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 have no idea what she was doing, but she hadn't noticed that he had gone until we returned him to the room. I was not impressed.

The children (x3) were sleeping in the sitting room bit on camp beds. The door was in this space.

She was sat, watching TV, in our bedroom which had large folding doors ajar onto the sitting room.

it's o.k hak, i don't do smug, totally twatty behaviour, it's just that this is a highly senstive subject but interesting though getting the different views

Hakluyt, are you trying to say that you can 100% guarantee that your DC will never be ill unexpectedly? Bloody hell, you should find out what the secret is and sell it.

Both DC were diagnosed with asthma in the past year. I never left them in hotel rooms in the five+ years of their lives before that - asthma wasn't the reason then but the diagnosis validates the concern. I wouldn't leave my children because it's a potentially dangerous thing to do, IMO. You are entitled to your own opinion, you've voiced it loudly and repeatedly. The OP wanted everyone's opinions. You don't need to comment individually on every poster who has a different view to your own.

In my experience, it is a very real possibility that a child can become ill very suddenly. Clearly, you have not come across any children who have become ill suddenly. Also in my experience, listening services and devices either don't work efficiently enough or can't be heard in the general hubbub of a social gathering. My experience tells me that leaving a young child alone is a risk, and my judgment tells me that I wouldn't take even a small risk. You obviously think that it is not a risk at all, or that you think it is a small enough risk to take.

By the way, the OP said a while back that she is going to ask the hotel about babysitters, as she herself doesn't know anyone locally. Her OP asked if she WBU not to want to leave her children alone with just a monitor as her PIL had suggested.

Choc I hope you didn't pay her!!

"it's o.k hak, i don't do smug, totally twatty behaviour,"

Well, going back through somebody's posts and thinking you have caught them out in an inconsistency then being offensive when it's pointed out that you were wrong is certainly something............

I wouldn't leave my children in a hotel room, not with a listening service, not with an unknown babysitter. DD1 would hate to wake up with a stranger there and I think that is entirely reasonable.

BlackbirdOnTheWire I'm very sorry about your children's diagnosis but I'm trying to understand your logic - not being goady, I'm just trying to understand it.

In our circumstances, my DH had the monitors set to vibrate in the inside pocket of his jacket (not having any pockets meant I couldn't although I did have them on my lap at one point). It meant us watching the monitors didn't cause a distraction to anyone else at the meal but we knew at the slightest sound, we'd be able to check on the DDs. I don't understand how that's different from at home, where they could also become ill suddenly. I probably physically checked on them more on those two nights than I do at home!

I have a hazy memory of being about 5 and waking up one summer night and finding that no one was in the house, and leaving our (unlocked) house and hearing the sounds of a party next door. Walked up our drive, along the road, down their drive, through their unlocked door and eventually found my parents at a party around next door's swimming pool. I guess those unlocked doors made it easy to check on me.

Different times.

I left my DD1 at around 2.5 in a hotel with their listening service (phone monitoring) whilst I had dinner at a work thing. She was on the same floor, not that far away but it was a massive hotel and not exclusively booked.
I never intended to but she was exhausted and I was pretty sure she was going to sleep through. My biggest worry was that she would wander (she could open the door from the inside -I never managed a poo in 3 days ...first day I was on the loo and she was off down the corridor - all doors wide open) but she also knew the layout of the hotel after the first 2 days -she could have found me easily...but more likely she would have gone to the play area. And anywhere she was likely to choose to go would have been through reception -manned 24 -7. She could have wandered out whilst I was asleep in the room with her anyway.

The previous nights I had stayed in the room - or in fact for the first night she'd been at the social event in her baby grow, eventually fell asleep in her pram.

I would make your call when you get there - what the layout is like, monitoring service etc, how comfortable you and your DCs feel etc...but I wouldn't guarantee I was going to leave them in the room or not before - make that call at the time. Or get a sitter - if you feel comfortable with the sitter - but I guess they would be a stranger...
(I did this pre McCanns -but I don't think that would have made a difference. Same building, much closer, and not a regular thing -so less chance that someone would be expecting me to do it)

Friends of mine have done this, except even worse as it was a very large hotel and the monitor didn't stretch. They still left their little one and checked every half an hour or so. I was gobsmacked at the time. I'm a mum myself now and over my dead body would I do this.

Personally, even now, I wouldn't leave my kids with a babysitter I didn't know.

I would decline and in fact have done in similar situations.

Your response to this is coloured by the type of kids you have. Mine have never been the kind you can predictably and reliably settle to sleep. In unfamiliar surroundings my oldest will take ages to get down. My youngest doesn't sleep full stop. Both would go absolutely wild if I left them with an unfamiliar babysitter and there is no way I could rely on being able to get them to sleep before dinner (unless dinner started about 11pm) so that I could hand over to a sitter when they were asleep. It's often suggested on here when kids' routines conflict with adult events that meals are served whilst kids nap or after their bedtime. If you have a bad sleeper or children who only nap in the buggy or car, these solutions are simply not viable. And if I tried leaving mine with a babysitter they'd never met before it wou the be an absolute unmitigated disaster. I'd hardly enjoy dinner if I'd had to peel a screaming, sobbing pre-schooler off my legs before going downstairs! So in the OP's situation, I'd have to say either the kids come to dinner or they have the weekend at their other grandparents' house. If it was a massively important celebration, maybe I'd look at bringing the other grandparents as babysitters but that wpu and obviously be very expensive!

