15 yr old babysitting her 12 yr old sisters

[Bayou2000]

My 15 yr old is very responsible. Over the summer I paid her to watch her twin sisters (12, who are also responsible) for up to 3 hrs at a time. For longer periods and overnights my mother looks after them if I am at work or they go to my mother’s house.
My former partner (who left to stay at an address unknown for 6 months) has made an accusation of neglect.
I have self referred myself to social work and have spoken with their school who have no concerns but will engage with social work.
My 15 yr old also babysits our neighbours children from time to time.
I feel like I have lost perspective. Was I unreasonable doing this?

12 year olds don't need babysitting.
Half the 12 year olds in the country are home alone for a few hours after school.
Parents of Year 8 students aren't taking days of work every time there's a teacher training day.

When I was 12, I was left alone all day, everyday during the holidays without any supervision whatsoever.

Why on earth do your 12yo's need "babysitting"?

Sounds like a waste of time for the social care to even have to look at this. So YABU for the self referral

My children were home alone after school from age 11 which is entirely normal in a lot of families

I can’t get over the fact the you self referred yourself to social services.

You left three secondary schools age girls at home for up to 3 hours. That is what every child does, whose parents are at work in the evening.

Why on earth would you report yourself for that? I bet even ex wasn’t planning on making a report.

Also to add to my pp YANBU to leave the dc at home
YABU to refer yourself to SS. That was a crazy move 😅

At 12 I would regularly stay home alone in the day over the school holidays, or have a friend over. Walked to and from school alone and was alone after school until parents got back from work. Very standard and not an issue

It doesn't sound like this person made an accusation to children's services because you said you self referred to social care.

I can't understand why you'd do this from this situation

What a twat
you haven’t done anything wrong

ss won’t be interested

I wouldn't even think 2 12 yos need babysitting anyway.

I used to babysit myself at aged 12.... family up the road paid me to watch their 5yo for a couple of quid an hour.

Ah, the 90s!

When you are 11 you are in secondary school and can walk there yourself, take a bus by yourself, all sorts. 13 year Olds can have paper rounds.

Why can’t parents just make parental decisions based on their children as individuals instead of worrying about what’s considered the right thing based on a one size fits all authority.

When my DS was 12 he would have been outraged at the suggestion his big sister was “babysitting”! I sometimes left them together for a while but I didn’t pay her-I would probably provide some treat food for them but that was it.

You left 3 secondary age kids for 3 hours and referred yourself to social services for it?? What a waste of their time. Unless there’s more to this story, that is ridiculous and a huge waste of time of an already massively overstretched service.

The only thing I think that you’ve done wrong is pay the oldest one . At 12 and 15 if they are responsible enough to be home alone then just leave them home alone , I wouldn’t be telling the oldest that she is ‘baby sitting’ or letting her believe she was in charge .

Yes they are not allowed to cook when I am out, just cold pre made snacks. I have a fabulous network of neighbours- so they all know where to go for help, and all have phones.
Until 3 weeks ago their father had only seen them for 2 hrs at a time and wouldn’t have them to his house. We still don’t know where he was for those 7 months.

I agree with this, however my GP recommended that transparency was important however I gave consideration to resources being diverted however my GP said they would assess if they needed to put resources to this case.

Agree. My 15 yr old is in many ways more responsible than I am.

This is a good point. Sometimes she forgoes a paid shift in a coffee shop so opportunity cost and all that but often she is otherwise doing not much.

Where does your GP come into this?

Why did you go to the GP about this?

This is such an odd thread.

Why are you making your 15 year old miss work to "babysit" her 12 year old siblings, who are more than capable of being left alone anyway?

Look, you married a useless knob and you are now letting him control you even though he clearly couldn't care less about your children.

Don't let him do this. Just ignore everything he says and thank god you have three lovely, sensible children who don't resemble him in the slightest.

It's fine

I think it's sensible to fully cooperate though

Your ex sounds like quite the piece of work

YANBU op, you’ve done something totally normal (left three kids home alone) and your 15 year old has the benefit of some cash for it! I was being left home alone from age 12 with my brother (a year younger than me) and it was fine.