Left DSC home alone

[Work1]

This happened yesterday but I'm still fuming about it to be honest.

I was due in work at 9am, husband starts at 7am so I've been dropping DSC at their holiday club on my way to work a few times when they've been at ours and we've had to go into work. They don't particularly like going but it is what it is.

Anyway yesterday morning DSC (9) was in a foul mood, refusing to get up, point blank refusing to go to club, saying 'make me', saying they were too tired and so on...

Anyway, it got to the point where I was going to be seriously late for work and I had to drop our child off too so I just fucked off and left. I rang DH and told him he'd need to come home from work and deal with it and I left and went to work.

DSC rang his mum and she's furious he was left alone but I am passed caring. They will now need to sort holiday clubs out or time off themselves as I won't be helping with it again (she's dropped them off with me beforehand too to take them to clubs as she starts work earlier than me). No way was I being late for work because of a 9 year olds tantrum and I wasn't dragging him out to the car either. Instead of being furious with me how about being cross with your child for being so naughty?!

Obviously I'm not the only one who thinks it was right.

OP here you are complaining about a 9 year old having a tantrum.

All while you’re a fully grown adult and having a tantrum yourself. Flouncing off to work and leaving a kid by himself.

Don’t you have any self awareness? You are reacting like a toddler. You could remain amicable - but no, you have to have your own little paddy.

This is why us step mums get a bad rep!

Yanbu to think that the parents should be angry with the 9yo rather than you and that your job and getting your dc to nursery is the priority in the morning rather than indulging a tantrum.

If I leave my kids in your care then you're doing me a favour. My 9yo would be getting a bollocking for inconveniencing you.

My kids could be left for an hour at age 9. You know him best so I assume dss is the same too.

Flouncing off to work

You mean just going to my job which is required to pay our bills and feed our children? There was no flouncing, I had to leave so I left.

Had his parents ever left him home alone before? If not did you bother to talk to him about safely doing so or just walk out?

you asked about carrying him out, as his dad was in contact if you where that worried you could have phoned him and told him “I will have to carry X out to the car as he is playing up, you can talk to him tonight” it would have been more preferable to a call saying you where walking out!

You should not have left him in the house on his own, you agreed to be the adult in charge of him and so should have waited for your DH to get back. You could then refuse to do it going forward and insist you DH and DSC's mum put something else in place, but leaving a 9 year old child alone is not really acceptable, what if something had happened. How would you feel if an adult who was responsible for your 9 year old child left them alone, I can see why his Mum was furious.

I don't understand how your employer would see it differently for your step child compared to your own child. As far as employment law goes, your step child would be considered your dependant as he was staying in your house, he doesn't need to be related to you.

For 30-40 mins? Of course you can/should!

she’s a step parent not a martyr! She called the dsd father who came home.

job done.

That is what OP did.

If she could have done one more thing, it would be phoning both his parents with the same message so they BOTH left work and BOTH were inconvenienced.

If I leave my kids in your care then you're doing me a favour. My 9yo would be getting a bollocking for inconveniencing you.

I honestly can't ever imagine leaving my child with someone, them behaving like this and then being annoyed at the person who was looking after them. My child would be grounded for a week for behaving like that and making an adult late for work on purpose and I'd be apologetic as hell to the person they'd done it to.

That just assumes she could physically carry him out, thought. My DSS that age would be way too heavy.

Well, yes.

That's the risk you take when you agreed to watch him.

You don't remove that risk by putting him at risk instead.

Phone his dad while you're still at home and it's clear he's not going to be up dressed and ready to go in the time you need to leave.

And it's not about being a SM. It's about the adult in charge of him, be that a parent, step parent, aunty or neighbour.

It’s interesting how the SM is being compared to a childminder here… as if she were being paid but not providing the service she was being paid for?

Its bloody hard as a SM because you are so often given responsibility with no authority. In fact, the responsibility is positioned as an obligation. There’s much less a SM can generally do to get a recalcitrant child to do anything than a paid childcarer or a parent can do. Even more so when the child knows they can behave badly and mum
will take their side/berate the stepmum.

It sounds like an incredibly stressful situation. And in these situations we don’t always see the other options that might have been better. We don’t recognise that the moment it started, we should have just called the child’s parent and told them they needed to come back and sort the child out. So that is being late because of it and having to leave never became an issue.

I think drawing your boundaries now that it’s been allowed to reach this point is important. The children’s parents have enabled and created a situation
where a 9 year old feels it’s acceptable to behave this way towards his stepmother. So they can deal with the consequences. If they want to benefit from @Work1 ‘s help, they need to make it absolutely clear that he must do as he’s told or they will
impose consequences. They haven’t. Quite the opposite in fact.

