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!

I did this when we were on holiday - our DD was 6mo. We left her in our hotel room every evening while we were having dinner (for a few hours), and checked on her every 15 minutes. We were there for a week and she didn't once wake up, let alone anything else.

In a way, I'm still surprised that we did it, but at the same time I feel that I can't constantly worry about all the things that could go wrong in life. I trust my parenting skills and instincts and believe that I can, and will, keep her safe without turning her (and me) into a nervous wreck.

what was the babysitter called Jessie?

(sorry think I misread!)

I was too scared to post on the first few pages, but the hysteria on here is giving me strenght, so I'll come right out with this.
DH and I did it with a baby monitor. 2 different times when he was 11 months old and 15 months old. He was fine, we were fine. It seemed a perfectly acceptable thing to do for both of us.
Now, should I hand myself over to the pitchforks and be done with it?

I'm sure I've read threads on here where people say they don't drink alcohol if they're alone with their dc. I do. I've also always left them in the car in garages when I've paid for petrol. (Oh the rows on mn about that little chestnut on mn.)

But I wouldn't leave them alone for the evening in a hotel at 18mnths. But those decisions are based on my experiences with my dc and in my case they were prone to roaming about and getting out of bed.

If people on here are worried about some kind of abusive attack on their dc from a stranger well then maybe they have personal experience which explains why they'd be very worried about such things and therefore good reason to be extra vigilant No point in having a pop at people for seeing things the way they do. If you feel it you feel it.

We all do stuff differently and I'm sure a large percentage of being a parent is down to gut instinct.

Im not of the "they would strangle themselves on blind cords, drown in the bath, be bitten by rats" over cautious club nor am I of the "I want to party and its not gonna happen" school of thought.

I know I could not live with myself if something did go wrong and if someone else had their child abducted in these circumstances I would think they were f*ckwits rather than unbeleivable unlucky this time...however statistically unlikely either of these scenarios would be.

Its a calculated risk and my main reason for not doing it would be that the children would be distressed if they woke up in a strange bed, I wasnt there and couldnt get there immediately.

Anyway I dont want to confuse the op anymore, I suspect we have not helped at all (sorry)

Sardine the first link it implies that she worked with children. So it's doubtful in any case that the parents would have known of her background which only states that her parents had died and she herself had been in an abusive relationship. I doubt that would have come up on a CRB check.

Let's not also forget the terrible abuse ring in that nursery not so long ago. That was just awful.

So you take risks every day. You make decisions. After all you don't have to send your kids to school/nursery, you could home educate. But we take them to school because most of the time we are working, our lives don't revolve around the children, we are people too with responsibilties.

What would you do if you didn't take any risks at all? Would that be better for the children? Your sanity? Your marriage?

Most people use common sense when choosing who to allow mind their children, it's not hard to find people who are trustworthy and kind, using people who hired abusers (with history) to look after their kids as an excuse to leave a toddler alone and unprotected is pathetic. I agree that people who can't be arsed providing proper care for their children shouldn't bother engaging with me, we're never going to agree.

catus, it's ok I did it for you. I'm not scared of a few pitchforks!

Besides there are quite a few of us now admitting that we do/did this. I suspect more are lurking. I honestly used to think that's what baby monitors were for!

Did someone fart? I'm sure I just heard a fart...

FGS bee, there's always one who pulls this on here! people can objectivly disagree with you, doesn't mean that they are clouded in their judgement because you think that only people who were abused think that way, maybe they were abused and think that way, maybe they weren't abused and still think that way, maybe they were abused and agree with YOU

am sick of people being discredited on here like this! Anyway do you think that all people who were abused project it onto unreasonably over protective parenting?

(and FWIW abduction/abuse isn't at the forefront of why I wouldn't do it, other safety risks, plus the emotional thing of waking up to noone in a strange place, are bigger factors for me! and I wasn't abused either but I HAVE been accused of being abused on MN this week because another poster didn't agree with my POV!)

Is it going to be too hard to leave her sleeping in a buggy next to your table at the party?

monkey, get used to it. If you believe everything you are told on Mumsnet you'd be pretty fucked up! Believe it or not I'm quite a strict parent and wouldn't do some things that other Mumsnetters do as a routine.

You have your experience of one hotel which sounds horrendous. However the hotel the OP describes, which is small and being taken over by the wedding party does sound different.

