Ex left toddler in hotel alone to go bar, so wrong?!

[Nothappy83]

Hi all, feeling really sad (and bit shocked) my ex let slip that during his access last weekend with our 3 year old son, that he left him in the hotel room alone (asleep) so that he, my ex, could go and join the lads for pints at the bar in the same hotel.

I really don't feel happy about this -- for one everyone knows any old staff have duplicate keys to hotel rooms, could've been abducted (unlikely but still) also could have woken up, he does wake up from time to time still, so could have been scared and or got hurt, any number of scenarios.

Ex says he was checking on him every ten mins -- I don't believe that, he doesn't draw breath for that long when having a drink with friends. Plus anything can happen in that time.

I just keep thinking of him alone in room & ex downstairs laughing & drinking & I feel so, so crushed.

I'm so confused as to why he would do this as he seems such a doting dad otherwise. Is well educated, from a lovely family, professional job etc.

Some background, I also caught him once nipping to the corner shop opposite our house when son was just a newborn (he had left him sleeping in Moses basket argued it was minutes). Also, on holidays with his friends there has been conflict as they all wanted to leave kids in tents etc whilst they drank in other area of campsite -- I disagreed and stayed back with ours.

He has also tried to blame my anxiety (pretty low) I pointed out it's against law (?) To leave kids who could be at risk, so not my anxiety at all.

I feel like I want to ban him from taking him away again as feel he's broken my trust 💔 plus with shop gate as newborn not the first time.

Do people think I'm overreacting, or is it just plain wrong?

Sorry for long post! Just can't get it off my mind.

Yes I remember going shopping and there would be prams outside shops with babies left in them.

It absolutely was normal 20 years ago when DS1 was a baby as hotels used to advertise that they had a "baby listening service". This would not have been the case if it was not considered "normal".

Whether people personally thought it was acceptable is a different matter.

No, I'm not misunderstanding your posts. Listening services are still offered in hotels around the world to this day. Which is completely irrelevant to the OP. Her ex left the kid alone and that, despite you arguing the toss, has never been normal. Nor has it ever been safer to leave a child unattended than at a kids club. Nor has it ever been more frowned upon to take your kids to a hotel in a pram than to leave them alone. Ever. It didn't happen. You've been conditioned to believe that is the case. Truly scary.

"I did not say a kids club was like a listening service, I was talking about what was seen as normal. Reading comprehension again."

Reading comprehension? 😂😂😂 not only did you say they were "like" them you said that they were the 70s/80s "equivalent". Which is utter bullshit by the way.

And the "ratios" were never enough in some settings, it is very narrow minded to think that because you welcomed it "most" people felt they were adequate.

just in the same way plenty of parents thought kids being left to sit outside the pub with pop and crisps while their parents drinking inside was neglect, but it was also normal. And actually lots of kids loved it, obviously not if went on late at night or happened frequently but occasionally lots of kids, me included, thought it was a treat.

@crustycrab You are being a GF. I never said adult child ratios were adequate. I said they were welcome by staff in childcare because we went from having no legal limits, to having legal limits.
And none of this including your posts are relevant to the OP.

Sounds like a good plan.

Children always show more adoration and excitement about the parent they see less of and take the resident, SAH or more present parent for granted. One day they'll recognise who cared for them and did the grunt work (maybe when they're grown up, or have their own DCs!).

@karencantobe

Leaving a child of 3 alone in a hotel room/apartment/house without supervision is completely unacceptable no matter what year it is.

At the very least the OP needs assurances it won't happen again from her ex.

Don't see why you feel the need to argue with everyone on the thread over something that's basic common sense.

Hotels are businesses seeking to make as much money as possible by catering to as wide a range of potential customers as possible. Of course they're going to offer services that, while very cheap for them to run and requiring no special investment, bring in, or bring back, that extra 3% of outlier customers.

Maybe 0.5% of families with children would have considered using such a service, maybe 10% would, maybe 90%. It doesn't matter. The point is that the existence of a baby listening service is not evidence that use of a baby listening service was ever the norm.

The point is that the existence of a baby listening service is not evidence that use of a baby listening service was ever the norm.

If you say so🤷🏻‍♀️

Well yes, I do say so. If you consider the economics of it, that point is incontrovertable.

e.g. McDonalds offer vegeburgers. Does that mean that, among families eating at McDonalds, consumption of vegeburgers is the norm? No. They offer them to cater to the outliers, so to expand their customer base marginally, so make more profit.

Maybe the use of baby listening services was the norm among families who stayed in hotels that offered that service. What's the evidence for that? Then, what proportion of families ever stayed in such hotels?

More and different evidence is needed to support the assertion that leaving DCs alone, asleep on holiday or on nights out, while parents went off drinking elsewhere, was ever the norm.

Might as well bang your head against a brick wall @lottiegarbanzo before your very sensible and logical points are accused of being "goady".

It wasn't the norm. It never has been

Oh and 12 year olds being allowed to babysit was also normal. SS would not pay for babysitting costs if you were a foster carer, needed to attend a meeting, and had a 12 year old or above at home.

