To be furious that the kids were left alone?

[Therearenonamesleft]

My OH got home late last night after drinks with friends. He got a taxi home and this am forgot that his car was still parked at the station. I leave for work earlyish in the morning and he is responsible for taking the kids to school / holiday club most mornings. Today he suddenly realised his car was at station after I'd left for work so he gave the kids breakfast (DS is 7.5 and Dd is 5) and told them to be sensible and not go upstairs or open the door etc and that he had to go and fetch the car. He claims he legged it all the way and was back home in 8minutes.
I feel furious and sick with worry and unease. AIBU? I think they're too young to be left alone even for this short amount of time. I shared my concerns and husband said he sees my point of view but disagrees as he thinks the risks are minuscule. I've asked him not to do it again - at least until DS is competent at making a call on the landline should some problem arise. They are both very sensible children and I often leave them playing upstairs etc while I'm in the garden etc but they are always close enough to call me. Should I take this any further? Is this a safeguarding issue I need to be worrying about? I don't want to over react but I feel uncomfortable about his inability to guarantee it won't happen again.
Thanks for reading all this! Any sensible advice welcome.

Irrespective of whether it's right to leave them alone or not, your reaction is way over the top. Talking about safeguarding (WTAF), changing your work hours & not leaving them alone with your DH. Frankly, your neurosis is more likely to cause them harm than being left alone for 10 minutes.

It wouldn't have occured to me to leave them alone, I'd have just walked them to the station. But if they were watching TV or playing happily I'd pop next door for something without thinking about it, or potter in the garden as you do. Very little difference in reality.

Kids are wrapped in WAY too much cotton wool these days.

outrageous. How insulting to your partner

Unless there is something you're not telling us, the bottom line seems to be that you think they are your children, you somehow have the right to remove his privilege of looking after his own children, and only your risk assessment is valid

It's not actually that outragious, insulting it may be but outragious it's not.

On our area HUB referal forms we have a tick box section with a few fairly standard reason for referal, under 10yo's being left home alone is one of those things.

It also has a section which asks about discussion with parents with a Y/N and outcome of discussion bit on it, that has a few tick boxes along with space to write stuff if a tick box is not relevant, parent lacks understanding of concerns is one of the choices.

If both are ticked a visit would occur, one of the things that would be asked of the other parent during the visit would be "what are you doing to prevent this in future" obviously that would be if the parent who didn't agree wouldn't stop it.

If both parents didnt agree with each other then the onus would be on the others ability and willingness to mitigate the risk of re occurance.

A one off whilst prompting a visit would be unlikely to involve any further involvement but future risk could.

You would be surprised at the amount of situations where if one parent is a bit lapse but if the other is not then that one will be considered to have mitigated any problem, same as when you have one whose very crap but if another family member goes behind them doing the stuff they don't bother with then the kids needs will be being met.

Bonkers over reaction. Teach 7 yr old about phones and who to phone when.

"Leaving the house is different to going in the garden."

It's really not that different. Unsupervised is unsupervised. If they're out of eyesight and you're in the garden for 10 minutes there are all sorts of things that could go wrong and many of them wouldn't make any noise so you wouldn't know until you went back in to check. Thankfully, the risk of that happening is minuscule so most sensible parents wouldn't worry about it. But then this whole thread is about the equally minuscule risk of something happening while dad was out of the house for 10 minutes, so my point is - why freak out about one situation while ignoring the other?

For goodness sake, it's not like he left them for an hour. Even half an hour - I think most people would be saying something could have gone wrong in that time. I wouldn't have left either of mine for half an hour at that age without checking in on them visually. But 10 minutes? Get a grip. Even in the extremely unlikely event that something went wrong, by the time anything could have happened he would have been back to deal with it.

Needs you're talking about when a child is left alone for a long period of time or in an unsafe situation, which is against the law, e.g. left alone in the street or left at home for an hour or more. Granted, the length of time that you can safely leave kids alone isn't actually spelt out, either by government guidance or by the NSPCC, as it depends on the child. But under what bizarre definition would 10 minutes qualify as "a long period of time"?

U2 "I am not an over protective parent who sees danger in every situation and live my life in fear though."

