going to be a 'bad' mummy later.........

[QueenOfQuotes]

have to take DS1 to his induction afternoon (2nd one - hoping he doesn't throw up like he did last week LOL) at his new school.........thing is DS2 has his sleep at 1pm-3pm - and the induction afternoon starts at 1.30

So I'm going to put DS2 down for his sleep as usual, at 1.30 on the dot grab the monitor, lock the front door and whizz round to the school to drop DS1 off - then whizz back again

no difference, day or night.

You're absolutely right Caligula, it would be grossly unfair to expect dd to babysit day in day out. She doesn't mind doing a bit every few weeks or so which is what it is in our situation. Children should be free to pursue their own activities; their childhoods pass too quickly anyway without that kind of ongoing responsibility.

i understand. it's hard being a parent. god, if we didn't let our hair down once in a while, we would become boring when our kids are with us. we should all have a bit of freedom, and not all of us have the luxury of being able to afford a babysitter or have family help. 14 is a good age to challenge a child, can't do them any harm for their own future.

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panicing about everything doesn't make your kids safe, letting them grow up a bit does. we send them out in the big wide world, travelling to school etc, how safe is home compared to that? much safer i'd say.

"having to run through a burning house making sure you have all your siblings? "

Who said she would have to run through a burning house?? the majority of house fires are caused by carelessly left cigarettes and people messing around with lighters/matches and kitchen fires (caused by unattended chip pans/pans)

• the annual figure for deaths for children in house fires is 32, serious injuries 1200.

Compare that to

"The number of children killed or seriously injured in road traffic accidents in 2003 was 4,100. Of these 2381 were pedestrians. There were 171 child fatalities."

(can't find the most recent figures).

Crikey, Caligula. You could've been describing my childhood, 'cept mine was my half brother (ten years younger) and step dad wanted his leisure time as he was a drunken layabout.

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2170 messages

BLIMEY!!!

This thread is immortal!!!!

Carla :O

would you let this look after your kids though?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Bloody bat got me again!

sniggers

ok... there arne't over 200 messages!

if you add a message ahve a look at the first one...

this has happened on a couple of threads... they seem to start in the middle, and the replies are identical going up and down iyswim... so the actual number of posts is doubled!

I thought that was the case but i've refreshed and refreshed the page and checked it like 8 times and it was telling me the messages were in the 2000's so I figured it must be the case.

Sorry

If you check here MNToweres explain what's going on witht he message count/disappearing messages etc.

well.. yeah there ARE over 2000, but only because they've been doubled iyswim.

the original post is somewhere in the middle, and the replies read in both directions from there!!!

interestingly enough, on the active convos page it still says it has 1000 something!

pmsl soupy!

DOH!!!

the bat got me

I know I should let this thread die, but I've stayed up so late reading the damn thing, pmsl though!

I know both QE and QoQ are pretty strong characters who don't really give a flying fig what people think, but I still want to post in support of them! Really can't be a**ed to debate about it though, sorry. I need to go to bed....

Can we go back to have boring threads about baby pasta so I can get to bed at a reasonable time????

all this talk about 13 year olds babysitting feels very relevant to my situation. I have been pondering in just how many years time I can let my 11 year old look after his nearly 6 year old brother.

tbh, doing my own personal risk assessment, I would feel ok now about leaving ds1 in charge of a sleeping ds2 for an hour or so in the evening if I was 10 minutes away. During the day, I would feel ok about ds1 taking ds2 to watch a children's film at the cinema in Bluewater while I looked in the shops. However, I think generally people I know would feel this is too early and I don't want to risk getting into trouble....

However... I reckon when ds1 is 13 and ds2 is 8, I can think seriously about it then, as long as I can trust them to be responsible together - just 2 years away. Time flies!

I had a friend in a similar (but probably worse) situation to yours, Caligula. She looked after her three younger siblings all through the holidays and after school. She had to really plead with her parents to have any time off. I felt so mad on her behalf. She never forgave her parents for using her like this. She felt very undervalued by them and has not had any contact with her family for years.

tigermoth, you know your own children well enough to know whether to leave them or not. My ds1 is 11 and also very sensible (he also has moments where he is extremely difficult and a complete pain in the backside), but 90% of the time he is lovely and very sensible when the occasion requires it. I would (and have) left him for 20 minutes with one of the younger ones. When he is about 13 or so I would be happy to leave him as the babysitter for a couple of hours if dh and me went out in the evening.

Just to demonstrate the character of dd and ds1 I'd like to share this with you:

ds1 told me this morning that a woman with a toddler in a seat on the back fell off the bike and the baby banged it's head on the floor (luckily wearing a helmet) and the woman's bag spilled all over the floor. dd and ds1 turned back and helped the baby and comforted her whilst the other helped the woman pick all her things up off the floor and asked if she was ok. They did this whilst several other kids of the same age looked on sniggering, thinking that it was pretty funny that the woman had fallen off her bike.

Now I think that shows a level of maturity and I am pretty proud of both of them that they stopped to help and made sure they knew how I felt.

Interesting that you say on your own personal risk assessment you'd think something was OK, Tigermoth, but that you wouldn't do it because other people would think it was bad, and you wouldn't want to get into trouble.

I think one of the results of this hysterical "no risk at all" culture is that it is so profoundly disempowering of parents. I find myself doing all sorts of things all the time which I know to be unnecessary, but I do them because otherwise others will comment. And I'm not the sort who generally cares what others think of me, but in the area of parenting, we feel under so much more critical observation than our parents did.

Sorry, just not ready for this thread to die yet!

"Sorry, just not ready for this thread to die yet!"

• and I thought I was bad LOL

Caligula, I'm with you on your opinion about doing things because of what other people will think.

When ds was born I was terrified that one day he would be taken away from me, because people would think that I wasn't capable of dealing with a baby (cos I'm disabled).

Even now, he's nearly 6, I worry when I take him shopping or out anywhere on my own, because I think some people will believe I can't do it safely. But all his life I've made my own assessments of the risks when we do something together. But I have baulked a couple of times in places where we don't seem to be welcome.