What is the etiquette for leaving children in cars??

[Luxmum]

Not at all? For 2 minutes while you pay for the petrol? Or longer?? I have been leaving my sleeping children in the car (not hot day, in the shade, doors locked for no more than 10 minutes) to go to shops I know they would be hell in, for a few minutes or so. I then come back, they are still asleep, (it being their nap time) and we then go home. Is this wrong? I feel bad doing it, but I would feel worse waking them both up during their naps, hauling their grumpy bodies out of the car and bringing them to inappropriate shops (ie a china shop where I had to get a wedding present). Am I a bad parent??

i wouldnt leave a child under about 13 or 14 alone in a car, or alone at home, by that kind of age they can sencibly guess whats best to do in an emergency. with babies and younger kids imo the risks are to high. i doont know if its partly because ive worked with alot of adhd kids,but ive always been a great believer in reins(both the toddler ones and the crelling type older child special needs ones where required. or wrist straps and having kids walk with me wherever i need to go in a controlled way. the wrist straps are great even with older children if they are not good at staying close by , as they leave your hands free for paying and carrying shopping. my teenage daughter and i even resorted to one to stop us getting split up in the crowd when leaving take that at wembley earlier in the week.
maybe im old fashioned and over protective but have always taken the view better safe than sorry. and ive allways been hot on saftey gadgets etc.
i do admire some of you are are more laid back and less panicky and im sure your kids are secure and blessed by it, i just am not made that way.

Never. never. never. Not once.

Thank god for 'pay at the pump' machines. Husband thinks I;m over cautious but I don';t trust my two year old not to eat/throw/press something and I don';t trust the world with my very precious first born.

Stupid world. It hurst my arms!

Lucy Green with all due respect I think that is very extreme, a child starts high school at 11 by which age they should be independant enough to walk to school alone and responsible enough to be left at home for a short time. They really dont need mummy wiping their backside at that age.

Molly coddling children and wrapping them up in cotton wool does more emotional harm then good, it doesnt prepare them to live in an adult world, there will be situations in life where your daughter needs to cope alone and think for herself, how can she do this if she's never had the freedom to do so? Mummy wont be there to hold her hand forever.

Of course we should all take appropriate and responsible steps to protect our children but IMO wrapping them up in cotton wool.....especially teenagers won't help them.

kazzi , i think its a case of every childs difrent and as i said ive probably alot more experience of adhd and aspergers kids than normal ones. but i have found out what works well for the special kids can also work very well for others too. yes i agree there are plenty of 11 year olds who get to and from school especialy in a group. but home or car alone could still be an issue. as i said in my previouse i know im protective and admire people who are not.
however i should think in a crowd of 80 000 coming out of wembley stadium its important for parents of even the most sencible kids to be very carefull.

Oh I totally agree with the Wembley statement.....I'd probably do it differently tho if it was my child and discuss beforehand what to do in the event of getting lost ie meeting points etc and I'm not for one minute making any criticism as its not my place to judge anyones parenting skills and choices.

I'll happily leave my 10 yr old alone at home whilst I nip to the shop 5 mins away this isnt a big deal (and nor is it illegal), he can contact me by phone if need be, the yale lock is on so he can get out if he needs to but no one can get in and can always seek the help of a neighbour if he really needed to. Yes of course something could happen but as I've said on different boards we can't live life with a what if attitude where we constantly fear the worst.

I really dont believe in molly coddling children......trust me I've seen how molly coddled children end up as adults and it really isnt nice to see, some turn abusive as theyre so over sensitive you have to walk on egg shells around them constantly watching everything you say, others just can't cope with anything life throws at them as they dont have the neccessary life skills to handle the real world.

Obviously you do what you believe is right for your child but I really couldnt cope with the thought of my children being in their 20's and not being able to walk down a street for fear something might happen, not being able to stay at home alone for the same fears. Its a recipe for disaster and totally OTT

"Do an internet shop and pay at the pump"

Good jesus are we not to leave the house anymore incase the remotest things might happen?
Don't cross a road with your child, they might get mown down by a bus.
Don't let them go to the park, a branch might fall off a tree and fall on their head, they might fall off a swing or a roundabout.
Don't go for a cycle, they might fall off.
Don't leave them in the car for the 60 seconds it takes to take a trolley back, or the 120 seconds it takes to go in and pay for petrol.
Don't get them out of bed in the morning, there are dangers lurking everywhere!
In fact, should you leave them alone in a bedroom at all, I mean imagine what might happen to them while you're not in the room!!

When did we all get so ridiculously paranoid about everything? Life is about balancing risk, about calculating what benefits outweigh what risks. How about just for once we assume that most of us, not all, but most, have enough of a brain in our heads to be able to judge when our children are safe enough and when not?

only if i could see them

seeker,there was a case in britian(fairly recently) left in a car on a driveway for short period of time while parents were inside.the car engine caught fire and the child died .very unlikely to happen but possible

once id seen this story on the news thought twice about leavin mine in the car

Petrol yes, otherwise it's not worth the risk. When mine were about 2 we were on hol & parked up to look at a view. We got out & were standing by the car. DS took the handbrake off, car gently rolled down slope into a gate! All OK.

Another time car was parked up & DH was birdwatching out of the sunroof. The DOG stood on the automatic sunroof-closing button and nearly chopped DH in half - he managed to stand on the other button just before it closed . Not nice.

" I would never leave a child in someone else's car. Not without asking first. That would be extremely bad etiquette."
PMSL OrmIron, you naughty girl!