Most nannys or babysitters will set you back no more than £10 an hour for hotel sitting, so 8pm - midnight would be an extra £40 on your hotel stay, it's hardly a bank breaking amount when looking at the typical hotel costs.

It is worth remembering with PIL, a lot of the change of not leaving DCs alone did happen after McCanns, as others upthread have said, it was perfectly normal to not just leave DCs alone in a hotel room in the same building, but in the Pontins type resorts where parents were a long way from them, in a different building. Like many changes in how we treat children's safety, it's worth being careful in how you word things with older generations to not sound too much like you are critising the way they parented - even if you'd not dream of taking the risks they did.

Most parents in that generation didn't use carseats either, babies were put in moses baskets on the backseat, if the parents were particularly safety focused and had seatbelts,they might strap the moses basket down. But that was it. We wouldn't dream of driving with a baby in the car not in a carseat now, you'd be called every name under the sun if you did, yet few people have been in a crash with the children in the car. The chances of a the OP's child being hurt or sick, there being a fire alarm activated (actually rather high in hotels - people still will sneakily smoke indoors or staff set off alarms in the kitchen accidentally), or even a kidnapper going into the hotel if she leaves her DCs alone in the room are probably about similar to the chances of me being in a car crash when I pop the short distance to the supermarket later this afternoon. I'll still strap DD into her carseat though, even though she'd probably be perfectly happy and safe not in it.

Another way we've done it is to split the meal so we each got the bits we like best- so I got pre dinner drinks and starter. He got main course and wine. I got pudding and coffee. He got after dinner drinks and chat while I had a liqueur in the room with a book.

I wouldn't, for selfish reasons. 2.5 yo DD cries if she wakes up alone, and has been known to cry until she vomits. She does not worry about where she is when she vomits, so she doesn't make it to the toilet. Babysitters and hotel housekeeping might not be willing to clean up vomit. I do not like cleaning up vomit. So I keep her out of situations where crying until she vomits is likely. (I cried until I vomited as a kid, too, and I don't now, so I'm pretty sure this is something that will pass)

I do leave DD alone in bed at home, but it's a different situation. She's on the second floor, and is in earshot from the first if she starts crying. Our house is not big, so I can get to her pretty quickly if I hear her at home. I would not invite anyone over if they did not understand that I might need to go to her with no notice.

I think the crucial words in the OP are Neither of them are good sleepers and often wake up" In those circumstances I would not. However with a pair of reliable sleepers who regularly sleep through til morning I would probably use a monitor combined with regular checks. There is no right answer to this dilemma as there are so many variables. Bedroom close to the dining room I'd probably chance it. Bedroom up a flight of stairs and through several fire doors would be a different matter. I'm never sure about an unfamiliar babysitter in an unfamiliar room - I couldn't imagine this ever having worked for my two unless they were asleep when the sitter arrived. But a friend recently did just this at a wedding with an 18 month old who she'd neverleft before. She took the view that if he didn't settle she'd give up and go up with him, but nothing ventured nothing gained. In fact it was a great success.

I also think the difference with leaving your DCs at home in their rooms or in a holiday rental property, is that a) in the case of a fire alarm going off, you are in control of deciding if it's a real fire that needs evacuation of the property (rather than say, burnt toast setting off your alarm - a reason I was evacuated from a hotel once!), and then are in control about how the property is evacuated - not being directed out of the nearest exit and being barred from going to the stairs to get your DCs (assuming there's not a fire in the way) - and b) you are in control of who is in the building.

Personally I wouldn't have a problem at all with this and have a 1yr old. I am surprised that lots of people wouldn't as I wouldn't consider it an issue at all. Exclusive use, so no one else will have access, and a 20 room hotel is just a big house really. We would ask for a room as close to the dining room as possible and use a baby monitor, or pop in every so often to check.

But, it doesn't matter what I or anyone else would do, if you aren't happy then don't do it.

I personally wouldn't do it as I couldn't relax, but I can't believe the emphatic 'NO WAY's and 'over my dead body'!!

It would perfectly reasonable of someone to feel ok with this, others don't.

The odds of something any more serious than a few tears are very small though.

I had a similar event when DS was very small.

I simply kept him asleep in his buggy next to me through the dinner. It was fine - he woke just once from memory but after a quick hug he went back to sleep again.

I wouldn't have left him in a room alone. Some members of the party where a bit sniffy about me having him with me but the alternative was not to go at all and quite frankly my DS was far more important than their attitude.

I would leave mine without a second thought.

I wouldn't do it either - I have a nearly 3 yo and a 7 mo, and the toddler would either flood the place or damage her brother by climbing into the cot and standing on his head, or paint the walls with my make up, or poo somewhere inappropriate, or get into the cot and throw the baby out...or quite simply howl the place down. She's a middling sleeper at home but in strange places she's terrible.

I have tried this before - the monitor didn't reach to the dining room, so DH and I took turns to be with DD, and she was a lot younger and couldn't escape from her cot unaided at that point.

actually hak i didn't need to go back through the posts to read your original comment, i remembered it as i thought when i first read it 'yeah, she's got a good point there'. so don't bother having any sort of dig at me, i'm not really bothered by what you think.