to thinks if a school has issue with my parenting skills, that they contact me first?

[mixformax]

I recently made the (long-mulled-over) decision to leave DD (13) and DS (12) alone at home overnight with close supervision by friend and neighbours. Both children are sensible, trustworthy and used to being left for a few hours at a time.

One of DS's teachers learned of this and, without making ANY attempt to contact me, or any of the other emergency contact numbers (4 in total) called in social services which resulted in a plain clothes DC turning up on doorstep and questioning DD.

Also DS and DD attend different schools - DS's school had the cheek to email the other school and alert them of the "problem". Thankfully this school seems to be a bit more in touch with the pupils and actually listened to DD when she told them that she was perfectly happy with the arrangements.

But WHY couldn't DS's school even attempt to listen to him properly before jumping to (very wrong) conclusions of neglect?

Yes Everysingle star but they as i said they be mature enough to know how to deal with it properly, and mum and dad might have given them neighbours number to phone if anything happens. As i stated being left overnight is not right and i would not do it unless my dd is 15+ and i deem them able to, but a few hours during the day is a different matter. As i stated previously here in the UK we do tend to wrap our children up in cotton wool and to molleycoddle them a bit too much that they do not aquire the skills of self sufficiency, when they leave home they are totally lost without mum and dad. Of course it depends on the age of the child and maturity. I would certainly not leave my young children at home alone, if they are 11+.

Can I just ask?

Is 14 years old too young to answer the door then?

Ds (10) answers the door now, if I'm upstairs or got my head in the washer or something (obviously I'm in the house with him).

Now admittedly, I tell him "not to bother" answering the door if I'm leaving him on his own for a short time. But I suspect by the time he's 14, I wouldn't be so concerned.

I think it's not their place to talk to you, that's what SS is for.
YABU

I have just read the entire thread and now want to scream because the OP never came back. I hate threads like this.

GOML. Does it surprise you that she never came back? it doesn't me.

Yeah it looks as though the op is not going to come on and explain the actions, so we will never know if it was a one off or not.

If true, it seems to me that she put other issues ahead of her children - even if she could not find friends or family to help out - she took a risk on her kids rather than sorting out care, even if this meant paying for care for one night and the school stepped in inline with their policy.

Clumsy - I think it is completely different if you are in the house. In this case the children were to be left alone for an entire night - I don't know why they would have been opening the doors to the undercover pc's, if they thought they were going to be alone for the entire night.

I don't know. I think the OP was actually attempting to be a good parent by the sound of it. It sound like she considered a number of options and made a decision which she felt was the best option for all of the family. I don't think this was a case of someone being selfish and lazy in their parenting, rather a case of a parent exercising what I, and a number of others apparently, believe to be spectacularly poor judgement and decision making. I'm not annoyed the OP hasn't come back. I hope she'll just take this whole episode as a warning that that was a very wrong decision to make and she won't do it again.