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!

@ gordy

Seriously, how many news items are there of children being abducted from hotel rooms in recent years? How many children have died in hotel fires?

It is NOT illegal. Health Visitors have even endorsed it to give stressed parents a break. If you sit and think logically, going through all the potential risks and the solutions, you'd find that actually it's a pretty safe option all in all. Statistically safer than leaving them with a hired babysitter (after all nursery workers and others who have worked with kids, been CRB checked and had good references have also abused kids in the past, just thinking of the nursery worker in Peterborough). I'm sure hundreds of parents do this and their children come to no harm whatsoever.

So why not just let parents get on with parenting, even if it's different to the way you do things?

I of course hate my children and regularly beat them with hammers - which is why I have used a listening service and hotel nanny before - although now if I fancy a bit of dinner and hanky panky I tend to leave them with their dad !

TheRhubarb said:

"It seems that those who wouldn't do it are very prepared to slate those who have done it. Whilst those who have done it, aren't slating anyone."

oh. I think I might have started the slating the other way.. sorry about that.

gordy I often go out without dh now too. In fact we go out more as singles than as a couple, which is actually very sad as I'd love to spend more time with dh.

BTW did you know you can get little cattle prods on ebay? Brilliant for discipline! As for making sure they stay in bed - electric fence!

WeeDom love the name!

Well considering the battering some of us were subjected to, it's hardly surprising should the tide turn.

However I'll just resort to waving my shit stick around.

I am off to bed - I may consider letting my 3 in for the night - they normally sleep in the shed

Night sane and crazy people x

And to think that just last week I was called "hysterical" on Mumsnet for suggesting that leaving 2 young tots in a locked car for 40mins whilst the poster waited for her dh to arrive with a spare key was too long. How funny that you can go from one extreme to the other all within the space of a few days - only on Mumsnet!

Do you have many little people in your life Kaekae?

I only ask as I am assuming you must have lots of little people in your life for you to have listed them in order of preciousness.

I don't know any little people but I do however, have a few children...I don't like them very much and tend to lock them up, alone, in a room as much as possible. I don't need to be on holiday to do it either.

Night gordy. Me too, it's our actual anniversary tomorrow (we had the meal at the weekend as you just do, don't you?) so I have to file the divorce papers for dh's lovely surprise. 13 long years. 13! As my dd said, "that's unlucky, you'll probably split up this year." Ah such optimism in one so young!

Night all!

we managed 8 - then he left me - probably for a woman who loves her children more than me still - thems the breaks

happy anniversary x

@Rhubarb.

Er... I guess this is the wrong place to restart that conversation. But, briefly, if it was hot weather and the kids were in danger of overheating, I'd break a window. If it was a cool day and they were safe and not seriously distressed, I'd leave them be.

My reasoning? Breaking a car window is actually quite an explosive thing to do. You have to hit them very bloody hard to get through them. Ever watched the fire brigade do it? They take huge care with the "jaws of life" to make sure all the glass falls in a neat pile on the floor. Try doing that with a brick.

TheRhubarb i totally agree with you re the disney hell and kidzclubs. I loathe the idea of that and took ds to disneyland for two nights last year under duress as my father 'treated' us. Was hell Even ds, 7, preferred Paris itself and the museums/street life.

What I mean is, our idea of a 'family' holiday is time for us as a family to unwind, together, not primarily a time for DH and I to enjoy each other/adult time. We celebrate 10 years marriage next month and can count on one hand the number of times we've left ds. I just enjoy the three of us being together and celebrating together. Our love resulted in ds, what's more romantic than that? But I do know it's horses for courses. And some folk love the water parks, kidz parks and so on. I just find that a step too far. Delighted to be with my child, just not prepared to live in a cartoon for a fortnight

For me it would come down to the size of the hotel and how far away from the room I'd be.
I would if it was a small hotel and I could get back to the room easily if needed. I wouldn't if It was a 30 storey tower and I had to take a golf-buggy to the restaurant.

I'm totally happy to leave my kids with babysitters though - I've always been impressed by the lovely people that hotels/agencies have supplied to look after our boys.

Wee, yes I have broken a car window before
Really I was just using that argument as a demonstration of how different people have different attitudes to risk taking. For me, watching my 2 very young tots in a car getting distressed for 40mins would have been too much and I would have broken in somehow or phone mates I know who can break into cars To someone else, leaving the kids in a hotel room with a monitor is too much of a risk.

If someone came on and said she wondered about leaving her 18month old sleeping in a hotel room using the babysitter that the hotel provided, the responses may well have been very different. But to my mind, that presents more of a risk than leaving the baby with a monitor as you don't know that babysitter so you are essentially trusting your child with a stranger. Yet people who do that/have done that would not have come across such strong emotive responses as on this thread.