JoPie.
Chance are we will only ever have one baby. She will fall over, ride her bike, snog randoms at clubs when she's 15 and chances are get knocked down by traffic. I will allow her to play conkers and have a go on a unnetted trampoline

But I will never never never leave in the car on her own. Not for a long time anyway. [till she's 10?]

I live in a lovely rural area where crime and day time traffic is practically non existent. I quite often leave 6mo DS strapped into his seat in a locked car and nip into the shop as it's the only place for miles to get cash. There's no machine, cash back only, so I expect I've probably left him for 5-10 mins occasionally. Is that so terrible? What could happen to him, really, in the middle of a Cornish village?

However I think I'd feel very different if I lived in a city...

I only ever pay at pump though; it can take eons to get served in petrol stations and all those cars hovering around in such close proximity makes me nervous about getting bumped and it'd be awful if that happened while DS was on his own in the car.

lucygreen, what is oldfashioned about not wanting to leave an 11 or 12yo alone at home? Surely everyone agrees that children used to have far more independence in previous generations? Can't have been many 12yos in our mothers' generation who were never left alone anywhere when they were of secondary school age.

When I was 11 I was allowed to take a boat out on my own, I cycled to school, I was out exploring on my own for hours on end- surely that was par for the course for my generation (born in the 60s)?

Personally, I think my dd is far safer staying at home on her own than crossing a busy road with me. And if I was driving, then she would certainly not be safer coming with me- that is how an awful lot of young children are killed: in their parents' car, while a parent Is driving.

My mum used to leave me alone at the age of 4 whilst she nipped to the shop, I'd never do that with my 4 yr old but I just think people are too over protective of children these days.

LucyGreen, I'm a bit confused. Did you take your special needs daughter to a concert at Wembley? If so, I can see the need for a wrist link thing. If she is an ordinary 11 year old without any special needs, then I would dearly love for you to have a rethink of how you keep your daughter safe. Arrange beforehand with her to meet at a certain place should you get split up; both have mobile phones handy to communicate on; link arms FGS! But a wrist strap.... You're having us on, surely......????

11 was the age i was first left home alone and i got pissed as fart cos my mum did nt think it necessary to lock the booze cabinet ....oh what fun

haha bet you had a fab time

yeah till the room spun its all learning !

and made popcorn without a lid on the pan !

I had a go at random bloke in the street today. Me and dh were walking to the park when posh chap pulls up along side us in lovely open-top jag. in passenger seat was a beautiful wee boy - prob bout 10 months. So the bloke jumps out walks up the street to a shop and goes in leaving the wee one sitiing there in his carseat. Am like and . Me and dh walk off and I'm and decided to go back and wait for man. Dh is like 'Leave it' (eastenders style) but I couldn't as I couldn't believe someone would be so stupid. Can you believe he left his baby alone in an opentop car and went into a shop where he could not have seen the car or baby???? Anyhoo man comes out of shop and sees me standing there (dh and W safely on other side of the road ) The bloke smiles at me in a 'yeh - isn't he adorable' kind of way but I said 'How could you leave him?? How could you?' Man looked angry and said 'He's my child' Pah. Ijust shook my head (very judgey )

So was IBU? Couldn't help myself. Couldn't leave child there by himself. never done anything like that before.

sorry - butted in there

good 4 you bbb

sorry wrong thread not sure how that happened meant home alone thread ......

kazzi glad we have more common ground than i thought at first. i totaly agree with your stratergy of discussing a place to meet etc and in normmal quiert to moderatly bussy places would do exactly the same. but given the huge crowds at wembley, the fact i didnt know the area and that we were under time presure on leaving to make transport times .it made more sence to me to have her safley attatched on a wrist rein and better safe than sorry. i wouldnt genrally resort to that with her day by day at her age ,but would do in very unfamiliar places such as bussy airports, or very crowded shops such as oxford street christmas shopping.

I leave my children (aged 3 and 4) in the car whilst paying for petrol and also occasionally outside the shop if I need bread or electric etc. This is only because I can literally park next to the shop entrance. Never ever leave them for more than 3-5 minutes and the car is always in my view.

I just daren't do it for longer than that - Maddie McCannn just pops into my head!!!

Hope this helps - seems like everyone on here is pretty unanimous with only leaving them for a few minutes at a time.

Words fail me. I read this yesterday and had to log off as I was so angry that most people were giving such measured, polite responses to this. I think if you have to ask you know really that you shouldn't do this. I have come back on and noticed that the above responses are getting a bit sharper, maybe this is due to the time, original post was two years ago, and now this week a policeman is in trouble for leaving his police dogs in the van, where they died in the heat. I bet he is thinking thank god it wasn't his children and here people are admitting they leave young children in cars/at home alone.
As parents we are guardians for other lives, if you aren't prepared to do everything possible to protect that life and keep it away from harm (not put it directly in harm's way) then why would you have children? Too simplistic??
I realise that being a parent means making decisions on what we have to do, not what we would like and that is tough, but why risk situations you don't need to face?
Why are your children badly behaved in shops? Shop online and use the time you save to teach your children right from wrong, they will thank you for it in the long run.
I think if you asked shoppers they would rather see a grumpy, groggy child being pulled around the shop than to know that child is outside alone in a car. Someone above has mentioned paranoia and I do agree that we need to use rational judgment and take into account the child's age and abilites etc, but please think before you leave your children. There is a first time for everything, and strange sets of unlikely, random events can and do happen, just think of Sara Payne, Madeleine McCann etc. That is off my chest and I may sleep better tonight.