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??

This would be ok at home in a familiar party near her house but in a strange city the adult should be within earshot at least

Thts not what the poster said or implied, more that there are plenty of hi vis type people around to approach if she needs dad to come back

If she is okay with it I would be too. Lots of people do this at the parkrun we went to over Christmas - I saw one kid sitting at the top of the rope pyramid eating sweets and watching the run.

Is it not also shit to prevent your child from doing a good sporting activity?

But she’s not going to explore a whole city’s she’s going to hang out at the swings for 30minutes whilst her sister goes for a run. She could have run too which would have been better but she didn’t want to and her dad was juggling the needs of two kids.

I agree it’s also probably okay as long as she was comfortable and ideally if she had a phone.

You would despair at the parenting I had back in the 80s. My mum used to bring me to the office with her on a Saturday to catch up on work. 9/10/11 years old. I used to walk myself maybe 10 minutes through the city centre to the big library to read books and the newspaper all day. Literally do you remember when the daily papers hung on those wooden rails. I’d sit at the big table and read the paper. 😂 And at closing time, I’d shuffle back through the city centre and some kind security man would let me back in the building. No mobile phones! I could have been trafficked to god knows where before she had her 2nd cup of rank office instant coffee and she would have had no idea!

And there we have it

The answer is to stick her in a room on a screen, connected to the internet no doubt

How healthy. How safe.

Thing is, I'm not arguing with you at all. It sounds like you've made a very sane assessment.

Also, I'm always in favour of there being a 'all the kids hang out here' house, and I've always tried to provide ours as an option.

This.

I wouldn’t be doing this, no.
Two reasons she is on her own
and there could be predators around so she would be pretty defenceless alone.
Secondly it’s not very nice for her being left there. Miserable in fact,

Of course a 10yo can be alone 30 minutes, at daytime, in a park full of runners and families.

or she could be encouraged to run instead?

That would be my concern but it's unlikely at 9 am in a park full of park runners. At 5 pm (evening summer) I wouldn't leave a 10 year old in a city park but at 9 it should be fine.

A suburban local park in a safe area is different to a city park where there are likely to be drug users, rough sleepers, more antisocial behaviour. The issue is if it's a park away from home you don't know what it's like.

So my youngest has never been to a park on her own (except a rural play park) certainly never a big city. She messaged me to tell me what she was doing and just sat pushing an empty swing on her own. I felt like it was almost a cry for help as it feels my eldest always gets the attention with the running etc. So she has to sit and wait for them to finish. This happens almost every Saturday morning, it just so happened that this Saturday was away from the normal park run they do and I didn't feel too comfortable about it.

a 10 year old should be able to play at a park unaided for half an hour.

so your more worried about a lack of attention opposed to having a safety concern?

Yabu I think it's helpful to build independence.

It’s how I grew up. My dad even converted an outhouse into a games room for me and my friends. I moved out at 16 for a job, but still, me and my friends would still go to my dads most weekends, be put a bar in there on my 18th birthday.

I’ve replicated the same ideal for my children who are very happy.

And yes, I’ve made an assessment based on my circumstances. I feel unsafe walking my dog in my local park, so like hell would I let my daughter be alone there.

Let's not pathologise parental anxiety, it's a useful evolutionary trait: it's our job as parents to anticipate and weigh risks, some we can live with and some we can't.
The only question that matters is: is it worth the risk.

Quite. And the assessment of worth is not an absolute, it's utterly and unavoidably subjective. Even two parents of the same child can't agree on it.

Yabu, it's perfectly fine. She's not a toddler and can amuse herself in a park for half an hour. It's up to your ex what he does when the kids are with him.

i suggested reading a book, or an ipad. What have you got against reading ? Sigh...

@PointsSouth It's a personal assessment, like is my run more important than the safety of my child, for example.

She wasn't unsafe.

OP has updated to say she wasn't particularly happy about it, but that's a different question IMO.

@BarbaraHoward she was unsafe and vulnerable and she knew it.

In what way was she unsafe?