Why can't I go out and leave my 3 year old asleep on his own in the house?

[FrannyandZooey]

Don't worry, I am not about to do this. But I have been musing about risk and safety recently and I am wondering if this really is as terribly unsafe as we all think it is. He doesn't wake up and will be asleep for 90 mins or more. Even if he did, he is a sensible child and is not going to fall down the stairs or drink bleach or anything. He would be worried that I was not there (which is my main reason for not doing it).

I know the argument is "what if there was a fire?"

But there isn't a fire, is there? How many fires start at random when there is no-one in the house but a toddler, fast asleep? I can see there is a small risk here - but it seems tiny to me. How does it compare with taking children out in the car? Crossing the road? Air travel? Being savaged by a dog?

As I say, please don't think I am about to go out and leave him - I'm not. But can someone explain to me why this would be absolutely unacceptable for me to do so, because I'm not getting it.

good point about where children hide. Like the bloke who was extra-good at finding kids - that would be an interesting skill to put on your CV.

It's like giving honey to babies, when my dss were born loads of people said you should give them honey but I explained that this was no longer advised as there was a risk of botulism. No-one I know has ever had a child suffer from this botulism due to honey, but I still never gave it.

Have been thinking quite a bit about this thread today. There's two issues that disturb me - the first is the idea that all bad things are preventable, therefore if a bad thing does happen to your child, you could and should have prevented it. This is a terrible burden to place on parents already poleaxed by grief. When my sister was assaulted, my Mum certainly didn't blame herself or my sister, she blamed the perpetrator and the terrible luck of my sister being in the right place at the wrong time. But nowadays, she would be blaming herself until her dying day for letting my sister do the perfectly ordinary childhood thing of walking home with a friend in broad daylight. I just believe it's so wrong.

The other issue is this concept of doing everything for our children so they don't hurt themselves or put themselves in dangerous situations. I so agree with the person further down the thread who said that fear is a great learning experience. We can't protect them for ever and we are doing our children a great disservice IMO if we try to. Let them fall off slides and out of trees and discover that you treat heights with respect. Let them discover what to do when you're walking home and someone who looks dodgy is hanging around on the pavement in front of you - don't always collect them because you've decided it's "just not worth the risk".

Ah come on, someone bite, took me ages to type it

Can't bite. I agree.

Agree with you. But I think any decisions have to be adapted to the child. I didn't particularly freak on seeing ds3 sitting at the top of the stairs playing with his cars (17 months) because he's been walking up and down stairs for months now. Dh said "do you think he's safe there, perhaps we should move him", and we did- eventually. DS1 at his age had only taken his first few steps and I would have raced up the stairs to collect him. DS2 (4) is fine to walk alone on the pavement and run ahead because he has some rudimentary road sense (knows to stay on the pavement and not cross until I catch up with him). DS1 isn't allowed outside the front door unless someone is holding onto him at all times.

Think its the same with being left, the risk for each child will be different. DS2 I can imagine leaving fairly early as he's sensible- and although I haven't done it I think already he;d be fine to be left whilst I popped to the letterbox around the corner, ds3 I'm guessing will be older as he's into everything, and ds1 never. It's individual.

My parents used to go out and leave me alone at night in bed, with a neighbour popping in every half hour. I hated it, so would never do that.

The honey one is intersting. I have read somewhere that the risk is really tiny but still in hordes we avoid it for babies. It's like all the advice you get when PG- soft cheese etc. My Mum simply doesn't unsderstand it. When I was a baby I was allergic to Formula and My Mumjust didn't do BFing. I was then fed unpasteurised cows milk straight from the cow (lived on a farm) and nothing wrong with me. In fact we all grew up drinking unpasterurised milk as did any farmers child even when our herd had TB. This is high risk for PG women (can lead to still birth) but farmers wives have probably always done it. So also is sheeps afterbirth (can bring on miscarriage)but again didn't stop my mother and countless neighbours.

Now having told you all this how many of you would take the small probably tiny risk of eating soft cheese when pg or rubbing down a newborn lamb (if you should ever come accross one)when pg?

I wouldn't handle a newborn lamb while p/g because I don't have to. It's a risk I can avoid, completely. Drank unpasteurised milk as a child, because we lived in a farming area. So sad we aren't allowed to buy it now.

