to leave my child in the car with a travel monitor.

[Libra1975]

The car sends my 16week old LO to sleep, am I being unreasonable to want to buy a travel monitor so when I get home and he is fast asleep in his carseat I can leave the monitor with him and go into the house to get things done rather than wake him up?

intresting. Personally we have done both. dd and ds are both so used to being moved that they are not bothered, however when we go to MIL's we park opposite the kitchen window and watch them whilst we are chatting. BUT they live in a quiet farmhouse off the common, off a tiny road through the tiny village of about 6 houses so I cant see the issue.
When ds/dd were little we used to leave them in the garden in a pram albeit with the daschund in the basket underneath and let them sleep. No harm came to them and the dog was a great alarm when they woke up as he came and got us.
Are we bad parents, no I dont think so. We just made an informed decision.
Whatever works for you and is safe for your children.

I've always left DS asleep in his pushchair in the garden too but we live in a quiet cul de sac. the only people who walk up our road are people who live here or visitors to the houses. no one uses it to get to somewhere else iyswim.

Seeker - it is my opinion that no one should leave their baby in the car. Obviously, each parent makes their own decisions based on what they believe to be in the best interests of their child and I respect everyone's right to parent as they see fit. Maybe it is the area I live in, or the increasing instances of cruelty to children, but I would personally feel like that child was in danger if left unattended in a car and I would ring the police. Perhaps I would feel differently if the drive in question was in the country or in a low-population community, but I couldn't say that for definite unless I was ever in that situation.

Not that you have accused me of this, but just to clarify, I am most definitely not an over-protective parent. My daughter crawls all over the place, gets in to everything and bumps her head about a dozen times a day. She does not "suffer" from Precious First Baby Syndrome and she has been surrounded by strangers, dogs and cats since the day she came home from the hospital. In most things, I am a very relaxed and easy-going parent, but I'm afraid in the case of leaving a baby in a car on his/her own my sense of danger rises significantly.

That is just my opinion.

I take it as a chance to do some stuff to my front garden. This would only work if you had a front garden tho...

I would only ring the police if I thought the baby was going to overheat.

I usually sit in the car with them and read or sleep myself or whatever, or if I need a wee I pop into the house quickly and leave the car door ever so slightly open. This is because I have a paranoid fear of the central locking jamming because the car spontaneously combusts.

I wouldn't be entirely happy completely leaving them if they were under the age of about 4 or 5 and had the ability to get out of the car themselves in case of disaster. But that's a personal thing.

NB We live at the end of a very quiet cul de sac so road safety isn't the problem here. DH sometimes leaves them in the car alone and I tut a bit. But parents should do what seems sensible given the prevailing conditions and their own sanity requirements.