DH left DS2 (age 3) in the house on his own, and I am LIVID

[Legacy]

I was out at the shops. Came back into the driveway. The side gate of the house was open. I walked round and found the french windows open, and met DS2 (will be 4 in August) wandering around in the garden saying 'where's Daddy?'

I called to my DH but no reply, checked upstairs (we have 3 floors, so not always easy to hear). Not there. Back into garden, garage, shed. Not there. Suddenly DH appears coming down the driveway...

"Where the f*ck were you?" I ask. "Oh, I just popped across to X's (a neighbour)for a few minutes. Well, I had been back for between 5 - 10 minutes at this point.

I am livid, and told him so. He says I'm completely over-reacting.

But we live in a biggish house, with bushes at the front. The said neighbours house is about 50 metres away. He certainly wouldn't have heard anything if DS had been screaming. There is also a road between us, and some of the less considerate neighbours pelt down the street at 50 Mph.

I shudder to think that DS2 could have wandered out looking for his Daddy.... or could've done something else, like fall of the climbing frame which is 5ft+ high.

What do you reckon? Am I over-reacting?

Twiglett's right. The grey area is about what age older children can be left on their own. But any social worker or police officer would take a parent leaving a three year old on their own VERY seriously. It is illegal. And he could be prosecuted. In fact if you look up a news site like BBC Online I bet you'll find examples.

In fact, it may not be a bad idea to call your local cop shop and get them to have a word with dh?

first para was from the NSPCC .. sorry forgot my quotation marks

I'm quite laid back too and have stood on neighbours doorstep for one minute if I need to tell them something. we're a halls-adjoining semi so our doors are right next to each other and I leave our door open so I can hear them and I would only do it if they were sitting doing something like eating tea, watching tv or on the computer. wouldn't do it if they were on the climbing frame or in garden at all. (they're 6 and 4). Mr Legacy - Mrs L is NOT over-reacting.

men are such idiots sometimes.
i came back from the gym one daay, and dh's car wasnt in the driveway, so i assumed he had gone somewhere, and had to take the gkids with him. so i sat in the car for a bit longer before forcing myself to go into the house to face the debris that he would no doubt have left behiing him.
get to the door, and i can hear the bloody vacuum. he'd left all three kids on whilst he went off 'just for twenty minutes' i was livid. he thought i was overreacting.
ds1 at 9, grey area, i have left him on his own watching tv , whilst i ran to station, back in 15 mnutes tops.
but 4.8 yr old, and 3 year old? ds1 is not old enough to look after them.#

That was incredibly stupid of your DH. I have left DSs alone when DS2 was 3 to pop to the post box which takes under 2 minutes. However, they can't get out of the house and I tell DS1 (2 years older) that they are not to open the door to anyone except mummy or daddy. When I'm feeling particularly paranoid, I carry a note that says I have 2 children alone at X address. Remind your DH that the risks aren't only if somehing happened to your DS but also if something happened to him and no one knew he'd left a small child alone.

Don't be stupid ad call the police though as suggsted lower down - how would you feel if they did actually decide to prosecute and/or involve social service??

Don't think it's stupid to ask the police for advice, OP's dh is insisting what he did is OK and it isn't. You could always call them with a hypothetical 'dh and I are having a dispute, is it illegal to leave a 3yo on their own while you go round to a neighbour across the road'.

i think your dh was up to something he shouldn't have been up to at the neighbour's house and that's why he didn't take ds.
There can be no other explantation, unless he's an utter d**khead.

you don't need another reply but serious nature of this compels me to add one. Very irresponsible idiot you have unfortunately married!!! over reacting, he's trying to transfer the guilt to you. does he care at all about his children?

Not sure you need any more confirmation of your dh's character, but, for what it's worth, I think he's a blethering idiot who has no conception of what a 3 yo can get up to when unsupervised, has no idea of how quickly accidents can happen or situations arise and has no real grasp of what it means to be a good parent.

Presumably you will never leave any of your children alone in his care again??

stich - do you mean to tell me you can turn kids off. How come no-one told me this before and where's the switch??? sorry - couldn;t resist

I know it is probably too late to do this now, but I would have been very tempted to invent an accident that almost happened in his absence, eg "I came home and found ds right at the top of the climbing frame/coming out of the side gate to look for you and caught him just before he fell off/caught him just before he ran out into the road". For some people it is the only thing that will make them face up to their actions.