I understand your POV about the risks, but I do think that powerful monitors negate most of those risks these days. Yes it is still a risk, but then so is everything else. It's a risk I'd be happy to take but I wouldn't really care if someone else didn't. Horses for courses and all of that

TheRhubarb why are you so invested in this? Your kids, your rules. If you want to leave them in a hotel room then do so, but there is really little point in trying to persaude everyone else that they should do it.

Read my last sentence

i dont care if people do it or not, i have done it and said so on here. but i do object to posters telling me i shouldnt have had children etc, imo far more damage can be done by over protective parenting, there have been posters recenlty saying they wont allow their children out on their own anywhere ie up the road until they are high school age!! its just madness, yes we need to assess risks etc but i do think some peoples risk assesment is scewed if for example its not ok for a 9yr old to walk 100yards up the road on their own, people use cars everyday often for journeys where they could easily walk or get a bus, so if you have an accident in a car when you could have walked (even if god forbid it meant getting wet in the rain) would you beat yourself up about that, as it seems to be accepted taht we use cars a lot and often when not necessary but in doing so we ARE taking a risk!

I read your last sentence therhubarb, but why have you only just realised you don't care? Was it all the headbanging?

You know what? It was the posters who said that people shouldn't have kids if they have opinions like mine. Posters who implied I was an unfit parent or who put drinks before the safety of their children.

I have not said that you MUST do this. I have responded to the OP and defended the rights of parents to make decisions and take calculated risks without being condemned for it.

And the comparisons to Madeleine McCann drove me up the wall.

So there you go. What is your point then?
Whatever it is will have to wait anyway whilst I pick ds up.

There is no chance that I would leave my 18 month old in a hotel room by herself. At that age she is little enough to sleep in a pushchair next to you, and if she doesn't sleep then you all get a lie in the next morning. It seems a bit unnecessary to me. Are there no relatives/ friends who could pick her up and take her back to their house for the night? I am reasonably easy going, my kids have always walked themselves to and from school fro quite young, but 18 monhs is too young. I would also be concerned about hotel security, admittedly Travelodge are not teh classiest in the world, but when we were there a few weeks ago with a rugby tour, kids and adults were always losing keys (partners having it etc) they were given duplicates to whichever room they asked for, no questions asked, no id needed.

I don't just base my decisions on that one hotel though, I don't tend to stay in kids club type places so MY experience is less relevant to my own decisions when on holiday than what I posted earlier about my friend who got instantly hired by a reputable babysitting agency that is used by LOTS of hotels (and has lots of reviews on my local nethuns).

I've never stayed in a hotel that's offered its OWN staff like the one I work in as most hotels don't have kids clubs etc, but the ones I've stayed in do offer a local babysitting agency that they use regularly.

I wouldn't do it. If I don't have friends or family available I recruit babysitters from a local health care university course, they are all CRBed and referenced and interviewd to get onto the course, and they learn things like basic resusitation and have placements with children, then I interview them and they have a play with DS when I'm there, then I show them DS's routine and fav toys etc, our fire exit plan for our home and other things they might need to know. When we then hire them for a session we leave details of where we are going and the babysitter has our number and name and we have theirs. Also we often pick them up/drop them home so we know where they live.

IMO most people who use babysitting agencies through hotels know NOTHING about the babysitter they just trust the system!

I do have one friend who does use an agency but she always asks for the same sitters and HAS found out information from them first hand before leaving them with her child. I do think this is unusual though unfortunately.

I just wondered why you're so committed to it. I can understand (although I don't necessarily agree with) the people who are strongly against it; they fear something may happen to the children being left alone in hotel rooms. I don't understand the people getting really frustrated trying to prove it's ok to leave a child in a hotel room.

and I would NEVER hire a babysitter that I didn't trust to leave at home with my passport/bank details/cameras/macbook etc

IMO most people who use babysitting agencies through hotels know NOTHING about the babysitter they just trust the system!

Yes. This is off topic really but this is the most interesting point for me.

We get frustrated at silly scenarios like a child running a full bath and then drowning in it.

We get frustrated at the people who think thieir child will be abducted because of what happened to Madeleine McCann.

We get frustrated at posters thinking they can tell us that we are not fit parents. And I use the word 'we' because I am not the only poster to say that I have done this and would do so again.

(extra 5 mins before ds pick up time)

We used the hotel baby listening service 3 years ago when our pair were 15 months old. We had to give room number, say where we would be within hotel and roughly what time we would return although leaving the premises was not part of the terms. The door was locked from outside and we had no problem with it.
We couldn't use the same service last year as they were able to open the door from the inside and escape. We did not want them locked out and roaming around.