Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

More of an 'is it unreasonable' to lock a toddler in a bathroom...

135 replies

FlamingoBingo · 10/09/2009 20:08

...for half an hour crying so you can read a story to your two older children?

Really want to know what others' reactions to hearing about this would be!

OP posts:
GirlsAreLOud · 10/09/2009 21:58

I actually think that thinking this is ok and having to check whether or not this is ok are not that far away from each other.

Sycamoretreeisvile · 10/09/2009 22:08

Girls, that's not really fair - OP is asking more in an HAVE I GONE ABSOLUTELY MAD, OR IS THIS BONKERS BEHAVIOUR? You can see that, can't you?

I can see the thread has wound you up but just step away in that case, no need to start implying Flamingo is A. Thick, and B. Negligent. She is quite the opposite

AvrilH · 10/09/2009 22:09

agree with morningpaper

maybe she left him having a tantrum in the bathroom while she attended to her older children?

and your friend assumed the locked in bit....

katiestar · 10/09/2009 22:22

Sounds like a case of chinese whispers to me !

nappyaddict · 10/09/2009 22:36

Not unreasonable for a few minutes as time out but very unreasonable for half an hour.

NorkyButNice · 11/09/2009 08:19

Out of all the rooms in the house why would you choose the bathroom with its drowning dangers (and probable cleaning products/medicines).

What if one of the other kids needed the loo?

It's just not logical.

As for calling it CC, that's just not a fair comparison!

BonsoirAnna · 11/09/2009 08:22

If you feel the need to lock your toddler up, an empty cupboard would be safer than the bathroom

diddl · 11/09/2009 08:35

If I thought someone was regularly locking a child away for half an hour-crying or not-I would seriously consider calling social services.

corriefan · 11/09/2009 08:56

Is your friend planning on locking her toddler in the bathroom herself? Because it sounds to me like she's not but just referred to someone else doing that. If she wants to do cc with her child that's not so horrendous is it?
My experience with dd was a baby then toddler who would breastfeed almost continually night and day, crying for food at night several times once she was in her own bed (for about half the night and wouldn't settle until she was on the boob to sleep fidgetting and making it impossible for me to sleep). She'd be grumpy and cry throuhghout the day due to tiredness. In the end I let her cry in her cot because I'd had enough and it was horrible but soon she was sleeping through and an absolute delight during the day. She wasn't old enough to realise she needed solid sleep for herself!

ScummyMummy · 11/09/2009 08:58

Completely unreasonable. And dangerous. As I'm sure everyone's said already. Will read thread now!

ScummyMummy · 11/09/2009 09:10

Hmm! Seems the person in question is doing controlled crying, not locking babies in bathrooms? Isn't that the thing where you return the wakeful toddler kid to bed about a million times or go in and say "shh, shh, go to sleep screaming one" every few minutes? Not really the same as locking said screaming child in a room of danger for 30 mins, imo!

NotPlayingAnyMore · 11/09/2009 09:30

FB - I think your friend is mistaking a bedtime story as a basic need, which it obviously isn't and certainly never vital enough to justify denying that of another child.

How very sad

FourArms · 11/09/2009 09:31

I would say unreasonable to lock the child in the bathroom to read to the older ones for half an hour. However, I did shut a tantrumming DS2 in his bedroom last night. I'd missed the window of opportunity for getting him to bed nicely, and had a screaming, irrational 3 year old who did not want to go to sleep. I gave him options - watching TV in my bed, or going in his own bed, and he kept asking for something else. Two minutes screaming in his room (whilst I tried to ignored him by hoovering madly downstairs), and he'd decided watching superwhy in my bed was a better option. Happy DS2, happy mum. Then I could read DS1 his story!

corriefan · 11/09/2009 09:56

I also think texting your friend to say you feel sorry for her son in a pseudo-jokey way in order to get your anti-cc stance is extremely insensitive. Particularly so considering she's got a toddler and a baby to contend with, is inevitably shattered from trying to meet the constant demands made by very young children and probably feels guilty about various things she isn't doing or thinking 'right' already.
How about being supportive of what she's going through? Share your horror of locking a toddler in the bathroom for half an hour, yes, but don't lump cc in with that. To do so is a bit odd.
I'm probably sensitive because of what I went through but would have been devastated if a 'friend' had told me they felt sorry for my child, wouldn't you?

