Left alone in a park

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Please help, My ex looks after my two girls (12 and 10) most weekends. The eldest likes to do park runs on Saturdays but my youngest isn't really bothered. I found out recently that my ex and my eldest had done a park run in a large Scottish city (they've never been there before so an unfamiliar location), and my youngest had been left alone in a play park while they did a 5k park run. Looking at the course, the majority of it is outside the visibility of the park so there would be no way of checking whether she was safe in the park, except a few sections. A 5k takes around 30 minutes to complete - it does circulate the play park but on a very wide basis. Am I being unreasonable to think this isn't okay??

Parkrun is 9:30 start in Scotland so it is always fully light.

At 10 I don’t see an issue with it, if sounds safe enough.

I think it depends on the child.

Was dd comfortable with the situation?

I think it’s fine. I’d do this.

But all depends on how your daughter felt about it really?

NSPCC - Is your child ready to go out alone - a guide for parents. On the NSPCC website.
Very useful to read & make decisions

Despite the posts 51% agree with you OP
Id definitely be looking at the info @Active13 has recommended

For me it would depend on whether it was
A: 10 year old didn't want to run with dad
Or
B: dad didn't want to run with 10 year old

Then whether I think that particular park is safe for that particular child.

I might be going against the grain here but I would not be okay with that.

I have a ten year old, she has never been to a park on her own. My now adult son wasn’t allowed to either. He didn’t go out to shops alone until he was 14/15 and wasn’t allowed to hang round the park or the streets. He’s grown up to work in the emergency services and travel the world alone so it didn’t exactly stunt him.

And yes, dd is going to secondary school this year, but she will be getting the school mini bus that we will walk her to and from.

There is no way I’d let her be in a park alone, or walk home from school alone after all the stories my son tells me from work.

sounds fine to me, especially as, with what you've described, your ex would have been able to see your youngest in the park at a few intervals across the half an hour or so run.

Do kids still say 'the rec'? That cheers me up no end.

In your local park fine. In an unfamiliar city park not so much.

Depends on the child and the park, really. A sensible child would likely be fine in a safe park, especially during the day in the middle of parkrun event, with a parent and sibling nearby and presumably contactable if needed.

This is weird and suffocating

What did I just read? 14/15???? Walking a secondary age child to a bus stop and back?

Jesus Christ. All I can say is, I'm so glad I grew up in Europe and none of the parents there were, are or will ever be like this.

At age 10, she was probably better off staying in the hotel room with an ipad or a book for an hour while they popped out, did the run, then came back to pick her up and head out for brunch. A 10 year old is sensible enough not to open the door... if they're not, then they're not safe to stay put in a strange park either.
If she'd wandered off looking for a loo, it might be easy to get lost. As pp have said, muggers and people who hurt kids are opportunistic, an obviously-lone pre-teen girl is easy prey. Not worth the risk IMO.

Well, I’ve got a wonderful 23 year old who didn’t grow up weird or suffocated.

He's also a police officer and some of the things he’s told me make my blood run cold. So I don’t give a shit if a random person on the internet thinks I’m being weird and suffocating.

I live in an absolute shithole of a place where I don’t even feel safe as a grown arse 45 year old walking my dog.

Genuine answer: Zero 🤣🤣

I was replying to the PP who had some sort of crime novel written out in her head, when I said I'd be happy to leave my 10 year old in the park with a phone!

Bloody hell.

Ten is old enough to be in a park unsupervised for half an hour, provided your DD is a sensible girl and knows what to do if she's approached by a strange adult or some crisis happens. There would have been lots of families around and people to help if she had some problem.

My dad was a copper. Coppers have terrible stories about things happening to people.

But I was still allowed out to play at the park, and I went to school on my own at 10 - or more accurately, shepherded my younger siblings to school. Because my dad, despite the terrible stories, knew that the terribleness was very, very rare. He and mum reckoned that restricting our lives was more likely to harm us than letting us out on our own.

So it appears to come down to a parent's capacity to cope with risk. If the chances of something happening are, for instance, one in a million, then some parents will say., 'no, no - why take any risk at all' and others will say 'that's really not a risk, is it?'

Thing is, nothing has no risk. And the maths are not helpful in practice. So what we actually react with is our ability to handle anxiety.

As long as the play park has others in it so oif there was an accident someone would see I really can't see an issue here. My daughter is a similar age and is quite capable of going to the playground if we are elsewhere in the park.

I meant to reply to that PP.

He didn’t go out to shops alone until he was 14/15...

Horrifying. I was pretty sheltered but I was definitely walking into the local town to mooch around the pound shops with a friend who lived in the opposite direction at 12. And I'm from Ireland where we go to secondary school a year later than in the UK, and so I'm assuming a lot of these milestones happen a year later.

I wish I could link you to my local facebook community group.

I don’t live in a safe place. There’s a lot of young girls who are harassed by groups of men who hang around. There are many parents here who arrange to chaperone girls especially, to school.

We have had a few alerts from the school over the last few years of people trying to entice school kids to get into cars.

And no, I didn’t let my son hang around the streets. We had a house he had friends to everyday, they were all welcome. I didn’t want him getting cauhhht up in the massive drug problems here.

Do what you want with your children. I’ll do what I want to keep mine safe.

The youngest is ten.
old enough to go to school independently.
To walk to local shops and to friends houses.
at this age I think she is old enough to know not to leave with anyone.
so I’d say, if she felt comfortable then it’s ok.
I think it’s great that your eldest wants to do parkrun. And that her dad facilitates this.
if your daughter felt frightened or pressured into being alone then there’s an issue.
if you were in charge how would you have enabled your eldest to do park run?