Leaving small children alone in the house does involve taking a risk. And it's one I can avoid. House fires aren't that uncommon. Or burglars. But the biggest risk would be upsetting ds or him deciding to turn the taps on/explore the plug sockets/ turn the gas cooker on/ climb out of a window.

This thread has left me thinking about this all day long, I have forgotten about the accident where my co-worker's children died, but after being thinking about it I remembered another thing. In the same job I met another person who was very quiet so never knew much about him until one day when we all were joking about our respective "obsesive-compulsive" behaviours and he mentioned that he checked time after time if the gas hob was turned off, we all joked about him being worried of being blasted until he said that when he was a child he played with the hob and didn't turned the gas off properly, and his 3 yr old sister died, which makes me think that perhaps people don't talk much about these things but accidents do occur. I guess the only ones knowing how bad and common childhood accidents can be are people who work in emergency medical services, etc.

Now, after I have brought new fears to my memory I would like to say that I believe that some accidents will happen to us and some to other people, and I only pray to be spared as long as possible, but I think that you are not really living if you are not prepared to take some risks. I don't believe that watching so much over my DS is going to make him safer, it would actually just prevent him from learning to evaluate risks by himself and would make it more vulnerable in the future. Now, it's so very difficult not to be the forever controlling mother taking care that everything is perfectly safe for DS, but I guess that I have to move out of the picture little by little to let him make his own mistakes, just hope that I had the will and wisdom to know when and how to take such steps.

Englandflag - I dont believe that all accidents are preventable, I appreciate that sometimes they happen and there isn't a damn thing you can do about them.
Car accident - accident
Falling off a slide - accident
My child being injured while being left alone in the house - my fault.
The definition of an accident is "something going wrong unexpectedly". Leaving a three year old child on their own in the house and them being injured isn't an accident in my opinion, as you cannot expect a three year old to comprehend everything they'd need to do to stay safe on their own.

I dont think we should do everything for our children, we should be there to support and look after them, but yes, there is a point you need to cut the apron strings. Yes, older children should be able to walk home from school by themselves. They should be able to play by themselves. Yes, it's part of childhood falling off slides and out of tress, But the OP is asking about leaving a three year old child, and I believe it would be a great disservice to leave them.

I enjoyed watching ds run around in the park today. I was happy to let him go out of sight because I felt it was a safe place for him to be and that he would only go as far as he felt comfortable before coming back. I could see the friend I was with felt uncomfortable about this.

I am struggling between letting him experience this freedom that I rationally know has only a tiny element of risk, and feeling some very powerful emotions of guilt and fear about doing so.

I know if anything did happen to him, I would blame myself for letting him out of my sight. Do mothers always feel like this? Do mothers whose children are abused and hurt, when any reasonable person would expect them to be safe (for example when they were at nursery) also blame themselves? I think in the latter case nobody would blame the mother, but I bet in the former lots would. Why, when the problem in both cases is not that the mother was not there, but that a dangerous and evil person was?

Exactly franny.

elf1981, I've moved on from the 3yo scenario - in a way, I think it's more interesting to look at the kind of age where we as children would have been allowed a great deal more freedom than we allow our own children. Say, 7 or 8. Leaving a 7 year old in the house while you walk to the postbox 2 minutes away is an entirely different proposition to a 3 yo (and I understand that it depends on the child) but there are a very great number of people on MN who wouldn't do it and also wouldn't leave a 7 yo in the car alone while they paid for petrol or popped into a shop. And yet, these very same people pop up on threads discussing what things their parents did that would get them slated on MN now with tales of being left in houses, outside pubs, shops, you name it! I'm genuinely interested in what exactly those people think has changed in terms of risks to children.

According to my mum, we weren't left alone in the house til we were about 14. My older sister claims that she wasn't even allowed to sit in the front of the car until she was 12! So my stand is probably different because I am doing no different to what my parents did.

Ah, is 1981 your birth year? Maybe things were already changing by the time you were 7 or 8 then. I'm pushing 40 (and the youngest) and my oldest sibling is 50, so I guess my parents were of a different generation to yours. I do find it all fascinating though, did you guess??

I don't think the risk has changed (in some cases it has actually reduced) but our awareness of it has.

We used to be driven in my uncle's car without seatbelts. As did many children. And when there were accidents, on the whole, children died, end of. Now they are much more likely to survive car accidents, mainly because people became aware of the risk and started to take steps to reduce it.

