Leaving dc in a hotel room (yes, I know it's been done!)

[ravenAK]

Ok, I know this is a MN perennial!
Dh & I are planning to do a bit of a road trip with the dc ? the idea is that we throw everyone & a tent into the van, head for the opposite end of the country & catch up with sundry friends & relatives.
We?d planned to do one overnighter with my oldest friend, Jo. The idea is to head to a local theme park (not as horrific as it sounds for the poor woman ? Jo & I are roller coaster junkies), & then dh & the dc would spend the evening at a hotel whilst Jo & I went out on the town. At some point her new dp would be joining us, either for dinner or for drinks.
All sorted, until my mum rings earlier this evening & ends up chatting to dh, who explains all this & mentions that he?s feeling slightly Cinderella-ish about not getting to go out with Jo, her new chap & me (dh & Jo adore each other, & we haven?t seen her for months ? neither of us has met her new dp).
Mum is taken aback by this, because to her it?s completely obvious that we should book a hotel with a halfway decent restaurant, put the kids to bed & both have dinner with Jo & her dp.
Dh relays this to me when I get home, finding it quite funny (he also has parents whose idea of responsible 70s parenting re: nights out was for the parent who was driving to steer clear of the whisky chasers & occasionally pop out to the car park with crisps for the offspring they?d locked in the Cortina...)

I find myself thinking ? actually, she?s got a point. The dc are aged 4 to 8 & we could leave ds with dh?s phone to ring mine if they needed us.
I can think of 3 possible problems:
1.Dc have some sort of fight or do something daft resulting in one of them being injured.
2.Fire, & dh & I not being allowed back upstairs to get the dc out of the room.
3.Sinister strangers with hotel master keys.
None of them seem that likely tbh, but it?s fair to say that it?s a ?low risk, high consequence? situation...
We do have other options anyway (we could camp at Jo?s ? the only reason she isn?t putting us up anyway is that she?s sharing a house, but she?s offered her garden for camping; or I suppose we could hire someone to sit in a hotel room via Sitters).
So AIBU to even consider doing as my mum suggests?

Much too young imo. And i dont think you would enjoy yourself anyway.

It depends entirely on the hotel and the DCs. I have done it but it was a small, family run hotel and a very sensible 8 yr old who was happy about it.

Nobody can answer this but yourself. You've already to a certain extent. How many of our parents did the crisps & fizzy drinks out to the car thing when we were growing up? We turend out fine, my sisters and I had a great time playing in the car and reading comics, we felt totally secure and knew exactly what to do if we needed to go get our parents.

It is likely that a large hotel won't let you do this, but they will have a list of checked staff who will, for a fee of course, sit with the kids while you're eating.

If it is a small hotel, and one we stay in sometimes is no bigger than a large house, it has a superb restaurant behind the public rooms/public area so you don't even have to go past the reception to go to the dining room. My son is 7 and would be more than capable of walking down the single flight of stairs and popping his head around the door to the dining room, which is at the bottom of the stairs, if he needed us. The fact that it is unfamiliar is beside the point. He'd have no qualms, if he wasn't sure, of standing at the bottom of the steps and shouting MUMMY as loudly as he could instead.

We are currently travelling around France with dds aged 1 and 10. We go out most nights for a meal and some drinks armed with colouring books,the ds,some crisps and books. The baby eventually sleeps in the pushchair and dd10 is learning to socialise and how to conduct herself in social situations. She just told me that she is mostly enjoying chatting to new people. I think its perfectly possible to still go out at night with kids and if its a good piss up you are planning then yes dh should be staying to babysit especially as you will be returning the favour.

Mine were never good at staying up late.

No way.

An eight yr old left in charge of a four year old is ridiculous.

I'm sure your DH will survive. It's no biggie to miss a night out.

Funny, I would consider it with much younger children (under 2, maybe) in a cot and with a baby monitor, but not at the ages your children are at. A baby can't leave the room on its own, but an older child might wander about.

DH and I just spent a weekend in a hotel with our 6 & 4 yr olds. He stayed in the room while I had a pleasant evening in the lounge! No way would I have left my curious 6 yr old alone in there.

I suppose, like GateGipsy says, that it depends on the hotel.

