So when do you leave them alone in a hotel room?

[meditrina]

with the holiday season coming up, I was wondering what is the MN consensus on when children can be left alone to sleep in a hotel room, say in these scenarios:

a) you are staying in a hotel with a "secure" perimeter (everyone has to pass reception to go in or out, fire doors cannot be opened from outside and are alarmed), you aren't leaving the hotel and there is continuous monitoring eg baby alarm?

b) same, but it's occasional phone monitoring, or the child has to ring down to reception for attention?

c) same, but perimeter not secure

d) you want to leave the immediate premises, even if it your destination is nearby?

I'm with everyone who says around 9/10 is fine (depending upon the DCs). I might not leave the hotel at that age though.

Mine are too young (although I was probably left from very young - me and my sister used to have a great time in our own room at about 6 and 7).

blimey. from the age of 10 onwards on holiday each year in France I would ask my parents if I could stay in my hotel room (shared with DB) for an evening if I was too tired to go out for dinner. I would get a delicious picnic to eat, watch tv, read a book while DPs and DB went out. I loved it!

So much depends on the child but I'm really surprised at people being worried at leaving children who are at secondary school alone in a hotel room for an evening.

I never would, and never did as a child. My kids are all really little though so i may change my opinion when they are older but I would rather eat early or have baby sleeping in a buggy with us.

I think that you will have to change your mind when they are teenagers naturalbaby-they will refuse to go everywhere with you and will want to stay on their own.

I would leave my 12 year old under circumstances a) and b) for a short time if we were in a country where he could speak the language.

I won't let him have his own hotel room for an entire night yet.

(After Madeleine McCann disappeared), we went on holiday (always self-cater) but decided to stay in pub overnight on the way up with ds's aged 1, 4 and 6. As a special treat, boys had a pub meal for tea and then dh and I planned to have a meal together in the bar, having first established that the child monitor worked between bar and bedroom, and explaining v carefully to ds1 and 2 that if there was a problem they could talk to us through the monitor. After all, the hotel room door locked, what could go wrong?

As we enjoyed our first drink, dh noticed that the lights on the monitor flashed, but thought nothing more about it. Ten minutes later, as our meals appeared, the manager appeared to say that ds1 had been found by another guest wandering the accommodation block. He had got up v quietly and instead of talking to us through the monitor, had decided to come and find us. The locked door is of course openable from inside the room (fire regs), and the door slammed shut behind him. He tried to find us but got lost and wandered around until a (female) guest came across him, took him to her room and phoned reception.

Actually the rest of the holiday wasn't that great but that was an appalling start. We've not stayed in a pub/hotel with the children since without spending the entire evening with them. They never settle well but at least they're only at risk of me strangling them for not going to sleep!

Never. Hotel with interconnecting rooms maybe, but only if the outside door to their room was securely locked and we had the key.

Either they're young enough to need proper supervision (paid babysitter fine if that's what you want to do), or old enough to come with you IMO.

What if they are 15/16 and don't want to come with you?

Then maybe you don't go on holiday for those years, I don't know havent crossed that bridge yet but my feelings are atm we all go together, stay together or we don't go at all.
I know what mischief I got up to on holiday at that age and my DD's certainly won't have that opportunity.

Then they'd have a choice, come with us or starve! Honestly it never occurred to me or my brother to not go and eat with our parents if we were away with them somewhere. Plenty of time to do your own thing at home. When you go somewhere as a family it is to spend time as a family surely?

Not ever. Fire, intruders, sudden illness. Imagne if one of them was sick?

bosch

How awful! But just shows what can happen. Kids think in such convoluted ways..their thought process is not the same as an adults and they can get into right scrapes trying to do the right thing, the wrong way!

Well, I would drag my DC along with me, but I was often left in hotel rooms as teenager while my parents went to a function downstairs, or even in a nearby hotel.

Once I managed to lock my parents out, and the manager of the very small hotel had to get a ladder and climb through the window. I was about 12.

But then these are the same parents that saw fit to leave me in a tent alone when I was 5 while they socialised in a caravan nearby.

Don't go on holiday when they are teenagers in case they might want to stay in a hotel room alone?! Seriously?
Obviously when they are young and need babysitters you wouldn't do it, but once they are at secondary school theycan be left for a couple of hours!
I find it really scary that you would make your DC stick to you like glue and then turn them out into the wide world at 18yrs-I wouldn't do it.
You work up to it slowly. A couple of hours in a hotel room at 14yrs is fine if they are going to be in their own room in student accommodation in somewhere like Manchester less than 4 yrs later!
I don't see how you avoid it either. When we have stayed in hotel rooms we have had one and the DCs another and they have never (despite requests) been next to each other. I can't see a 14 yr old wanting to share our room, and even if theydid it wouldn't be much of a holiday for us!

Now way would our dc want to share with us once they were teenagers. Anyway once, when they did, they complained all night that we were keeping them awake with our snoring. Nobody got any rest that night.

as a child we used to go to Butlins and they had their baby sitting serivice basicaly someone walking up and down outside all the rooms any noise .your parents were paged.

Hmm and now it depend on age would leave ds1 and ds2 at almost 17 and 14 np .

If was only me and dd age 8 and ds3 age 5 no would not leave .But if they was asleep and ds1 was with them yes i would though would not be far

I can only think that most of you have got very young DCs and are going to have a steep learning curve at some point! Teenagers do not want family rooms and they don't want to go to bed or get up at the same time! Parents may want some some privacy in hotel rooms-it is their holiday too!
My DS was fine in a separate room with his younger brother at 14yrs-after all he was taller than me!
Parenthood is all about letting go slowly, not treating like infants until 18th birthday and expecting them to be streetwise and cope-as if by magic!

At almost 17mine were on holiday on their own. If they were with us they could be trusted to do their own thing!

yep when we go on holiday i hardly see ds1 or ds 2 they spend fair amount of time doing own thing .infact there of to chessington next week together for the day will get train there and back .They both are sensiable know where they are going and have their mobiles

Mine have got the train to Chessington-and they got back again!

I can't believe some of you wouldn't leave teenagers alone in a hotel for a couple of hours. Don't you leave them alone at home? Don't they go to the shops or to the park etc?

DS (9) stays at home sometimes while I run some errands, goes to the shop for me, goes to the park by himself (6 blocks away)...I can't possibly imagine him doing something stupid tbh.

exoticfruits speaks much sense.