that parents should fucking ask me first before going out and leaving their son outside playing with mine ..

[ggirl]

kids are 10/11
playing happily which if fine
but I want to go out
ds's friends parents have buggered off somewhere so we have to wait for them to come home ......wankers

and i don't want to take their child with me

[PortofinoRevisited]

I personally would feel terrible leaving a 10/11 yo in the street by themselves. Not because they might be abducted by paedophiles, but because it is just not very nice.

[confusedaboutparenting]

facts:

• The parents told him they were going out and that they were locking door.
  

• He knew they'd be an hr or so.
  

-His parents were happy to leave him

• He didn't want me to go out cos I needed to take ds and he'd be bored.
  

• OP was being presumptive in that the parents weren't expecting her to stay in and be there for him ,but felt too mean leaving
  

Perfectly normal and acceptable i would say

[mercibucket]

i just re read and yes, about halfway through, the op does say the boy gives the impression he will be bored if the ops ds goes out.

parents hardly deserve the op's sweary scorn for letting their child run the risk of boredom for an hour.

if it was my kids, they'd just have gone and knocked in someone elses door to see if their kids wanted to play out, or gone to the park to see who was playing out already (not to play in someones house and use them as free childcare btw)

[IfNotNowThenWhen]

Thanks Kitty. It is my own personal bug bear at the moment!

[knickernicker]

The parents must have expected the OP to babysit, otherwise the boy wouldn't have complained about the family going out. How rude of those parents. They will do this again.

[Rooners]

It wasn't a dig, it is an opinion. Got a problem with that?

[macdoodle]

Rooners.....ridiculous. a toddler is not a 11 yr old. And the nursery dig was great too.

[MsMischief]

There was definitely a feeling amongst the adults that I knew when I was growing up that having a key was a lot of responsibility and the sensible thing was to not put that responsibility onto a 10/11 yo.
My Dad in particular had a fear that we wouldn't manage the alarm and locks at that age or that we would turn the house into 'a gang hut'

Thinking about it, there was a key in the greenhouse, but I don't think I ever used it. We got a key on starting secondary school so 10/11 was on the cusp.

[Rooners]

It's a bit like (but not totally, obviously) saying a toddler ought to be left at a playground with its peers and random other parents, in order to experience freedom, without its parent being close by.

Really it makes a child far more confident and able to explore outwards if it knows the parent is always available. (this is part of the problem I have with nursery situations)

You can watch this in babies. They explore, return to the parent, go a little further, return to the parent...

those whose parent is rejecting or not available tend to explore far less. I think that was about the size of it - experiments regarding attachment theory I think they were.

V interesting

[Rooners]

There isn't mutual exclusivity between freedom and access to a house or a parent.

In fact I would suggest that allowing a child out but not allowing it in, is curtailing its freedom.

We had loads of freedom as young children, in the late 70s and early 80s on a newbuild estate in the South East.

We were always off in the overgrown shrubland across the road, up trees, building camps and fires and getting into gang warfare with neighbouring children.

On bikes, with no hands, on rollerskates, making substances from berries we weren't sure about eating or not.

Difference being, we could always go in if we wanted...either our mum or dad was home, or we had arranged care from another parent.

So most of this thread seems to be about freedom vs care, when really it's a moot point. You can have both quite easily.

[mercibucket]

yep, kim, i agree that sounds a very likely scenario. i might ask my kids the same if popping to the shops and they wanted to play out. we usually just leave a key out but they never use it anyway.

[mercibucket]

11 year olds have to walk to and rom secondary. they have to learn road safety

i still dont get the big deal about the door being locked. no hurricanes or snowstorms forecast. its not like he was locked out all day.

[KittyAndTheFontanelles]

Excellent point about the height of cars, ifnotnow.

[dunsborough]

Yanbu.

Very rude of them.

[IfNotNowThenWhen]

I was totally free range from 6/7. My brothers were, apparently, looking out for me (I am guessing that was my parents assumption-they never said).
I also escaped being abducted into a car, and got lost in a disused power station...I am a lot more careful with my dc.
And it IS a different world now, quite simply because of traffic. In the 80's we played cricket in the road. We could cross the street because there wasn't much traffic in my area. Now, the streets are chocka with parked cars and, crucially,(and NEVER talked about) cars are so much bloody taller than they used to be. I have been teaching ds to cross roads, and he can't look up and down the road from the curb because he cant see over the giant 4 wheel drives/people carriers lining the road.
I am teaching him road skills, but I feel damn sorry for him, growing up now, in a place where everyone drives everywhere and kids can't play in the street anymore. (They do play, a bit, on the pavement, but it's not the same-in my day kids took over the road as their right, now the car is king).
OP, I would be pissed off too, and the parents need a talking to. Playing out at 11 is not the same is being locked out.

[MsMischief]

I was routinely locked out at 10. Everyone was. If you were out playing and your parents went out then you either went with them, or you played out. It never occurred to me to mind or think it was neglectful. I wouldn't want to be locked out now, because I don't play out anymore. We had a greenhouse and my friends house had an insecure garage and we could walk to shops. It wasn't brutal by any stretch.

[BurntPancake]

This has got fuck all to do with whether he's old enough to play out/be left home alone or whatever. This boy was locked out of his house while his parents went out. If they'd left him a key then it might have been ok but it looks like they just left while he was playing and locked him out.
Everyone saying this is fine, would you like to be locked out of your own home? I wouldn't. It's disgraceful behaviour and in my opinion neglectful.

[AgentProvocateur]

PMSL@ "what if it rains?" Are kids soluble these days?!

[mercibucket]

something could happen anywhere
on the way to school
in town
on the way to a friends

we all rely on the kindness of strangers and on publicly funded emergency services as our kids spread their wings

[MsMischief]

what if something had happened to him & he needed emergency care?

I have had, on occasion, random kids needing help for some reason as I live near a park and I'm usually in. I don't feel obliged to stay in just in case a random child needs help and if I do help someone I do it it a 'citizen' way rather than a 'childminder way'. I helped my adult neighbour when he fell of his ladder and I helped the elderly woman across the road who had dementia. It's ridiculous to not help out children in an emergency because their parents should be there. I'm sure if the OP had gone out and the boy had an accident or something then someone would helped him, the same way that an adult can expect the assistance of other humans.

I was out for hours as a kid and I honestly can't remember having a piss being an issue. I can't remember what we did but it can't have been an issue. I do only pee every few hours though, not every few minutes.

[NigellasDealer]

yes it used to happen to me with a couple of tiny kids in the backyard of some flats, their mum would just leave me watching them and playing with mine for ages while she did drugs in her kitchen.

[WorrySighWorrySigh]

It is all very well people saying the child would be fine for a few hours but how many hours is a few? 2? 3? 4?

How many hours is it acceptable to leave a child without access to shelter/toilet/drinks?

Of course he will be perfectly fine. Until the very second that he isnt. Until something goes wrong.

We had a neighbour who used to go out leaving his children playing with ours. He never rang the doorbell to check it was all right. Actually I got the sense that he didnt actually care whether we were in or not. It just justified it in his head. His kids were playing with someone else so he didnt need to care.