Now worried about holiday, as intending to leave Dc's in room while we eat...

[OutragedfromTunbridgeWells]

we're going to villa Pia (as recommende on MN) where children eat early and then go to bed and parents eat later all together.

This seemed a great idea to me before.

but now obviously with tragic and frightening abduction of Madeleine, it's playing on my mind and feel we cannot do this.

Are any others having such dilemmas? what should we think/do??

ernest, i had one from panasonic

i used to take it down the bottom of the garden

was very reliable, didnt need much charge and would last for ages. not much interference

Haven't read all the other replies so sorry if i am repeating but it sounds like you are not going to be able to fully relax if you do leave them so really there is no point in doing so.

ERNEST
it wasnt panasonic at all, it was philips

ta, will have a look

Luby I feel the same as you, would never consider it even before this tragedy. Abduction would be the least of my worries about leaving children alone in a room. Agree with you about family time too, we prefer to eat together as a family when we can rather than have kids and adults eating at different times.

this monitor

I've not left my dd's but we went to a posh company event at a very exclusive hotel in large grounds in the middle of nowhere, some friends of dh took their baby, left him asleep in the room with a baby monitor on and kept going back to check on him. I was not horrified by that, I guessed that anybody would need to get past the doorman, hotel reception etc.

But to do that on holiday, dont think I could.

But I am a rather over protective mother, so I wouldnt knock anybody who did.

We've done a Mark Warner holiday every year for the last 6 years - thanks in the main to recomendations on here. When the dcs were younger we tried to use a babysitter each night but this is rather hit and miss - not all of the nannies want to babysit and I guess on some weeks we only got our requests about half the time. I think what some of the posters are missing is that in some MW resorts you are not allowed to eat with your children in their restaurants in the evening - the set up is that the nannies offer high tea at around 5 (or a bit later for the older ones), and the adults eat later. I appreciate that it won't suit some posters, but actually it had worked well for us - our dcs have never been up past 8:30 in the evening in their lives - they simply can't cope and don't want to, so the idea of an evening meal with them would not only not be fun - it would be our idea of hell. So for the 50,000 people who apparenlty book MW holidays each year it isn't always quite as simple to rejuggle things, though I would be amazed if MW stick to the adults only rule for some of its restaurants for the rest of this season.

We won't do a MW holiday this year - not because of this incident but more because we think that we've outgrown them. We'll go for the villa option somewhere. That said I guess what this incident has illustrated is that if something awful does happen at least the tour operator does do something to help, whereas I wonder if you do end up doing your own thing whether the British Ambassador would be there just as quickly.

Outraged - if I understand you correctly are MW planning on charging you the difference if you move resort? Have to say that that seems a bit off in the circs. I have to say that I'm surprised that so few families have so far moved their hols - despite the fact that it is such a rare occurence I'm not sure that I would want the reminder of what has happend whilst on hols. It is inevitable that it will be a topic of discussion in the resorts for a while.

OH and the monitor thing - yes it is a nice idea but in practice you get huge interference from the fact that most monitors only operate on a few wavelengths. You do end up hearing some very interesting conversations though! My oldest son used to deliberately listen in (we had a Tomy monitor with 10 possible frequencies) and he was intrigued to find that many mothers sound just the smae at bedtime!

Do you always have them in the same room as you then janitor, or do you simply not sleep on holiday or at home! Surely if they can wander on holiday then they can wander at home?

Anyway see below - there aren't enough babysitters for the familes there - so then what do you do? Move hotels mid hols - if you can I guess!

Shall I extol the virtues of Greece again.

They are very child friendly.

Here is what we do - everyone has a snooze in the afternoon and then we all go eat together - this way we doon't have exhausted children. We ahve been doing this since the kids were 1. When small they would fall asleep in the buggy during the evening - yes we would sometimes have ot do a walk up and down with them.

Now they are 13 - 8 and they all still snooze - older ones might read but they lie down for an hour and a half.

This is when we get our quiet child free time - and we sometimes snooze, read, have sex or jsut lie in the sun.

This is not to say that I have not left my kkids asleepwhile I have been at the bar - in the tiny village in the Greek Mountains that we frequent every year the kids often go to bed at midnight and we wander in later at 4 or 5!!

On a practical note for thos who have booked MW, Lakitira in Kos lets you take dcs into the main restaurant (buffet) and the pizzeria, but not the taverna. When I last went to Corsica the Pizzeria wasn't open and children weren't allowed in the main restaurant, but that may have changed?

TBH it has never really occurred to me to eat seperately from the DC on holiday but I think somewhere like Mark Warner would be out of our price range anyway. The last two summers we have been to northern France and the system we have is to try and keep the children on English time which buys us an hour. So instead of getting up at 7 they would get up at 8, instead of eating at 6 they would eat at 7 (and we stretch this to 7.30) etc. We haven't really managed to push them too late with going to bed etc, but might try this summer when we are going to the Carmargue with the siesta idea. Also they are not the type of children who would fall asleep in a pushchair at a pavement cafe or bar, I have always been rather of people who can achieve this.

ernest , I'm left wondering in the wake of the strength of feeling expressed against leaving children asleep , not so much on this thread but other threads and indeed other sites and in media, what has led me to having done so in the past. I wonder if living abroad , in a seemingly safer environment where children walk themselevs to school from the age of 4 and play out in playgrounds unsupervised younger than that , staying in hotels and resorts such as you describe and the MW type ones has lulled us into the idea that all would be fine (and in the overwhelming majority of instances it would still be). Are we naive, too trusting or just taking a balanced risk ? Would we do so again in the future, I'm not sure tbh.

ime monitors don't always work , even in small hotels. We stayed in an Esprit one and so many people had similar monitors they interfered with each other's ! That was a similar set up to the one LM describes . Children under 14 ate at 5.30 then all under 5's had to be in bed by adult dinner time - 7.30 - and the staff listened at the doors every half an hour or so . Over 5's had a club in the basement until 9 but they would not take younger children even though that week there was only ds and 5yr old twins in that age group.

My children would have refused to go to sleep and would have trashed the room....so we tried the siesta and evening promenade route which worked for us. Had we had children who were willing to sleep we may have done things differently.

I remember when DS was 18 months, walking him up and down the back streets of Ambleside in his buggy trying to get him to fall asleep! It didn't happen. So we ended up back in the B&B room for the evening.

"under 5's had to be in bed by adult dinner time - 730"

WHAT??? sounds more like boot camp than holiday

LIZS could you please tell me where this holiday is so i can avoid it

the siesta is a fabulous thing and you can work the threats - 'if you don't sleep then you don't go out and have fun this evening.'

My perfect holiday memory is on Naxos. After eating at a beach side taverna, the kids went to the beach and played together while we sat and drank grassi.

bozza, if mine didn't sleep in the buggy then we just fed them chips!