You've got 100% support here legacy. His accusation of you overreacting is a typical response when caught red-handed doing something so stupid.

I have to say, I wonder if this is the first time he has done this ...

Has he not read the newspapers over the last ten years?? The number of accidents from badly supervised children wandering out of gardens, getting run over, falling into swimming pools/ponds, helping themselves to kitchen implements, eating something poisonous out of the garden, falling etc etc etc etc
What an idiot. As for turning it round to you by making out that you are over reacting and that he was only a few minutes - very nasty and childish way of dealing with it all.

my dh says:

your dh needs to be put over someones knee and spanked very hard till he learns to look after the kids properly

also maybe he's more of a kid than your three year old

I agree you should be , ridiculous behaviour

Why didn't he take him with him???

Silly silly man

Oh dear. A "jeeeesus" from my dh too. How upsetting for you.

Still not sure why he couldn't take your ds with him. And totally agree - get him to call the NSPCC and try to get them to agree that you have over-reacted

am shocked at his willful neglect

Thanks for all your comments - always useful to get other perspectives.

He KNOWS he is in the wrong on this, but he's a stubborn sod, so of course would never admit it.
Someone asked 'what's he like as a Dad generally?'. Well, this is why it's so annoying - he's actually a fab Dad 98% of the time. It's just that sometimes he has these seeming complete lapses of judgement.

The only incident of a similar nature was when he left DS1 (5 at the time) in the car at the nursery car park while he dropped off DS2. OK, so it's a small, private car park (only about 8 spaces) but you have to go through 2 gates and a door and up some stairs, and then drop off usually takes a few minutes, so he'd be gone for about 10 minutes that time too. The only reason I found out on that occasion was because DS1 told me. he wasn't particularly unhappy about it, but I was!

Anyway, after this recent incident I was so shocked and shaken that after we'd had our row about it I took DS2 off into a different room, just hugged him tightly and bawled my eyes out - just thinking of all the horrible things that could have happened. DH didn't see though - he's stomped off into the garden.

I haven't shown him this thread, I think it would just make it worse. Thing is, he's always complaining that I nag him about things too much unnecessarily, but then he goes off and does something utterly stupid like this which makes me wonder if I can REALLY trust him!

After the dust had settled later on I confronted him and said, "I need you to promise that you will NEVER do anything like that again. You are NOT to leave the children for any time - however short - especially with all the doors wide open".

He just muttered 'fine' and that's the end of it.

But he's on probation now as far as I'm concerned.

The thing with taking risks is that while the chance of something happening may be sooo small, the thing that could happen is so awful that you just don't take the risk. Your dh may have thought that your ds would be fine for a couple of mins and luckily he was, but if something had gone wrong, the things that could have gone wrong would have been so catastrophic that it doesn't bear thinking about. Maybe his man's logical brain will appreciate the logic of that when a calmer moment arrives and you talk about it again (which if it were me I'd have to as otherwise it would simmer with worry in my head)

Or why not leave his golf clubs (substitute PS2/scalextric/briefcase/something loved and shiny) out on the drive with the gate open for a few mins when he's due home and will find them there, and tell him you didn't think he'd mind as you were sure they'd be OK?

grrr

Legacy I think under the circumstances (and given your dh's reaction) you have handled the whole situation very well. Hopefully he won't ever do it again!

Caught a bit of that - Mum has the week off programme - on TV the other day and both of the blokes on it were really patient and loving dads and generally did a good job of managing but -

one left his baby in the car on a busy road while he went in to the shops to buy food and the other....

allowed his toddler to play with the deep fat-fryer which was heating up at the time, lost him completely at one point and found him in next doors garden and let both his sons (4&2 I think) play on the road unsupervised on their wheely toys!

Clearly your DH isn't alone in being a little too trusting I think some men may just lack basic awareness.

Caught a bit of that - Mum has the week off programme - on TV the other day and both of the blokes on it were really patient and loving dads and generally did a good job of managing but -

one left his baby in the car on a busy road while he went in to the shops to buy food and the other....

allowed his toddler to play with the deep fat-fryer which was heating up at the time, lost him completely at one point and found him in next doors garden and let both his sons (4&2 I think) play on the road unsupervised on their wheely toys!

Clearly your DH isn't alone in being a little too trusting I think some men may just lack basic awareness.