Neither am I. I don't sit by my children's side while they eat but I'm either in the same room or a meter or two away in the kitchen where they are in eyesight/ earshot. Mainly so I can chat to them to be honest but also to keep an eye on them. I'm trying to envisage putting food in front of them and going of upstairs to do chores but it just seems a weird concept. Why wouldn't I stay and chat to them? I guess I prioritise having a nice time with my kids and making sure they're safe over changing the beds.

7 and 5 years old? Nope, don't care how long he was or wasn't, you shouldn't be leaving that age home alone.

you're talking about when a child is left alone for a long period of time or in an unsafe situation, which is against the law, e.g. left alone in the street or left at home for an hour or more. Granted, the length of time that you can safely leave kids alone isn't actually spelt out, either by government guidance or by the NSPCC, as it depends on the child. But under what bizarre definition would 10 minutes qualify as "a long period of time"

No I'm not, I'm talking about children under the age of ten being left alone at all.
Obviously a longer length lack of near by supervision would be considered in a different way to a short term one but they would both give interest, sometimes that interest may more be about what else is going on if anything but interest would still be there.it may well be that someone could be sat there thinking wtf am I even here wasting my time and yours but they could also be thinking hmmm does ten minutes really mean ten minutes

I've got some nice shiny 'best mummying ever' medals for a few on this thread.

Needs if that's true it might explain why so many serious cases of neglect fall through the cracks - perhaps it's because the people who should be investigating children who are actually at risk are too busy interviewing parents who pop out for a few minutes

I'm only half being facetious. Social workers are constantly saying they're overworked... If leaving a 5 and 7 year old for 10 minutes is considered cause for "interest" then no wonder the case load is so high. But both government and NSPCC guidance specifies that children shouldn't be left for long periods, not that they shouldn't be left at all, so why would SS have any authority to involve themselves over something that doesn't go against the official guidance?

Just clocked the safeguarding issue bit. (Sorry.) What do you mean by that? He's your partner. Who made a serious error of judgment, and I'd be pissed off with him too. Safeguarding, though?! Just bollock him and make sure it's not to happen again.

I guess I prioritise having a nice time with my kids and making sure they're safe over changing the beds.

That doesn't really deserve a thoughtful reply.

Because carol it's not just things that are actual defined crimes that are an issue.

There is also quite a difference between parenting that does not meet adequate standards and parenting that would meet a threshold case but that does not mean we say to all the inadequate ones that wouldn't meet threshold 'crack on and do what you want'

Smacking is legal providing it does not leave a mark yet we still take threshold action with sucess when smacking that does not leave a mark (so legal) is sufficient to constitute emotional abuse.

Sometimes things that some parents consider to be acceptable can be indicative of other problems or issues, other times it can be a indication that they don't have a clue, other times it could mean there are no valid concerns, when you get a referal you have no idea which one it's going to be.

It wasn't a dig U2. You suggested my actions were borne out of fear I was explaining that they're not - I want to keep them safe and make meal times enjoyable for them. Not everyone wants to, fair enough. It doesn't make it wrong that I do though. I won't feel bad about making choices I believe will keep my children safe and happy.

I think my original question to you was, if your child did choke whilst eating and you weren't around would you not look back and think, 'I should have done things differently?' I would hate for something to happen when it could have been avoided. That's not fear, it's just logical to me.

It wasn't a dig U2. You suggested my actions were borne out of fear I was explaining that they're not - I want to keep them safe and make meal times enjoyable for them. Not everyone wants to, fair enough. It doesn't make it wrong that I do though. I won't feel bad about making choices I believe will keep my children safe and happy.

I think my original question to you was, if your child did choke whilst eating and you weren't around would you not look back and think, 'I should have done things differently?' I would hate for something to happen when it could have been avoided. That's not fear, it's just logical to me.

I think my original question to you was, if your child did choke whilst eating and you weren't around would you not look back and think, 'I should have done things differently?' I would hate for something to happen when it could have been avoided. That's not fear, it's just logical to me.

I think when your child dies you are always going to wonder if you should have done something differently, even if there is absolutely nothing you could have done.

