To not be comfortable leaving DS &DD?

[BabyHaribo]

MIL & FIL are having a formal dinner for wedding anniversary in a small hotel. It only has 20 rooms and they are having exclusive use.

I am not comfortable leaving DS.3 and DD 1 in the hotel room whilst we attend the evening meal. Neither of them are good sleeps and often wake up. I also worry about who had access to the room and fire etc. I don't mind sitting in the room whilst they sleep.

MIL & FIL are putting on the pressure saying they don't see the problem and I'm being rude

AIBU? Would you leave them with a monitor if your party were the only ones in the hotel?

I would do it IF we did have sole occupancy and IF I could have a video monitor.

Am I being unreasonable because all I can think of is the bit in "Big Dog... Little Dog" by P. D. Eastman where one of the dogs says "Look! A small hotel!" and points to a house with a sign on it that says "SMALL HOTEL"?

Anyway, if neither babysitter nor baby monitor is a reasonable option - and I think it would have to be a video monitor - just don't go. It's a bit weird in my opinion to expect other family to turn up for your wedding anniversary in the first place, although some of you would probably call me U for saying that.

I'd do it as a tag team
A single place at the table for the pair of you

DW enjoys the starter while DH is in room with kids
Vice versa for the main
DW back again for dessert
DH for coffee/ after dinner drinks

Money saved can pay for snacks & drinks for the parent upstairs
We've done it before, neither of us felt like we'd missed out and we weren't really missed by others at the dinner either, got to chat to everyone

Why, by the way, should the PIL pay for the babysitter? I wish I'd known when mine were smaller that the host paid for the babysitter- do you think I can issue retrospective bills? And shoul I pay for the sitter my friend is getting so that she can come to dinner with us on Saturday?

If you told her she HAD to come to your house for dinner, scoffed and huffed when she said it was inconvenient, and responded by claiming they were being incredibly rude, and had to come... then yes, you should have to pay for that sitter, because you are insisting on a scenario where they need one, in applying a three line whip. But you didn't, did you.

Nor is a 3 story house in any way similar to a 20 roomed hotel... and I'd not leave my 1 and 3 year old in a strange 3 story house, either. I don't expect the entire world to child-proof itself for my offspring.

I wouldn't leave a 1 year old or 3 year old alone somewhere strange because toddlers have an unerring ability to get into mischief, and with mine, the biggest sign you needed to go and investigate was their going silent. Nor would I like the other option, which would be terrified screams for the five or ten minutes it would take me to get to them.

Agree a babysitter is a good idea, if they're neither of them deep in the throes of separation anxiety.

Op when people say get a sitter they mean this company www.sitters.co.uk they will come to your hotel room.

No I wouldn't leave them either. You just don't know what could happen!
Just makes me think of poor Madeleine McCann.

FWIW my dad, in the couple of years before his retirement, worked night shifts on the reception desk of the big hotels in Glasgow. From what I remember, there was a fire alarm about once a month... not rare at all.

In similar circumstances, I took 6mo and 3yo to the posh meal. I know this is frowned on on MN, however, we were actually staying in adjoining cottage well out of monitor range and baby is a co-sleeper so would never have settled anyway. 3yo would have been greatly distressed by an unfamiliar sitter. The family had our own dining room rather than exclusive use of the hotel.

3yo slept in the car on the way so was able to stay up a bit later. Gave them a light dinner at 5 then at the meal at 8 the baby slept in the pram and came out for cuddles when he woke up as he usually does through out the evening. Everyone happy to pass him around. 3yo had a bowl of chips, a new Lego set and then some ice cream and was thus delighted and stayed at the table playing, eating and chatting nicely. Everyone enjoyed seeing them as extended family don't see them that often, their behaviour was impeccable and they didn't inhibit anyone at all and I took them both back to the cottage forgoing the after dinner coffee when 3yo was tired out. I know that some kids wouldn't cope with this but mine are pretty flexible so it really wasn't a problem and worked out best for all of us. Is that an option at all, OP?

Hakulet what's with all the superior "you're all bonkers, everyone with a small child is, I know because I have forgotten all the trouble small children can get themselves into when left alone, therefore I am rational and you are not"

Not sure you've quite cracked rational

In a similar situation dh and I took turns sitting outside room in an armchair I had pulled out into corridor...glass of wine and book - lovely! However, I can see why some people would think it ok as it's reallu like a big house party, but very unreasonable to question what you do with your own children.

Absolutely no way.

To be honest I can't understand why things are arranged like this when there are small children in the family without any consideration.

Both sets of my DS's GPs always include him in invites. It's very different having an adults only meal with friends when you are going home afterwards and leaving the DC's with someone but when it's an all family going away thing it just makes the mind boggle. I'm not overly bothered about bedtimes so mine would sit at the meal with us and if he got restless later on we would say our goodnights and go up.

I wouldn't be leaving him overnight with anyone either. Either we re all invited or none of us are and I'm firmly in the children behaving in restaurants camp and not interrupting adults etc.

