To think that things were different before 2007?

[Haarrieett]

Just happened to see that the new Madeleine McCann documentary is trending on twitter - I clicked on it and saw that hundreds of people were saying things along the lines of "Who would leave their children alone in a foreign country?"

I was slightly at this because dh and I honestly used to do this all the time. My dc are a few years older than Madeleine - when we went on holiday to resorts in places like Greece and Spain, we would often leave them alone in a hotel room (often with a window/patio door open for fresh air) while we went out for dinner.

Obviously, after Madeleine went missing we never did it again, but I do recall it being pretty common behaviour at least among our friends.

Did anyone else used to do this in the pre-MM era?

Ours would have been 2 and 3 in 2007, and hell no I would never have left them to go out for dinner. Not for fear of abduction, to be honest, but because they have have become distressed, hurt themselves, gone to the bathroom and stuffed the loo with toilet paper, decided to smear Sudacreme all over the hotel room walls, the possibility of a fire and all manner of other things.

We always booked villas/apartments/mobile homes etc rather than hotels for this reason. We'd have dinner all together (in or out) and then pop them to bed. DH and I would sit up and enjoy some local plonk together in the villa once they were asleep. TBH, they're teens now, and I still don't leave them alone when on holiday (more because we want to spend the time with them than for safety reasons admittedly!)

My parents left us in a hotel room with a listening service when we were little. But they were only downstairs in the restaurant and this was in the UK.

I've never done anything of the kind myself but it wad normal in their day I think.

Agree with pp. my ds is 2.5 and has been on a few holidays abroad and weekends away. He stays up late with us, sleeps in his reclined buggy or we may have the occasional early night where we sit on the balcony.

The 'riskiest' thing we've done with him is put him to bed and sit in our own garden with the video baby monitor.

I agree that if MM’s parents hadn’t been middle class and in their own words ‘dining’, they would have been facing neglect charges.

what a ridiculous and pathetic comment.

I don't agree that it was common for parents to leave the kids unattended, but the McC really do not deserve the nasty comments they get. Just reading the thread show that they were not an exception either.

It's 2019 and I am still reading posts from people who leave a baby in an hotel room (because they have a baby monitor, that magical device that prevents any catastrophe )
posts from people who are happy to leave a baby or toddler with a completely unknown babysitter in a foreign country they know nothing about

The McC made a horrible mistake, many others are just lucky their own didn't come back to bite them in the ass.

The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.

I am nearly 50, so I was raised in the 70s and my parents NEVER left me, ever. I remember them saying that they were invited to a next door neighbours party once but wouldn't go cos they wouldn't leave me, despite us living in a very safe place and other neighbours leaving their children.

Actually, I think it's extremely weird to be willing to leave toddlers unaccompanied in a hotel room with the door to the patio open while their parents eat in a restaurant a 10 minute walk away - unless using a hotel babysitting service. Surely you didn't do that, OP?!

We wouldn’t have been 10 minutes away when they were toddlers, but by the time they were 5 and 7 we definitely were.

And then the following year Madeleine disappeared and we never did it again.

I'm pretty much a live and let live kind of mindset, I don't generally judge other parents for their choices.

But leaving toddlers completely alone in an apartment/hotel room while you go off down the street on a jolly is abhorrent.

All the people saying that they were left alone and turned out fine, you know that doesn’t make it right, right?

This!

No, leaving children before 2007 wasn’t normal

I wouldn't do it and my no.1 reason would be that children that age can wander out and fall in the pool and drown.

I'm 38
Holidays in U.K. (Mostly Butlins until early 90's) never left alone
Holidays abroad never left alone

You have kids holidays with them are no longer your own

Op surely you can see by the many comments that abduction is the least of your worries, no?

Op you clearly don't think there was anything wrong with what you did because it turned out ok doesn't mean it was

I don't think it was normal to leave small children unsupervised pre 2007. Dmil talks about leaving her dc with a listening service, but that was 40 years ago! Leaving toddlers totally unsupervised definitely would have been a social services issue in 2007.

We were in France the previous summer to Madeleines disappearance.

I had a 3 year old and 1 year old.

I refused to leave them in the room in the evening on their own.

The other parents made my life a misery saying I was an over protective parent.

That I should go to my room and stay upstairs if I was so worried about them and evening times were adult times in the hotel.

I wonder what they would have said to me if we had gone away the following year.

But baby monitors are really sensitive, they would've definitely heard something (or at least they are now, not sure what they were like 10 years ago).

*Really we are such a risk averse culture.

I stayed in tents in friends' gardens as a child. We were left in the car with a coke & crisps as a child.*

Being risk averse is not the same as neglect. I'm a year younger than you are, never left with coke and crisps in a car so my folks could go get pissed .

I was never left as a kid, and I’ve never felt comfortable leaving any of mine either. I slept in a different room to my 3 year old in a Spanish villa once, and found her at the bottom of the stone staircase looking for me. I felt enough guilt after that.

However I’ve been to the resort the Mccanns were at, and I can see how they decided to leave them. They really weren’t far away. The restaurant was just the other side of the pool from the apartment. You relax on holiday, they were with friends who were all doing the same. It’s easy to judge but there we go.

My kids were born in the 90s. We never left them at night. We did the reclined buggy thing or we camped and tucked them up and sat outside with our mates. Sometimes we took it in turn to babysit with our mates and I can remember once or twice paying the Eurocamp play leaders to babysit.

Youngest DS is now 13. I’d leave him at home for a few hours but I wouldn’t do it abroad.

Well I know my parents did at least once, as there was a famous incident on holiday one year when they walked out of dinner at a hotel to discover me being dressed by the nice lady on reception. I’d let myself out of the room, took my clothes and pocket money, and went to the hotel desk. I was 2.

I don’t think they did it again!

WYP2018 I do judge, harshly, any one of those children could have wandered out of that apartment and fell into the pool.

I don't buy into all this 'you relax on holiday' bollox, you'd have to have completely taken leave of your senses to ever think that it was ok.

Early 1970s - another world in terms of risk assessment...

I’d really be interested to see the actual risk of leaving kids alone. I’ve never actually done it, my kids were born after 2007. I even used to barricade the door in hotel rooms (with us all inside) when we went to sleep, for fear of someone getting in and taking my kids. The few years after, I’m sure the perceived risk was way higher than the actual risk.