play in or find some other way to endanger themselves. Even just the upset of waking up scared in a strange place and not having an adult immediately at hand to soothe them is reason enough to hire one.

A child monitor isn't going to protect them, in a noisy enviroment you're not going to hear everything and will probably miss a baby quietly getting up from the bed or an intruder quietly walking into the room.

There is a benefit to taking the risk of putting a child in the car or allowing a child to play unsupervised with their friends, there are no benefits to leaving a toddler alone ever, apart from the parents saving a few quid on a babysitter.

No way! The fact you even asked means you're not sure so you'd probably spend the evening worrying and checking in on them.

yes Latsia, I don't understand how people can use babysitters whose NAME they don't even know

I at least know the names of every person who has ever babysat DS, can people who use hotel sitters say that? not any I encountered!, they either ran me over and disappeared the second I arrived, or if the woman wasn't ready they acted like I was invisible while she carried on getting ready and they argued or talked dirty to each other or similar.

I always tried to get out of babysitting duty at the hotel, I told the managers I didn't know which end of a baby was up! and given the chance would have told the parents that I had NO experience whatsoever and was not one of the CRBed kids club staff, but none ever asked, not one.

I agree with Rhubarb that we cannot wrap our children in cotton wool.

My child rides his bike on the roads, goes out for hours in the woods with his mates climbing trees and making dens but there is a difference between taking measured risks in order not to stunt a child's development and taking unnecessary risks out of convenience.

"Why not just get a babysitter?" To come into a small hotel room and sit in the dark? Mine wouldn't sleep unless it was pitch black. Also there is the cost.

"Leaving a baby alone in a strange place is not a risk you need to take. It's incredibly selfish, stupid and unneccessary so why do it?" Says you. I did it so that dh and I could have some time to ourselves.

"You're really going to trust that none of the hotel staff will take advantage and abuse them (far more likely than kidnap tbh)," Ah yes, I forgot that all hotel staff are child abusers. Of course! How silly of me!

"you believe they won't drown by filling a bath for themselves to play in or find some other way to endanger themselves. Even just the upset of waking up scared in a strange place and not having an adult immediately at hand to soothe them is reason enough to hire one." Yeah cause of course you would't hear them running themselves a bath or crying.

"A child monitor isn't going to protect them, in a noisy enviroment you're not going to hear everything and will probably miss a baby quietly getting up from the bed or an intruder quietly walking into the room." Yes you would. Baby monitors are very powerful now and can detect their rate of breathing, so if their breathing changes rhythm, it will beep and a light will come on. You can also watch their breathing on the monitor.

But of course I am selfish and irresponsible, so as I said before, perhaps you'd better report me.

The last place we stayed, the neighbouring room did this. But their monitor didn't work. Their child screamed, and screamed, and screamed and screamed. Luckily for them, I was in the room next door with my daughter and she remembered which parents they were. After I listened outside the door for a while and realised that they really had left a child alone, I got her out of bed and we went looking for them. When we found them, they accused my daughter of waking their child up!

you dont have to hear the moniter, mine is a fairly cheap one and it LIGHTS UP at the tiniest and i mean tiniest noise!

and as for getting a babysitter, when my sister got married when ds4 as a baby we tried to get a babysitter to come and sit in the hotel room and OMG how expensive, we had to scrimp and save to go to the wedding etc and quite simply didnt have enough to pay another £80 for a babysitter, as it was my mum paid, but if she hadnt then we would have not gone out in the evening (the reception was in a different place to the hotel) but for my cousins wedding the reception was just downstairs, the hotel was small and being used by family and i did just use a baby moniter and myself and my parents also went back and checked in on dd an dds4 every 20 mins, the room was literally a minute away from reception, i had made sure the room was childproofed etc, had the moniter which lights up at any tiny noise and went back and checked on them. it was fine.

does no one go and sit in their back garden when their kids are asleep upstairs in bed, do you have the tv on deathly silent so you can hear every little sound? do you never have a shower when your child is asleep in bed, you wouldnt hear them then!

joins rhubarb in banging head against a desk...

Do people's toddlers really get up in the middle of the night and manage to run a bath and then drown themselves in it....some of these risks people are coming up with are just mind boggling.

The times I did this I stayed till they were asleep and made sure the room was safe first....anyway like Rhubarb I am one of the selfish irresponsible ones

monkeymoma, did you read what I said about the Mumsnet poster who knew not only the name of her babysitting neighbour but also the names of his family and she had known him since he was himself a child.

That didn't stop him abusing her little girl.

Now that I've told you that story, would you not get a babysitter? Because it seems to me that because Madeleine McCann was abducted from a hotel in Portugal, many posters are using that as a good enough reason not to use powerful listening devices in hotels here in the UK, because of course a stranger will come in and abduct your child. Following that mentality, given the higher number of babysitters who are convicted of child assault/abuse, which therefore makes it more likely that your child will be abused by the babysitter than abducted by a stranger, shouldn't you also be telling parents that getting a babysitter is irresponsible?

oh and the babysitter my mum paid £80 for wasnt even in the room with my children, they need pitch black to sleep and so she sat on a chair outside, i could probably hear more with my moniter than she could through the closed door (which would be a fire door in a hotel).

whoneedssleep toddlers do and have got up in the night and strangled themselves on blind cords

that is why all of ours are cut at home

therhubarb is correct in that children are most likely by far to be abused by someone who is known to the family or is a family member.

My blind cords are also shortened via a safety mechanism monkeymama

I don't understand. Is the fact that "children are far more likely to be abused by someone who is known" reason enough to leave your child with someone you barely know?! Or based on monkeymoma's experience, someone whose name you don't even know?

There are degrees though no? What might be considered an acceptable level of risk for a 5 year-old would likely be very different from what would be an acceptable level for perhaps a 2 year-old, or a non-verbal, immobile 6 month-old.

You can talk to an older child, explain to them what will happen, how mummy and daddy will check on them / listen out for them etc. A toddler who wakes up, doesn't understand where mummy and daddy have gone, doesn't know where they are, doesn't know the random person in the room next door and doesn't know that mummy and daddy are listening on a monitor and would be up in as long as it takes them to hear them call out and run up the hall / stairs / lift - that must be frightening! But if you have a hardy toddler who isn't that easily perturbed then perhaps you could be a bit more pragmatic about it.

Too many factors to be competitively hands off / hands on about it.

if you were worried about blind cords you can hook them up out the way at the top of the window, or tie a knot in them so they are too high for a child to do, its easy enough i have done it plenty of times. again you check the room and you make it childproof.

Crazy!

I wouldnt leave my passport and purse on the bed of a hotel room any bugger off out, can't imagine leaving my baby!!!

I think we all take calculated risks but everyone has a different idea of what a calculated risk is based on a million different personal things.

If some here were comfortable to do this then that's great. No need to imply they're shite for doing so, but also no need to imply anyone else is being laughably over-protective for not.

Everyone has to stand by the judgement they made. If if something goes wrong and you still know you did the right thing by your dc then that was the correct decision for you.