I probably wouldn't feel comfortable. Not because of (almost zero) chance of abduction, or fire etc. I'd be more worried about reach of monitor and also chances of 3yo 'helping' 1yo if they woke. But that's because my older DC was a bugger for 'helping' her DB. Its a wonder he's made it to school age tbh!!!
Is 3yo in a bed?

Yanbu, but I think you could find a baby sitter to sit with them which would solve the problem

I wouldn't leave small children alone in an hotel room. However, I think your PIL are probably of the generation that did quite happily leave children sleeping alone while on holiday so they won't see your POV.

When I was a child, the holiday camps had a "Baby crying in chalet ..." board up in the ballroom. Staff would update the board if a child was heard crying in the night.
The parents could then leave the ballroom and check the child. Probably by that time, the child had been crying for a good half hour.
Always supposing, too, that the parents were in the ballroom to see the message.

That's why they think you're being ridiculous. They think they've done enough by booking the whole hotel.

I wouldn't leave small DC alone in a hotel room. I might consider it in a very small hotel once the children were old enough to understand what to do if they heard a fire alarm .

It's a generational thing, it was quite normal 30 or 40 years ago, so I expect that's why your PIL feel you are being unreasonable. But they shouldn't put pressure on you.

When I was young , my parents occasionally used to leave me and my Dsis in a hotel room. Many hotels had a baby listening service, where a staff member would patrol the corridors, listening for crying children ! However one time I can remember I was crying and a stranger came in and tried to comfort me. He was very nice, but that was just luck! After I told mum, she never left us alone in a hotel again.

As for fire, the hotel I stayed in last week had 2 fire alarms in 3 days!

With sole occupancy of the hotel, is it really so different from a rented country house?

And agreed that it's not 'bonkers' or 'irrational' to not want to leave small children in a hotel room. The chances of a fire alarm or abduction are very slim but when my waters broke with no sign of labour I tried to argue against induction after 24hrs because the risk of infection is small. The doctor pointed out that no matter how small the risk, it was an avoidable one and the consequences of that risk if it happened could be catastrophic. Risk assessment isn't just about likelihood of risk, it's about cost v benefit of taking the risk. The children are more likely to be in an accident in the car on the way to the hotel, but we accept the risk of road travel because of the advantages it brings and the safety measures we can take to reduce the chance of serious harm. The risk of the children being stranded in a fire or harmed by a stranger is a tiny risk but the consequences are unimaginably horrific and the benefit is low (it's just one meal, the family and will all attend brunch the following day anyway).

Also, far more likely is that the children wake and either the 3yo gets up and has an accident/damages something in the time it takes you to Sprint up the stairs having heard him roaming on the monitor. Or they wake up and are terrified and have nightmares for subsequent nights (I have an anxious child, this would be likely for him if he woke up somewhere unfamiliar without me). Or you don't pay close attention to the monitor whilst you're talking and miss something, or you don't enjoy any conversation because you're anxiously clamping the monitor to your ear.

And finally, I don't even own a baby monitor so in this situation I'd have to buy one specially and they're pretty expensive so I wou to want to add that cost to the weekend!

Would the hotel be completely locked up whilst you are there? From what you have described and the ages of your children I would say no however we went skiing recently and the very small hotel we stayed in was locked so that nobody who wasn't a resident could enter. The children were pretty much given the run of the place and it did feel very safe. However mine are much older and even so we didn't just put them to bed and leave them.

Hire a babysitter to sit in the hotel room.

I think before the McCann case, many people felt like Haklyt - indeed they were doing something similar, they left the children asleep and could see the room from their table. Chances of something going wrong being slim... Of course what it pointed out was while the chances of something happening were slim (I bet hundreds if children had been left in hotel rooms across Europe the summer before with no problems ) if something does happen, it's horrific. Bit like seatbelts/car seats, I've never been in a crash in 18 years of driving, I still wouldn't set off without my dcs strapped in the appropriate car seats, which are probably a huge waste of money.

Op, as well as sitters, google nanny agencies in the local area, sitters.co.uk isn't that cheap for a one off as you have to join. We just had a weekend away and paid for a nanny to be in the room, she cost £30 plus £9 to the agency, worth it as I got to eat pudding, dc2 woke up just as pudding was served and if we had been doing the baby monitor thing, I'd have been back in the room by then.

The world is so different now isn't it. When I was little (70s and 80s) we frequently went to Pontins. The routine was you put your children to bed in one of hundreds of chalets. A staff member patrolled the chalets (probably passing once an hour or so) and if your child was crying, they'd go back to the main building and a light with your room number would flash up in the ballroom to alert the parents (eventually, when they'd finished watching the cabaret!) who would then make the 10-15 minute walk back to the chalet to see if the child was still alive.

I would not leave them there alone.

Nor would I book a babysitter from any company, that would be worse. Pick a random person and leave my kids with them .... uh NO!! [ i DONT CARE THAT THEY HAVE BEEN CHECKED, THEY MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN CAUGHT YET]

Find a trusted friend or relative or else I would not go...

My children are 12 and 15 and I only left them last year while dh and I went for a drink at the bar at 4pm in our hotel last year on holiday and even then I kept clock watching etc.

I had never left them prior to this and had never considered it.

Oops sorry Tanith we were probably at the same holiday camp!