Leaving kids for 5 minute late night walk?

[OneOliveOtter]

Husband and wife went out for a quick walk an hour ago whilst kids were sleeping (3 and 5). Gone for just over five minutes. Unreasonable or not?

You must have a big garden! No, if you walked around the house you would still hear your children.

So how do you know there wasn't anybody else in the house with the kids?

Maybe she thought it would be too outing to say that her neighbours own a dog.

Absolutely not in fact it's against the law

She didn’t pop to the shops! She went Christmas shopping for hours leaving 2 sets of twins alone in the house aged 3 and 4! Not on the same scale but still wrong.

Its for sure a ferret 😉

Why did both of them need to do it?

My mums house you had to walk 200ft down the garden, unlock back gate, take bins ( 3 of them so 3 journeys) out into back alley and drop at top of that. Tgen back into garden lock gate and back into house Takes 5 mins

Then I would wait for someone else to be there or do it at a time when the children were there.

The chances of anything happening during that window of time is so small and yet I still would never risk it. Imagine something awful happening and a parent IS in the house (my Grandma lost an 18 month old son to a brain haemorrhage and she was in the same room when he suddenly died & there was absolutely nothing she could have done 💔💔)- but imagine how even more horrific it would be if a child died suddenly and it turns out both parents were walking the dog and had left babies/children complety alone 😪

That's not easy if you had two toddlers that liked to do a runner and was a single parent. Exactly when should the bins be put out in that situation

Not acceptable to both go. They could have 'tag teamed' to walk the animal if it was that necessary. Absolutely terrible to leave children alone in the house when they're so young.

I was actually thinking the same thing tbh. I am a bit of a helicopter parent, have 5 children aged between 6 and 21 and would never have left them alone young. However, there is lots of hysteria in this thread without knowing the full facts. When my youngest three were all under 12 and my husband was away on an overnight for work I had to walk our dog around the estate. My older two were out with friends so my brother popped over for half an hour to sit with the kids, I’m not sure my neighbours would have realised this.
Obviously if there were no other adults in the house then it’s not acceptable to leave two very young children alone while they were sleeping but we really don’t know the full facts. And the OP isn’t returning with an update either.

Totally ridiculous for both adults to leave the house if the children were alone, but maybe there was another adult there?

Well what if all those medical issues happened to the child if parent was asleep or in bath for example? You may not hear anything. Unless you are meant to sit and gaze at the kids 24/7 " just in case"

And in the case of the OP she doesn't even KNOW the kids were alone. Grandma or a friend could be indoors with the kids Such jumping to conclusions

There is zero evidence of an abduction in that case. Regardless leaving a 3 and 5 year old is inexcusable OP.

Definitely not ok report to SS they both didn’t need to together they could be doing it more than you know just ring SS with concerns parents are leaving kids alone with windows open. The dog obviously means more to them than the kids. As long as you know for sure they didn’t have an adult visiting report them.

Well how would the OP know who else might've been in the house unless she's spying on them 24/7

This. If you needed fresh air last thing when it was cooler why would you go together why not one pop out for 5 min then the other.
You should no way have done this with children that age.

I would never have done that, but this thread is kind of crazy.

A lot depends on the circumstances. Was their house in view the whole time? Is it a quiet, low traffic neighbourhood? Do they have apps on their phones so they can see the children and the house? Was there potentially another adult in the house?

And, honestly, I can't believe you know how many times they've walked their dog, OP.

And as for fire or a child falling out a window. Those things are more likely to happen during the 7ish hours both parents are likely to be asleep than in 5 minutes. Are there posters on here who tag team their sleep with their partners?

Something unpredictable could happen that you didn’t foresee. On two occasions I have been locked out of my house. Once I was in the garden and I had chips in the oven on number 8. A family member went out and automatically locked the back door and I could not get back in. Fortunately my two small dc were with me but started to panic as I was worrying about the oven being on!

The other time my young teen was in bed and a family member left them to collect me and we lost the house keys and couldn’t get in. We could not wake dc up and were outside for hours. Imagine if that was a little one.

Good job that you were watching them then

The sensible answer to this is that they go for their 5 minute walk separately so one is with children

Exactly!

How can you say there’s zero evidence? The parents left the kids alone and she disappeared! There’s zero evidence of anything else, so this is by far the most likely explanation surely!