Dad fell asleep whilst looking after 3 year old

[talawalawoo]

When I was settling my little one to sleep tonight (she's 3) she mentioned that when she was staying at her dad's last night, he fell asleep first and she was watching something on his phone and fell asleep at some point after (I'm paraphrasing here).

Obviously I'm concerned by this from a safety aspect. Does anyone have advice on how approach this/ deal with this?

Were they in bed together? I couldn’t count the number of times I feel asleep before my child when they were this age and younger for a while it was my main sleep strategies. Door closed in a child proof room. It’s no different to them waking up before you during the night or in the morning. The only thing that would concern me was what was she watching? Was it youtube when it could morph into something inappropriate?

What "safety aspect" ie what was the scenario, time, place, where was your DD and your dad in what environment etc

What's the big deal? He was putting her to bed (I think) and drifted off? Doesn't seem like a massive safety issue to me, she obviously fell asleep shortly after.

That's the thing, I don't know if I'm
Bring over the top or not. I'm assuming it's You Tube with a cartoon on it.

You are being silly I've fallen asleep loads of times before my kids 🤦🏻‍♀️

Unless he fell asleep whilst cooking or without locking the front door etc its not overly concerning I dont think.

Yes, they would have been on the same bed. I guess I was just worried if she wondered I off and hurt herself or something. Again I might be over thinking this so happy to be told if that's the case! He can be quite "relaxed" about things do useful for a sense check re this!

The phone part isn’t great. At that age I would want to be supervising. Even content geared towards children sometimes turns out not to be what was advertised.

falling asleep in a prepared space is not a big deal. Dd was a night owl extraordinaire. Child proofing her room and our room was the only way we survived.

Yes I agree about the phone. I doubt he would have had a child gate or latch on the bedroom door and that's what was worrying me.

Who has a latch on a 3 year olds bedroom?

He fell asleep literally right next to her; I think for your sanity you have to realise that he's likely to have woken up if she'd got out of bed and wandered off.

Your perspective on this is probably not everyone's.

I would be more worried about her on the phone watching something, it’s really not good for small children’s eye development to have so much concentrated close vision.

He may have been pretending to be asleep to encourage her to settle down and drift off. I used to do that all the time as my son would keep talking as long as there was anyone awake to hear him!

Ok I'll chill!! Thankyou for the perspectives 😊

Wouldn't bother me at all, either the falling asleep in the same bed or the phone watching.

Honestly, what do people think CBeebies is going to suddenly morph into and I doubt anyone has eyesight problems from watching something on a phone for half an hour.

I've lost count the amount of times I've seen single mums post on here about how to cope when their child is sick and they've been told to nap on the sofa whilst the child watches tv! Stop trying to create problems for the sake of it. And yes as another poster pointed out he could have been pretending to sleep so that she sleeps, I've done the same.

Noted @VelvetTurtle. And as I mentioned earlier, I value the sense check and perspectives to get a measure if I'm being unreasonable or not. Not sure about the bit where I'm looking for problems though...there have been valid things in the past that I've had to speak to him about, hence why I wanted to check for different viewpoints to make sure I wasn't overthinking and I've taken these onboard.