PerfumedLife, yes horses for courses as you say. I love my kids and wouldn't be without them for the world. But I find the job of parenting extremely tiring and exhausting too. You feel you are being pulled in all directions. You have one child, I have two aged 11 and 8 and both have very different needs and demands. For me, time to get away and recharge my batteries is essential. I know there are parents who wouldn't dream of holidaying without their child and are happy to take them to every meal and every occasion they attend. I'm not one of those parents. Doesn't make me any better or worse than anyone else

jaquelinehyde - I wouldn't waste your time assuming anything about me, I am sure you have more important things to do with your time...

not a chance I would even consider this!!

www.sunderlandecho.com/news/local/kidnappers-tried-to-snatch-sunderland-boy-from-turkish-resort-1-4547922

For all those that leave DC alone in hotel rooms please read.
Imagine what could have happened if this child was alone :(

He was 12 and his grandmother was in the room with him, alsleep. He would have been better alone with his parents listening on the monitor, awake (like I am suggesting). I don't really see the relevance of this to the argument, it is a freak one off situation, if someone is prepared to break into a hotel room and abduct a child from under the parents nose, they are just as freakily as likely to do this in your own home.

I still don't understand why you wouldn't hear the noise on the monitor though, nobody is advocating leaving a child all alone without a listening device. all the arguments against it point out the dangers, which are only really relevant if you are not listening to the child with a monitor.

ie,

1. "Child might vomit'- it might also vomit at home, and you will hear it vomit on the monitor, and if you don't you wouldn't hear it at home either.

2.Stranger might break in and steal them- you will hear them in the monitor.

3.There might be a fire and you cant' get them- if you are downstairs at home and a fire starts upstairs you might not be able to get them

1. Child might wake up alone and be scared- you will hear them cry on the monitor and be there in a minute the same as at home, child will wake up alone at home unless you sit by their bed all evening. (child went to sleep in hotel so will know where they are when wake up unless they are very young)

5.Child might get out of bed and do dangerous things- they might get out of bed at home and do dangerous things, you will hear them on the monitor and be there in a flash. if they are very young you will put them in a travel cot where they can't get out and play with things.

6.You don't want them in the room with a burgular- the babysitter you hired is more likely to be the thief than someone breaking in, but I suppose that is ok as long as you payed the thief to be in your room?

Does age make a difference? it happened. How do you know that the monitor would pick up someone creeping in to a room, obviously you would if they made noise but not if they were silent, didn't break a window etc
An older child could shout and scream but a small one could be simply lifted from bed still asleep.
I never said things like vomiting, fires, children getting out of bed or even strangers breaking in don't happen at home. But IMO a hotel is more of a risk for something going wrong.
I personally have never left my kids in a hotel room alone and never would. However, it doesn't make it "wrong" for others that do, whatever you're comfortable with.

Our monitor detects when dd simply turns over in her sleep and ristles her blanket and flashes red at the slightest sound, a sniff, a sigh etc- there is no way anyone could silently enter a room and take her form her bed without it picking the sound up.

If people feel unhappy about it that is up to them, but in weighing up the very minor risks against the risks at home, those parents that choose to leave their child in a room, with a monitor are NOT guilty of neglect or similar, and telling others they don't deserve their child or that they care more about their child than another is offensive.

Again it's all about risk taking. dondon33 I linked to two cases much earlier in the thread where 2 babysitters had been prosecuted for abusing the children in their care. If you care to Google there are countless more.

So you might think that in this instance, the child would be safer alone in a locked hotel room with a monitor than with a babysitter - even one whom you knew.

Yet hundreds of parents up and down the UK get friends to sit, neighbour's teenage children, strangers who have answered their babysitting ad, friends of friends, etc. No-one would ever dream of condemning them for choosing a babysitter that was not registered with an agency and who had not undergone strict CRB checks. Yet someone who chooses to leave a baby in a hotel room with a monitor and regular checking, is condemned. The risks, as the hundreds of newspaper articles testify to, is higher if you leave a child with a babysitter.

Even those who are CRB checked, like the manager of that nursery in Peterborough who was done for taking indecent pictures of children and sharing them with a paedophile network, are not necessarily to be trusted.

We can all give examples of horrendous cases but thankfully, kidnap by a stranger remains incredibly rare.

We're all sensitised to different things.

I agree with you on that point, LeQueen. I would leave DS (9) alone in a hotel room for an hour quite happily, but I panic at the thought of him walking alone to school a mile and a half away. Mainly because the road is quiet for pedestrians and next to woodlands, but very busy for cars that go waaay too fast. So, for me, traffic is a much bigger worry than the possibility of abduction or fire.