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!

Long thread.
IMO an 18 month old is too small to leave alone in a hotel room, unless the hotel was so small that you would be able to check up on the child and hear them as if you were in your house.

For me it is about avoidable risk. We can't walk the children to school (too far) so I drive them every day but I drive them safely and strapped into correct car seats. If I drove them without being strapped in that would be taking an avoidable risk. In either situation there could be be an accident which injuries or kills any of us but I would know I had done everything I could to protect them as they were strapped in.

Not difficult to see the difference. No one needs to have a night with friends/partner if it means leaving their child alone.

WeeDom - just because you "knew the owners well" doesn't mean something terrible won't happen to your children .

JustFab, by driving you increase risk for the rest of society ... By drivers having access to safety devices, they may drive less carefully ... Is it moral, for each of us to reduce our own levels of risk at the expense of others? A philosophical dilemma ...

I agree Everlong, what solidgoldbrass said was absolutely insensitive on a huge scale and ignorant to those on here that have lost a child ,yet i have been blasted for using the words 'selfish' and 'neglect'!

Avoidable risk.

Yes. You don't have to go out without your child at all, you don't have to get a babysitter.

How much risk do you think there is in getting the neighbour's teenage dd to babysit? Or the friend up the road? Neither have been CRB checked but they offer babysitting services.

You take a calculated risk that they do not want to harm your child. Yet sometimes that goes wrong. Sometimes babysitters want to sit children just to get access to them. And you can't think that all females are safe, because they're not.

It's a calculated risk. It's not necessary, you could just stay in or go out for lunch with your child instead.

Yet hundreds do it and none of them, not one, are told they are neglectful.

I think it's disgusting that parents who take other calculated risks are being told they are selfish. No more selfish than any other parent who makes decisions based on their own needs for once. Like going out, like going to work, etc etc.

Is anyone going to bother to answer my points?

I think the reason people are jumping at being called neglectful is because they are dressing up the fact leaving a child alone is a normal essential thing and then comparing it to driving and crossing the road to cover their guilt it is in fact wrong

In Scandinavia and Germany kids self care a lot more than here- the personal can be political.

I've been following this thread since it started because we go to a hotel twice a year which has a listening service - which in this case is a lady sitting near to your room in the corridor. Parents give her the monitors and she listens out while you go for dinner (children aren't allowed in the dining room) and rings through to the dining room if there are any problems. It's a well-regarded family hotel.

I guess DCs could choke, go wandering within the room (although mine is in a cot and she's never tried to escape one) without the lady detecting that.

However, this system has been operational for 40+ years and a lot of my friends who go there now with their children were listened out for when they were children. There has never been an incident in all these years. It's a smallish, fairly isolated, family type hotel and I wouldn't feel OK about it in a bigger, more anonymous hotel. But like people have said you weigh up the risks on a case-by-case basis don't you, surely?

I feel uneasy with a thousand things day to day and I have since DD was born - when she was little I felt bad even walking out of the room or handing her to someone for a cuddle (in case they smothered her), now it's when she goes to the top of a slide, or when she goes out for the day with her granny (who adores her and is great with her) (and by the way are you really suggesting bogey I can't go have lunch or get my hair cut or something if granny is looking after her? I mostly work when granny has her, but am I supposed to feel bad about doing one thing for me? Particularly when DD would be bored stupid waiting for me at the hairdressers?).

Just, where does it stop? If I followed my uneasy feelings I'd never take DD to a playpark, never let her have access to anyone else. Never let her dad take her out in the car. But you can't live like this. Aren't we OK to make our own decisions about levels of risk and unease with regards our kids?

Particularly about the way this thread went last night, with 'oh these people can't love their children in the same unselfish and unconditional way that we do'. Just listen to yourselves.

Oh and one more point - that idea about how parenting's too ME ME ME these days (bogey again I think). 30 years ago kids were left in cars with a coke while their parents went to the pub (my DH certainly was, lots), left in houses while parents went next door for dinner, etc etc. And monitors - forget it! One friend of my MIL even forgot she had a baby when she went shopping and left the pram outside outside a shop, went home and had a cup of tea then remembered. I'm not saying life should go back to that, at all. But we've never been so paranoid, so neurotic and so hysterical as now. IMO.

A family hotel but children aren't allowed in the restraurant?

Yep! Award-winning, in fact.

Each to their own, if children can't go I don't go near the place with them!

... there is a dedicated children's restaurant - they do get to eat ...

Even so I hate this idea of children being seperated from adults personally, we go away we eat as a family not them and us.

No way. I wouldn't feel comfortable not knowing who may have access to the room. I'd never forgive myself if something happened.

And that's great Sirzy, and we do the same on other holidays, but not on this one. On this one we have tea with them in the children's restaurant, put them to bed and then, when they're asleep, eat with family and friends. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but neither is the hotel in general. We like the way it works, others don't. Live and let live.

Rhubarb- i never said getting a babysitter is selfish, i never said getting a relative to watch baby was selfish.
I said people that leave their children in a hotel room ALONE are selfish as they are putting their childs safetly and wellbeing before a meal & a drink which i do not think is responsible or nesessary.
In answer to your question about choking-its common sense you can hear your child choking more clearly in your home but you may or may not hear it in a noisy hotel even with a monitor.
Not only that it is quicker to get to the child one or two floors up at home than it is to get to them through corridors and more than two sets of stairs and of course uf there was a fire it doesn't bare thinking about.
Answer my question Rhubard- why do you think it isnt neglectful to leave a small child alone even if it is for 20 mins?
And why if you can a afford a meal and a drink pay for the babysitting service?
What is the problem with taking dc in buggy to meal?

I meant Rhubarb silly phone

but when you leave your child with a babysitter you could also be putting them at riks, that is the point rhubarb is making, you are saying one risk is ok, but the other is selfish, both of them are so an adult can enjoy some child free time.

and i and others have said thehotel rooms is generally on the same floor as the restaraunt and party room adn could be there in a minute, or one floor up the same as a flight of stairs at home.

For me personally my dc comes with in a buggy so i don't actually take any risks but i was stating that if someone was to use a babysitter that is of a good standard surely it has to be better than leaving them alone?

but how do you know they are of a good standard? rhubarb has linked to ones that people thought were fine but turned out not to be, there was a thread on here wehre a mnetter was using a neighbour, who seemed very nice and they were friends, turned out she was abusing the children? you just DONT KNOW! so it is a risk, even if they are crb checked, all that shows is they have no previous convictions etc.

what about the case rhubarb mentioned at the nursery, we all want these places to be safe and trust that on the whole they are, but there is and always will be a risk, so why is that risk acceptable but being a few doors away from your sleeping child with a moniter not ok?