emkana · 11/09/2009 11:07

"mistaking a bedtime story for a basic need"

hmm

am obv on different planet once again. I do think that older children have a right to some undivided attention, and if you have a difficult younger child, sometimes the only way to give that undivided attention is to be less than attentive to the younger one.

gorionine · 11/09/2009 11:20

I sort of agree with you emkana about difficulty sometimes to give undivided attetion to the older child/children but 1/2 hour is a very long time for a young child. I can say that if I was to attempt the same as described in OP and let DD4 crying in a different room while reading a story to her older siblings:

  • I would not be able to read 2 lines as I would be both ennoyed by the screeming and uncomfortable with leaving her.
  • Her brothers and sister would have hated it and I am certain would have asked either for her to be allowed to come in with them or to cut the bedtime short.

I am not a fan of CC although I am thinking each to threir own but the story in OP does not at all resemble anything I have ever been told or read about CC. I think the mum probably lost patience (can happen to any mother at any point IMO) and made a bad decision that she afterwards tried to hide under a CC blanket.

gorionine · 11/09/2009 11:25

Corriefan, I also agree with your point about insensivity of "jockingly" been told someone feels sorry for your DCs. Been there as well and I do not think there is such a thing as "jockingly" but more "I think you are wronging your child but I tell it to you with a smile and therefore will not allow you to show how upset you are by what I am saying!".

AvrilH · 11/09/2009 11:39

this is she said that she said that she said...

But I am really and offended by flamingbingo, who seems to be trying to link this bizarre and abusive behaviour with CC

"Completely unable to persuade this woman that her son didn't need CC - she's doing it for him"

yes, anyone I know who resorted to CC did it because they believed that it was both necessary and in their child's interest

it is easy to be sanctimonious when you've not been there

UndomesticHousewife · 11/09/2009 12:02

CC is not the same as locking your child in a bathroom or any other room. CC done properly is never leaving your child to just cry them selves to sleep, you go back in all the time at very short intervals and reassure your child that you are there but it's time for sleep now.

A child learns its behaviour and if they learn that sleep time means either being cuddled to sleep or up and down for drinks or when they cry they will be picked up that's what will happen night after night, why would they suddenly decide to change as they don't know any different routine?

Teaching a child that it's night time and it's time for sleep is a good thing - my next door neighbour has a 2.6yr old ds like me and her ds is running around at 11pm in adn out of different beds because she doesn't want to teach him what bedtime means.

She thinks she's doing theright thing and cannot bear to hear him cry (even though I've told her and told her that CC is never leaving him to cry himself to sleep), but then her ds is so tired and grumpy adn moany during the day that he drives her mad - she can't cope with him and she shouts at him and he is unhappy.
I don't agree with what she does but I can't make her change.

Locking a toddler away in any room (why on earth the bathroom? my ds would have flooded the place or drowned himself if I'd have done that) is horrible imo, though believe me I have felt like it when ds is wrecking everything and screaming when I'm trying to do something with the older 2, but that's what toddlers do. My dd's did the same so I knew what to expect with this one.

Change the routine if you want quiet time with the older kids. Toddler can be in bed asllep at 7pm and then you can read to the older ones.

GirlsAreLOud · 11/09/2009 12:26

Winding me up? Mais non.

I just think it's a silly thing to have to ask.

Not exactly busting a blood vessel here.

oneopinionatedmother · 11/09/2009 12:35

not in the bathroom. if they're having a paddy, put them somewhere safe to stress it off.

i would not say abusive, but I'd have been terrified about her hitting her head. especially as there is a kind of instant karma to toddler rage, they almost always hurt themselves.

Pikelit · 11/09/2009 12:38

Are you posting from Guantanamo Bay? If not, then I can't see where "locking up" enters into your life.

gorionine · 11/09/2009 12:41

Pikelit, Sorry I do not understand your post..

FreddysTeddy · 11/09/2009 12:44

This is one of those really disingeneous threads where the OP wants to complain about something - but phrases it as if she is innocent in making a judgement then lets everybody else do the bitching for her.

Nice.

oneopinionatedmother · 11/09/2009 12:49

next time you see her - why not suggest she gets a playpen instead? soft sided travel cots do well, and v. cheap off ebay.

perfect containment for tantruming toddler. up to the stage they can get out of them.....

as toddlers cry quite a range of reasons some which should and others that really shouldn't attract sympathy (eg, mine just hit her brother and when i told her off, she burst into tears - time for sympathy? i think not.) i really don't agree that they need their yelling answered in every instance.

Swipe left for the next trending thread