What would social services advise? Have you discussed it with your GP?

No. Just no.

Why would she discuss it with her GP?

Why would she talk to her GP?

I hired babysitters until my daughter was 12!

(and not only because of what the law states, but also because otherwise my heard would have exploded, knowing my child is alone!)

I think this very much depends on the size/type of hotel. I wouldn't do this in a normal, big hotel, but we have done it a few times in very small B&B style places. Whenever we go up north to see family we deliberately book at least one night in somewhere small with a restaurant so we can have dinner after kids' bedtime.

On a recent trip we were at the bottom of a single flight of stairs and our room was the first one at the top - you could see the room door from the entrance to the dining room. When it was just DS1 we took a baby monitor and went down when he was asleep. On this last trip we took DS2 down in his car seat and DS1 stayed in the room asleep.

I think there is a relatively small window when they are small when you can do this - once DS2 is too big to sleep in his carseat and has to stay in the room we won't do it as the two of them will no doubt wake each other up and get up to stuff! I think there will probably then be a good few years until DS1 is old enough to be safely left "in charge".

I think 8 and 4 might be pushing it a bit - the 8 year-old probably isn't quite old enough to always make sensible decisions and the 4 year-old could be a bit of a handful for the older one.

No think 8 is too young

What does the law state Val007?

The law doesn't state anything. The DC isn't legally responsible - you are -but I would have thought that was obvious. Parents have to be responsible. WhenI left mine it was a responsible decision.

No, I wouldn't. If that was me, I'd go out with the friend, Jo, and DH could stay with Jo's partner and have a catch up, that way he'd have someone to chat and catch up with as well.
Then he wouldn't feel like Billy No Mates/Cinderella as we all swanned off for the night.
Not a chance would we ALL bog off and leave the kids (mine are 5 and 8.)

Thasnkyou exotic I thought that was the case. I also don't understand the "only leaving them when they are 12/13/14/however old. They don't suddenly act responsible just because it is their birthday.

If you choose your hotel with this in mind, some hotels have a "listening service" where you leave the phone off the hook and the receptionist checks ever so often and lets you know if she can hear screaming. Doesn't protect against the (admittedly very very small) possibilities of abduction, choking or other non-noisy hazards, but it's a bit less risky than just leaving them.

Or if you still have your baby monitor squirrelled away from when the DCs were smaller, and choose a very small hotel, the range will probably allow you to hear the monitor yourself in the hotel restaurant. I stayed in a Pub-with-B&B-rooms, just myself and DS, once. After DS had fallen asleep I was happy to go downstairs and enjoy a quiet half-pint by the fireside in the bar, with the monitor on so that I could hear his every snore and snuffle. The possibility of being evacuated with a fire alarm and not allowed to go upstairs to fetch him didn't occur to me at the time.

No. My parents always did this with me and my siblings. From experience we'd bounce from bed to bed and make forts, fight over tv channels and attempt to have baths. We were all under 13 (dbro 4 the first time).

We fought, got hurt, broke hotel furniture, were REALLY loud, cried and made up. In retrospect we were then over tired and grumpy the next day (over who did what to to). I still struggle to understand why my parents thought it was worth it.

I have DDs aged 8 and 4...no way would I leave them alone. Elephants they don't "suddenly act responsible" on their birthday...it's a culmination of experience that helps them know what to do in an emergency.

My DC have no idea what to do in certain situations...they're prone to sudden scraps and they'd proobably think it a good idea to attempt to run a bath, construct a swing from sheets and the light fitting, get out of the room andd play hide and seek....

Its a terrible idea to leave such young DC alone.

Cross posts with Turkey....about the baths!

I was left alone aged 11 when my parents went out with their mates..the mates' daughter aged 13 was with me and she was meant to be "looking after me"

That involved us leaving the house, hangng out at the park and using a tea tray to slide down a hill at midnight.

Her gp? Have I missed something

I'm genuinely intrigued why if people would consider the cost of going out on the town, and/or dinner but then not factor in the cost of a baby sitter.

OP you have mentioned the sitter in your opening post - why not just book one?

Genuinely interested in why you wouldn't if you wouldn't? Is it money?

NO