Is this still going? Excellent long post earlier EF, btw, but then it was me you were agreeing with.

Well, today my children wee left to explore a Scout camp's adventure park - all scrambling nets, tree trunks slung over pits, tunnels etc. I went to check up on them once and found 3 yo half way across a log slung over a pit - no problem. Then 8 yo slipped at end of tunnel, fell backwards and split his head open on concrete resulting in trip to A&E. This the fourth time he had had his head glued back together. Sigh... experience doesn't seem to be teaching him anything.....

True caligula, but the risk of a child being murdered by a stranger iirc is about the same as it's ever been and yet everyone perceives that the risk has increased dramatically.

Apologies DG, I was too lazy to trawl back

yes, 1981 was my birth year. One sister four years older, the other four years younger.

I do remember being on hols and being able to stay at the activty thingy they had (lots of ball pools and hidey places) with my older sis without my parents, but we were signed in and our by our parents and not allowed to go back to the caravan unless they were collecting us. So we were still with adults, not by ourselves.

hard to generalise a rule on this topic

i let my dd do things i do not ever allow my ds to do - and they are twins

i often get " its not fair "

to which i reply " tough"

shes simply more sensible and capable and thoughtful and shouldnt be punished becuase her brother is errrr not!

god i let my eldest son do and go places at 13 i would never allow the twins to do.

its not only situation dependant its child dependant.

we all do what we feel is best as a parent.

i have a shop at the end of my road...both children are in bed, neither wake up...i have a car and will be gone no more than about 2 minutes....do i dare run out and get the milk or should i wait till morning when i will have to get them both dressed and take them with me????

take them with me.

I know they will be fine. i know that there si nothing that could happen and even if it did i would be there quicker than any ambulance/police car/fire engine ever could but its just not woirth the risk.

I did move my car last night though. i moved it from outside my front door to outside my front door across the street....literally just reversed and then re parked on the otehr side of the street....3 feet away.
I locked the front door and ran from the car back inside when iw as finished.

how many accidents do chidlren have every day even when we are watching them? they are never completly safe and its just not worth the risk.

f and z - I struggle with the letting them out of my sight thing - but I know the problem is me, not the risk. if it's a nice evening at the weekend we'll sometimes go to our local and on the way home dh often tells them they can run home - not a single road to cross, but a corner that means they're out of sight for maybe 1 or 2 minutes. It goes through me, but I know I'm being ridiculous and I have to let them do it. Same with public loos anywhere - again they're prefectly able to go it alone, but god I hate letting them

Because it is against the law, short and simple. If anything happens to him while you are out, you will find yourself in court facing charges. Your job is to take care of him, and sometimes that is inconvient. When I start thinking, for god's sakes nothing will happen if I do this or ignore that I say this to myself, "a few seconds/minutes of carelessness can lead to a lifetime of regret". Heavy I know, but dont' leave a 3 year old alone. What if he wakes up and if running around the house crying for you.

just to add I know there is not minimum age in the UK to leave a child alone and alot of posts say it is not illegal but it is not as simple as that. The british society for the prevention of cruelty to children states that "

Leaving children on their own

There is no law that determines the minimum age that a child can be left alone. However, there is a law about neglecting children and you are legally responsible for the safety of your child. Babies and young children should never be left on their own, however tempting it may seem when a child is asleep and you only plan to be out for a while.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) gives the following advice about leaving children alone:

• Never leave babies or young children home alone (whether sleeping or awake), not even for a few minutes.
• Until the age of about 13 most children are not mature enough to cope with an emergency and should not be left alone for more than a very short time.
• If children do have to be alone, give them clear instructions about what to do if there is a problem. Leave a list of people you trust who they can go to or telephone for help, such as a neighbour or close relative. And remember to put all obvious dangers out of reach before you go (eg. medicines, chemicals, matches or sharp objects).
• No child or young person under 16 should be left alone overnight.

(Taken from Home alone: Advice for parents, published free by the NSPCC leaflet no. 0279).

Reading this, I don't know any 3 year old capable of following or even understanding this advice about how to be safe while alone. So, I believe that it is a false security to think one is safe from the law because it doesn't state an age, but if your child is hurt or worse while left alone (and is only 3) I think you are at serious risk of being charged for neglect. Sorry to go all legal on you but you did ask and I am a lawyer by training and used to criminal prosecutions before babies came along.