What would you think if you were at someones house and saw a lock on the outside of a child's bedroom door?

[msappropriate]

?

What kind of lock? A proper bolt or a little hook and eye type?

I would think they have done what we will be doing when dd1 (8) moves into her own room

Locking the smaller, more annoying child OUT of the bigger childs room so they cant wreck the place

wouldn't be happy really, i'd ask them why it was there

Oh yes and how old is the child?

ah unless it's locked when empty to keep other child out.

I would wonder if they had an autistic child (lots of our rooms have locks on the outside of them- same in friend's houses).

I would think that they were a bit of an escape artist.

But it is normal round here.

good god get me out of here

? depends how well I knew them, if I knew them well I would ask them why its there.
But I would be tempted to try and ask there kids without them knowing.

That they might have a child who wouldn't stay in his/her room so needed to be locked in sometimes - eg during timeout or repeatedly getting out of bed at bedtime - not an ideal thing to do but sometimes everything else has failed. Obviously one would hope it was only used for short periods and someone was keeping an eye/ear out...

we have locks on DS's door and the spare room

they were left by the previous owners

i don't think i would think much of it TBH

We have a lock on the outside of our bathroom door which dates from when ds1 went into his own bed, and had a daytime habit of putting the plug in the sink and turning on the taps. So we had to make sure he didn't do it at night. Nothing more sinister than that.

When I was a child we had a lock on the office door so that my mum could lock her books away. Oh the fun we had when we could reach that lock and she was working in there...

gosh we could have moved into your sisters house and saved the hassle of having to add locks everywhere lapin

Our bathroom has a lock on the outside, but not on the inside.

We have locks too although we don't need to use then anymore unless ds is having a meltdown. My first thought would be that they might have a child with SN.

blimey i'd never lock a child in a room ever, whatever the circumstances

My DS's room has a stairgate on it to keep him in at bed time... isnt that just the same as a locked door?? and thats generally accepted as ok isnt it?

Yep like ours littelapin. DS1 fetches a chair now though and stretches up to try and reach, so the key stays with us (those keys have a special name- screw type ones).

we have an escape artist - he climbs over stairgates and another one sleepwalks so this is the only way to keep them safe. If they need to get up in the night, they knock on the door.

Where is the OP ?

it's very dangerous to lock them in. what if there's a fire

a hook and eye cabin lock.

Good, not all of you would think I was some evil mother.

We put it on to keep our crawling baby out of his big brothers room which is full of lego and playmobil. The door won't actually shut properly on its own. My older boy actually has the door open when he goes to bed as hes going through that phase.

Am having a big party and loads of people will see it and I even thought of putting a note on the door explaining it.

It's also dangerous for them to stand on the bannisters 3 storeys up at 3am

Actually we don't lock ds1 in, but we lock him out of plenty of places. The kitchen is always locked at night (after finding him cooking and tumble drying a plastic periscope at 5am) the front door triple locked, all windows are locked at all times.

We have smoke alarms.