Where do you draw the line though? My 13 year old went for a bike ride to the local shops today. If he god forbid got hit by a car I am sure I would kick myself for letting him go, but the reality is letting a 13 year old go on their bike to the shops is perfectly fine. Awful stuff happens, I can't prevent everything happening as much as I would love to and it's all about risk assessment. What are the chances of a 7 and 5 year old choking on their food?

I completely understand if others aren't comfortable with leaving children alone for 8 minutes at this age, but not leaving them alone to eat ever incase they choke because you want to avoid something awful happening does seem to come from a place of fear.

Then Needs, quite honestly, that really does explain a lot of what is going wrong in SS if they would take even the slightest interest in something like this. Social workers complain about unmanageable case loads and use that as an excuse for all-too-frequent failures in cases that actually need their attention. If they are busy micromanaging parents' perfectly reasonable risk assessment decisions then it's no wonder they lack the time (and perhaps also the perspective) to spot cases where there is a genuine cause for concern.

Wonder how this thread would have gone if it had been a childminder who popped out for 10 mins leaving a 7 and 5 year old alone eating breakfast. Would anyone be happy to pay for that sort of 'care'?

carol all these children who you deem to have a genuine need for help and where there is genuine need for concern, how the fuck do you think they get detected?

Do you seriously believe that the first thing to go wrong is something incredibly dramatic or that they all rock on up to A&E covered in blood on the first incident or that they know enough to be able to actively tell someone who matters or do you think abuse is just about physical abuse?

It's more often than not a patten of seemingly small things that all add up to a bigger picture or one event that may not in isolation seam a big deal triggering a contact that discovers other issues.
someone has to at least attempt to work out if that is the case or not.

When you do a vist that results in no further action or just signposting or advice then over all that's great because in reality it's not a fun thing to turn up and come face to face with the results of a really really shit long term situation that has happened because of missed intervention or referal avoidance.

Do you seriously believe a response of any description should only occur when you have enough for an actual case or when a referal comes in that makes your blood run cold?

Where would you personally put the let's look into this a bit further line? And whilst you think about that try and remember that not all people are decent kind loving parents just because they managed to reproduce and not all of them tell the truth.

I think it's much more of a problem that a 7.5 yo doesn't know how to use the phone. By not teaching him that skill you are both endangering him and possibly the younger sibling too. I agree with Cory -- children need to be taught and encouraged to be independent and responsible and they learn by handling real life situations.

Ideally, your DH shouldn't be out carousing on a school night either, and ideally he should have a few numbers to call to try to get a lift for the DCs.

The two of you need to get yourselves covered better. Accidents and illness can happen. Cars can break down or batteries can die. You might need to rely on your child being able to keep his wits about him and making a phone call one day.

Haligh -- a CM shouldn't do that, and it would be a problem. But this is a parent who made difficult decision based on what he knew of his own children and their environment, traffic conditions, etc.

Reporting him would be insanely unreasonable. I think you need to get a grip, OP.

100% they need to be able to ring 999. If they can and they know what is an emergency they can be talked through it. We can get a 5 year old to do CPR or help someone who is choking. Children are often a lot calmer than adults and it is amazing what they can do
I've heard colleagues taking calls from 2-3 year olds. Teach them the address and how to ring 999 but that it's only for an emergency. Even v v young children can be taught "if mummy falls down, ring 999"

I don't believe the poster who said a child burnt down a house with matches after being left briefly. That is unlikely I'm not buying it I'm not lying. But thanks for passive aggressively accusing me of it.

He climbed a cabinet to get his toy, which was taken off him. He found matches. He lit one, burnt his finger and dropped it. The house was gutted. The entire inside structure of the house was rebuilt. And the roof replaced. Perhaps "burnt down" wasn't the correct term, but it was severly damaged.

He was on his own for 15 minutes.

How was that passive aggressive? I just said I didn't believe it. Pretty straight up really.
Maybe you misremembered? 15 minutes for a whole house to burn down with no ignition fluid is pretty unlikely.

Pretty difficult to burn down a house with one match unless that house is a giant fire hazard, which is a much bigger issue than leaving a child alone for 15 minutes.