to be shocked my friend leaves her dcs - even briefly - home alone?

[mrsshackleton]

Yesterday a very good friend was telling me how she drove the babysitter home on Saturday night
I was surprised because my friend's dh is away, so this meant leaving the dcs - aged three and 10 months alone in the house
She said "She only lives 10 minutes away and the kids never wake up" and added that a mutual friend regularly drives the babysitter a good few miles leaving her ds aged two alone.
I know being a single parent which my friend effectively is is bloody tough but still ...? Is this common practice? I would feel very uneasy leaving dcs and would personally pay for a taxi but maybe I am the odd one out?

no way.

If you wouldn't generally leave your children unattended then why should there be mitigating circumstances? Either it's ok to leave small children alone or it isn't. And IMO it isn't.

And apparently the mccann children did wake up and cry and wanted to know why mummy and daddy didn't come. And the next day she was gone .

Message withdrawn

if she can't organise things better than that, then she shouldn't have gone out i the first place!

YANBU! that anyone would do that!

Just personal opinion but I would NEVER have left my kids on their own, they are now 18 and 23. I just know that I would rather die than put my two kids at such a high risk. [They were not wrapped in cotton wool though], indeed, I raised them as lone parent for the past 12 years.
If the babysitter lives that near [7 mins] then the cab fare should be VERY minimal and certainly not worth the risk.

I doubt I could even get a taxi to come all the way out here to drive my babysitter a less than six-minute round trip. We live in a rural area in a small village with no taxi service and they have to come from the nearest town, which they don't like doing for very, very short journeys. Not everyone has a local taxi service

ive often thought how easy it would be to nip to the shops literally across the road to pick something up when ds 2.8 is asleep but having been in a house fire some years ago i wouldnt you never know what can happen its never worth the risk imo

I left mine (7 and 12) asleep at 6.00 this morning for 10 minutes to run dp to the station because his taxi didn't turn up. I left a note where they would see it saying where I was. I certainly wouldn't have done it before I was sure they could both read the note - but I don't see a problem if they can.

A note's no good for op's friend's 3yr and 10 mth children. I recently spent the night on the settee downstairs after failing to settle the dog we were sitting.

I woke in the middle of the night to my ds (5) screaming and crying his eyes out as he'd gone in to my room and not found me there. I finally got him settled again downstairs on the other settee but he was very upset.

When we talked about it the next day I asked him what he'd thought when he'd gone into my room and I wasn't there and he said I thought you were dead.

That's how little children think.