To ask for your experiences of leaving children at home whilst going away.

[Zippyzoppy]

By next summer, we will have a reasonable responsible pair of teenagers DD(16) and DS(18). They do not want to come away with us on holiday, which means that either we stay put, or try and go on some kind of break without them.

I'm just wondering what others have done at this stage? Would you leave them for a day, weekend, week or not at all?

TIA

My eldest are 16 and 17. I have left them for long weekends, but with family members near and contactable.

Blimey, can't wait to go on holidays without my daughter if I come back to find she's guilt tidied the house after a shagathon.

My parents did - 30 years ago now & the parties were so legendary they still come up in anecdotes now...all nighters, booze, drugs, sex etc, finding people passed out in he bath, people shagging in my parents bed..

We were a particularly wild bunch though & the thought of mine doing the same terrifies me so I know I have utter double standards & it’s nothing to be proud of.

Subsequently I would never do it, despite my eldest being very sensible. That’s all purely based on my own experience & peer group mind you - this more sensible generation would probably be fine!

Depends on DD and DS. I was left for two weeks when I was 18 and my sister was 16, I was working full time and my sister part time. We had friends over for one night (all friends known and approved by parents) where we all slept on the living room floor, had a couple of drinks but it wasn't a boozy night.

Friend was left at 19, had a party and house got wrecked.

My parents left us. Can I just suggest (from my experience) that you check 18yo is comfortable because they will be responsible for the younger child however responsible

Left ours from 17 and 14 onwards. List of rules, including not more than two friends each in the house at once. Worked OK from our point of view, but when he was about 16 the younger invited about 4 or 5 friends round for football and drinks, elder son and his mate ignored them, until one of the friends got a football in the face and a broken nose, it which point they called in the neighbour.

All in all it was a good learning experience as they realised they weren't quite as capable as they thought at handling all eventualities.

Took a long time before I stopped finding lager tins behind the bushes.

This thread has also reminded me of how often my 6th-form boyfriends mum used to go away, leaving us with a free house. We were pretty tidy and enjoyed the freedom to shag! The house was lovely, too!