Would you let your child do this or am I over the top?

[KrustyBurger]

Currently on holiday in the USA. We are staying at a Marriott so not a motel type set up.

Husband asked our daughter who is 12 to run some rubbish down to the bin next to the lift, she would have to go past about 12 room doors (6 each side).

I said no, il do it as you never know who’s in the rooms and it only takes 5 seconds for someone to open the door and yank her in and you wouldn’t even know which room it is or where she is.

Husband said ok but gave me a strange glance.

Was I being over the top? Or would other parents do the same. It’s nearly 10pm at night here.

Husband's a bit of a clean freak and our bin is full hence not just leaving it.

Why isn't she in school?

I think you’re being perfectly reasonable and I don’t think you can be “over the top” when it comes to the safety of your children. I wouldn’t be letting my children out of my sight in an unfamiliar country. In all the cases where children are abducted etc it definitely could have been prevented had they had a parent who was “over the top”. I’d rather look like a maniac than have my child experience some kind of trauma because I thought “it’ll be fine”.

Ridiculous to assume children brought up with close attention to their saftey at all times will grow up with high anxiety levels scared of the world. At age 12 making them aware there are people in the world we should be wary of and not to take for granted everywhere they go is safe is teaching them common sense. I've witnessed children around 10/12 in bars on holiday skipping off to the toilet alone then being unable to find their way back only to be brought back crying to the parents by some random stranger. If people want to take those risks go ahead but let the rest of us accompany them until mature enough to not be upset & crying when lost.

This.

Not allowing your kids to do things independently such as this is far more harmful than wrapping them up in cotton wool because of completely invented risks.

Think the op is suggesting that if you want to be avoid crime and criminal n activities, then avoid the internet, as criminal activities will be happening on it as we speak.

Again, the specific child abduction stuff is hyperbole but people are so sheltered that they think no crime exists in hotels, that everyone operates in this life with an outlook as charmed as theirs - that is frankly hilarious!

Age appropriate risk is not helicopter parenting. In all honesty living in a deluded bubble is probably high up there in the ‘not helpful to your children’s resilience’ in later life. It is definitely up there with helicopter parents.

At 12 I was flying to another country unsupervised. I’d have absolutely no issue with my daughter doing that.

The moment asking for data to back OTT reactions gets called Ludicrous is the moment you lose all creability

We answered that a few posts back and they are not the OP.

But you could have literally popped your head out of the door and watched her . Instead you’ve made an issue out of it.

Do you really consider it needed and appropriate to take your pre-teens to toilet? If a 12yo is crying because they went to toilet alone, then this is most likely due to overprotective parents, who have held the child's hand until then.

at least learn to spell the word, credibility, if you are going to use it to make a ‘clever’ comment.

That seems like a poor decision IMO

Ah

Calling someone out on their spelling (autocorrect sorry) sure makes you look better...

You say you work in the digital world and then called a data request ludicrous

You have no credibility

I was brought up with what is wrongly described as a helicopter parent. I left home at 18 to travel with a friend, went on to uni & I have always been a confident independent woman who never relied on my parents since I left home. I am acutely aware of the dangers in the world & I take preventative action when required. I thank my parents for giving me the insight to make sensible decisions regarding safety which I have passed on to my children brought up in the same way. There is no such thing as being overly protective of young children & I & my siblings are good examples.

This is completely nonsensical.

For a start, I think whether you're a fan of providing independence for children or not, we'd all agree that independence needs to come with the skills to manage this. So I will happily let my children skip off to the toilet on holiday... but then I am also 100% confident that before I did this I'd be sure that they know where the toilets are, how to get back to me etc. So not doing that is poor parenting either way.

Secondly, your example demonstrates that while there might be a risk of the child getting lost, in real life, the vast bulk of adults will be perfectly willing to help a child. Recently DS managed to lose his phone while he was out at the park. He approached a woman and asked if he could borrow her phone to call me so i could ping his phone. She was, naturally, marginally suspicious by a hulking 13 year old in the park, but did want to help so agreed to call me on his behalf. I then pinged his phone and both him and the lady heard it and he scampered off to retrieve it. She assured me as he disappeared that he had been polite, and had thanked her appropriately. I consider this a win all round. He had a problem, he figured out a solution, and we were all reassured that most people are actually perfectly nice.

A Systematic Review of “Helicopter Parenting” and Its Relationship With Anxiety and Depression
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9176408/

Hotel sexual assaults have increased, how is it invented?

Age appropriate necessary risk is fine and normal, it doesn’t have any impact on your child at all. It is like cleaning up, I honestly don’t see why it matters. I didn’t have to do any chores, I did them anyway but wasn’t instructed to, I just was encouraged to be kind and to me being kind wasn’t letting my mum do everything around the house. My kids are similar, I don’t instruct them to do anything, they just do it or if they don’t I think there is plenty of time to learn how to carry out full housework: I’d rather my kids had fun whilst they are young. Housework isn’t exactly hard to understand how to do and as an adult you often have no choice.

@goldenbear - but that's more poor assessment. We can agree that hotels are not 100% risk free. But even you agree that the liklihood of abduction in this super short period in a corridor is unlikely so applying the same approach to mitigate against other risks to this specific risk is totally irrational.

eg, I personally wouldn't leave a relatively young child or teenager in a hotel room overnight. I've been in hotels when there's a fire alarm in the night, for example, and a child would struggle to navigate this. But that doesn't mean I can't allow a 12 year old to walk from the room to the pool at 11am because the risk factors here are completely different.

I assume the child was accompanied to the airport, looked after by staff & met on the other side. A totally different & acceptable scenario.

And stop telling people what to do.

Did I say that?

Bizarre that you have taken different opinion so personally and expect forensic data to back up my opinion like we were in a court of law, it is a chat forum, I’m chatting about my opinion. If you want stats and have time go and find them yourself.

At age 12 making them aware there are people in the world we should be wary of and not to take for granted everywhere they go is safe is teaching them common sense.

Absolutely. But that's not the way to do it. If you simply follow your child everywhere and ensure they never need to deal with any issues, this is not teaching them common sense. This teaches them that they don't need to have any sense, mummy is there to take care of everything.

Wow. That is taking wrapping her in cotton wool to the extreme.

Data for hotel sexual assaults being up?

And is that:

Random people being dragged into rooms?
Drunks breaking into rooms?
People getting drunk at the hotel bar and being assaulted/returning to rooms?
People being brought back from elsewhere?
People being assaulted in the lift?