Were this my ex and small child I'd be referring to him in the past tense

Friend's cousin who works in family law said what I can do right now, is pay for a solicitor consultation and pay for a one off letter to be written to him outlining that what he did was child neglect & has been reported to hv etc, and that access could be at risk if it happens again, a threat in essence. Which in the official form of a letter from solicitor, over from me, I believe will be enough to scare him silly.

Yes I agree, I think most of what he needs is psychological, the legal system is about proof etc and is when he’s had warnings but carries on. The legal system may not think prosecute however I do think social services would be interested as safeguarding children is not just about legal limits. That is if this doesn’t work.

People can be quite lax if they think no one is ‘watching’ as it were. Society watching, that is.

Isn't ex referring to him in the past tense?

It was never considered acceptable, even when I was a child in the 70s; my DM was horrified when her MIL told her that she'd left their baby at home alone whilst she and her DH went to the opera. (And she wasn't exactly a paragon of virtue when it came to protecting her D.C.)

What was different was that no action was taken when parents did leave children home alone or in a hotel room. People didn't interfere.

I think leaving a baby home alone for the duration of an opera is pretty extreme.

In the 70s I lived in a flat directly above a shop, I went to the shop once and left baby in the cot as he had been ill and I didn't want to wake him. If he'd cried I'd have heard him in the shop, it was like being downstairs when a child was in bed upstairs, but I felt terrible and never did it again. I suppose logically he was safer than sitting in his pram outside a shop. It is weird how we are influenced by what is considered normal and acceptable.

I am of an age (59) where it was considered acceptable and normal to leave babies outside a shop in a pram, or at the bottom of the garden for fresh air, with listening services on holiday, with siblings for a drink with the neighbours, sitting on the pavement outside the pub with crisps and coke while parents were inside. Primary school aged children who were 'latchkey kids'. None of these things were considered neglect unless a child came to harm or there were other factors involved.

There are thousands of people who post stuff like 'when I was a child we went out after breakfast and came home when it was dark, they were the best days, click if you agree' followed by lots of people agreeing with them - and most of these types of things are posted by children from the 80s and 90s so not even 'older' people. So clearly they think it was 'the norm'

Like everything else these things get skewed in the telling. I am not naive enough to think that just because I didn't do those things, no-one else did.

There are still some people who think it's ok to leave a child in what they think is an acceptable 'safe' place. That's because, generally, people have a 'it won't happen to me' mindset. There are people who say 'my 3 yr old won't run off, she knows the rules' until the day she doesn't. There are people who won't cut grapes in half because their child is never going to choke on one, still others who watch 2+ children on a trampoline because the instructions (that say only 1 child at a time) don't apply to them. And those that scoff at people who consider all of the above, calling them pfbs or snowflakes.

We all have a different experience of risk, largely dependant on our personal experiences.

OP you need to sit down with your ex, and maybe a hv or other professional and discuss the risks, agree on what is acceptable and what is not, the solicitors letter is a good idea as a first step.

We all have a different experience of risk, largely dependant on our personal experiences.
We do, except that there is a reality out there, the actual risk to the child. That is not affected by perceptions or culture or the parents experience, it exists outside of that.

So I wouldn’t be discussing risk with an Ex as if it’s just a personal preference. Her child will be less likely to have an accident, psychological trauma of not knowing where his Dad is, in w strange place, fire risk, getting lost, if the OP draws the line. Discussing with her Ex and ‘meeting in the middle’ will be more risky for her child.

Yanbu, he doesn't deserve unsupervised access. How awful.

1forsorrow Haha aren't you clever?! My late ex the father of my child now deceased-there does that make you happy?

@WildChristmas

We live with risk everyday. Every time we leave the house we calculate a risk. The majority of childhood accidents are in the home because parents have 'just nipped to the loo' or 'just quickly made a coffee'. There are some risks which we see as acceptable, like going out in the car or going to theme parks. Risk needs to be managed, and agreed, by both parents.

OP needs to show her ex that leaving a child unattended is an unacceptable risk, not just by her standards but by professional standards, even though travelling to the hotel by car is an even great (but acceptable) risk.

It's an emotive topic. By talking to her husband with the help of a professional it would help to take away the 'you are just being neurotic and/or controlling' aspect of it.

I think people are getting too hung up on the word "normal". Leaving kids in hotel rooms was a thing. People did do it. Lots of people in fact. Was it safe? No not really. Did they know that? Maybe. Because it was a thing that people did, it became accepted as a thing. Sure not everyone did it, but plenty did. I worked in hotels up until recently and was regularly asked (about once a week or so) if we had a baby listening service. This was 3-4 years ago. Often asked by older people who were looking after grandkids, or younger parents who had heard about this service from their parents.

I've had to deal with parents leaving kids in rooms on quite a few occasions. Often it's been other rooms calling down to the desk to report a crying child or a concern and we've had to investigate. I've had to call the police on a couple who were too pissed in the bar that they could barely stand up and then asked me if there baby was asleep yet. I've found kids wandering around late at night and even had one come into our reception from a neighbouring hotel.

Well yes... but we could also agree that being selfish is normal and that being negligent is 'a thing'.

But you're right that the wording causes confusion, since 'normal' and 'the norm' mean very different things - and neither is analagous with safe or acceptable.