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.

I feel like this as well. I despair. We are doing our kids NO favour by being so excessively hyper alert.
I genuinely would have let my 6 year old do the bin thing. This specific bin thing, not any variation of - eg where they go further or through a door. This particular example would have taken the child 20 seconds in a hotel corridor. It astounds me where some parent's minds go. It must be EXHAUSTING living like that.

You ran for the lift, don't go to the lift. Was there stair you could have come back down? You never mentioned it was his friends, you just said "people" and it would be uncommon for reception to be unmanned for a long time. Leading a potential attacker to your door is not a good idea, same as if you're being followed home you should divert to a shop or friendly neighbour.

It was literally IN the OP that bins were on the same floor though

My aunt was a hotel manager in US. She undertook a room check after guests departed and that included checking the shelf in the wardrobe - and found a loaded beretta hand gun.
The US is a violent society and their police force poorly trained.
No I wouldn’t let my daughter wander round hotel corridors nor would I do that on my own in the US. Nor on one of those large cruise ships

I think a lot of people are being unfair to you OP. She is your daughter. Trust your instincts. Foreign countries/ strange places are more risky for young girls. Obviously if it was a 5 star hotel in a really nice area and you could see the bin from the room then you are being over the top but I don't think it was like that.

Foreign countries/ strange places are more risky for young girls.

Every single country is a foreign country for someone 😂

I didn't run for the lift. I ran from the lift. Yo my room. Untill he knocked I wasn't sure if I was actually being followed. Should I have gone blundering in a panic down some fire exit stairs that I didn't know where there?
It was full of people hanging out. I assumed they knew each other. It wasn't fu of people in a cheery hotel setting it was full of people in a what the hell are you all doing in here, where the hell are the staff kind of way. Hence why I didn't double back and say to a room full of strangers that gave me the creeps bad enough to run in the first place " hey, are one of you following me? Can you have a word?"

If I'd run for the stairs after exiting the lift I would've ended up back in the reception with all the dodgy people hanging about wouldn't I?
That experience is why I wouldn't let my daughter go any where alone in a hotel.
It doesn't matter where her bins were. I said usually. I don't care if they were next door. OP isn't unreasonable in my book

It's a decent hotel and being as the girl only had to walk down a corridor it's pretty clear from the OP that she could have been watched!

None of that is how your original post sounded though

It sounded like you walked into the lobby full of people, thought someone was following you so ran to the lift and then to your room.

You've now said they were his friends and then that they were hanging out and then called them dodgy. All very different scenarios

None of which apply to the OP. And the fact its down the corridor not downstairs is entirely relevant

My 10 year old went down to get water. What is the harm in a hotel? Girls, sadly, need to be able to use their intuition and tools they’ve learned. Having said that it would depend on neighbourhood and entrances.

I also read a lot of true crime and I wouldn't.
What's the point in taking the risk for the sake of it

What bins do you have in a corridor that you need to use? Surely guest bins are in rooms

Read the OP. The room bin was full.

Oh, come off it. A load of strangers and you "assumed" they all knew each other, they all knew the man you think followed you even though you didn't see him, and they were all, each and every one of them dodgy? Seriously? If you were at all bothered about the possibility of being followed from the lift, you'd have stayed in it and gone straight down to reception and stayed there, waited for the receptionist and confided in them. Or gone through to somewhere else you would find staff like a bar. You didn't seriously believe that all these strangers who had done you no harm were all going to gang up to attack you in a public place.

What harm exactly do you think would have come to OP's daughter if she was putting something in a bin next to the door?

There qasnt a bar. There was just a reception and two entrances to the street. The people hanging out there together, very late at night in a unexpectedly staffless entrance area in a dump of a city in a filthy hotel didn't look like guests. That was my first clue not to hang about.
Also I know he followed me, because he knocked on my door with an unbelievable lie about why I should open it. Did I imagine that part Sherlock? If he had my key that I'd dropped how did I use it to get into my room

I love how confused you are that I got followed to my room. Isn't it just totally unbelievable that women in sketchy situations can magically sense that they're in them.

Crack heads also came wandering into my private view that night too. Lovely place. Won't be returning

The people that were in the room full of people were together. Not sitting at tables in twos or threes acting normal.

Oh and asking at reception in the morning, did anyone hand in a key card. Obviously they didn't. So was I right or wrong about the feeling that someone would follow me? Given that one did. I based my suspicions on flights of whimsy or the demeanour of the group of people there?

Exactly what caused my situation. Neighborhood, and entrances.

I never questioned the feeling? I actually gave advice BASED on the feeling

But now it's become some filthy hovel of a hotel

Which, again, isn't the same as where the OP was at all. And that comes into risk assessing

Fair enough that you wanted to do it yourself, but maybe think on how you word things next time. It’s dramatic reactions like yours from my mother that gave me pure ocd.

"Now it's become" right. Or I've given you more information based on your inability to comprehend how a situation like this could atise.
Thought the hotel was grim by day, obviously it was a lot worse than I though when experienced at night time and given my experience.
Would you like to ask me what I was wearing or if I encouraged him?

Boy am I glad I wasn't a 12 year old putting out the bins on his landing.

I am an overprotective mum but this is crazy. Doesn't she go to school by herself yet?

If you eliminate every tiny risk in your life you'd never bloody do anything!

I’m massively paranoid about my kids but I do sit on my hands most of the time and let them do stuff while internally worrying! I wouldn’t have let my daughter put the rubbish in the bin, I would have done it myself if dh was busy.

Doesn't help that I listen to far too many true crime podcasts and my sons best friends dad is as of last year a convicted paedophile. So now I don’t trust anyone!

I don’t think I you were unreasonable op.

You really think that kids shouldn't help out with chores?

Just saying:

Your first post made the situation seem completely different to where it is now. I gave advice based on how your first post made things seem.

But it's gone from a hotel in Bristol with some people milling around to a grim place where creepy man's mates had all come and congregated.

Which is a different situation to both how it came across initially and, more relevantly, WHERE the OP is. Which is a nicer hotel and didn't involve her DD going near any lobby where a creepy man could bring all his friends. It was a two minute walk max down the corridor and back which OP could have observed from the open door of their room if she wished