I guess, in this regard, it can be like aid childcare. If your child treats his childminder with open contempt ne the parents don’t challenge it (and even reinforce it), then you’ll find yourself without a childminder. They don’t have to put up with that shit. And neither does the OP

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

a child playing up doesn’t justify the adult behaving equally as childishly!

If you'd left a tantrumming 3 year old alone to trash the house for 40 minutes, I could understand their fury.
But a huffy 9 year old in bed? Nah. Sort your kid out, they are old enough to know better and too big to man handle any place they don't want to go.
The parental rage may work in OPs favour though as she won't be asked again and can simply concentrate on her own responsibilities.
As for "the poor child will know how you feel" - well yes, if you behave like a little arsehole then people are not going to be impressed, are they? My 3 year old know this. I'd expect a 9 year old to get it and to be honest, he knew what he was doing and deliberately wound up OP. So if she's not all sunshine's and rainbows towards him then he got what he wanted and what he deserved.

Had his parents ever left him home alone before?

He's been left by DH a couple of times before whilst he's been to the shop for 15 mins or something yes. His mum doesn't like him being left though.

You were, at the time, responsible for the 9 year old's care so YABU to abandon the child and go to work.

All your other issues you and DH and the mother need to resolve separately.

Abandoning a 9 year is always going to BU

It's only childish if you consider it unacceptable to leave a 9 year old alone for a bit, which clearly not everyone does.

It makes no sense to say the OP had nothing in place.

Either she is in a parenting role, and she has the authority to decide that an appropriate response is to leave a child alone for half an hour, or she isn't in a parenting role and she shouldn't be expected to do the drop-off. It's very simple. You cannot put another adult in a role of care for your child, then nit-pick the way they choose to deal with what that child does.

Different if the parents had previously agreed with the OP that the child would never, ever be left alone - but quite clearly, they hadn't, or the OP wouldn't be furious that they're cross with her.

But it doesn't really cut it when it's someone else's child making you late for work does it. Doesn't really wash with my boss that I'm late because my step child refused to get out of bed whilst his actual parents were off at work on time at their own jobs

This. A million times this.
They are at work, not getting into trouble for being late. You are dealing with the stress of a badly behaved child (not yours) although I appreciate you've said he's normally a good kid.
Why should your child and you be late?!
People are acting like you left a toddler wandering the streets for hours.
He's 9. He has a phone. His dad was on his way back. It was 30 minutes.

I'd be furious if I was then getting it in the neck from his mum and I would refuse to do any childcare at all going forwards.

"If her DSC had phoned mum to say she dragged him by his arm to the car.... do you think that she wouldn't have been even more angry?"

I already said that I would have preferred that, @I6344, so no, I don't think she would have been more angry. It is the safest of the 2 scenarios. All she had to do was ask his DF (or DM) what to do.

As I also already, said, in the eyes of the law, OP would have been held responsible if anything had happened to the DSC.

Also, as a step parent, she has the legal right to take time off in an unexpected situation/emergency to take care of her step child so there should be no comeback for OP being late to work. Every employee is entitled to a reasonable amount of time off work to take care of a dependent. A dependent can be a step child, a relative who lives with you, even a flat mate or elderly neighbour. In this case, it is defined as anyone who would rely upon you to help them in the event of an accident or emergency.

And good for you @Work1

perhaps now the kids actual parents will do their job and make their arrangements for dsd and do the grunt work of facilitating it

no fucking way would I have done anything differently to you, and I’d have been extremely clear with h, his ex AND the child that my role a skivvy to them is over. They need to be ashamed of themselves wrt their attitude to you

id have been absolutely mortified if my ds gave anyone anything like this kind of trouble.

They’re 9 not 3. What is it with mums net and leaving children on their own for short periods of time. The child is not going to spontaneously combust, fall over, let randoms into the house. They’re 9.

if a 9 year old hasn’t been taught that they shouldn’t play with fire, if there is a fire get out and call 999 , call 999 if they have an accident etcetc
these days kids have mobiles, and can be in touch with parents at a moments notice

back in 60 and 70s there weren’t after school clubs, summer camps etc…kids were latch key from around 7-8 and some at that age were being expected to look after younger siblings for a while. We were regularly on our own from 3:45pm to 6pm due to working parents.

whatever has happened to common sense

Ok, I cross posted with the OP saying the mum doesn't like the child being left alone. TBH I think in that case, OP, you might have rung her and said something like 'I will have to go in x number of minutes; you and his dad are x + 10 minutes away, sort it out between you'. But it's hard to predict he wouldn't calm down, I think.

IMO the child's mum has a case to be angry with the child's dad, but not with you.

Would she also have not been responsible in the eyes of the law if DSC had been injured by struggling against OP when she was dragging him into the car? There was no way she would have been in the right it seems apart from to be late to work which could have resulted in losing money and getting a warning. How about focusing on putting the blame on the parents who quite frankly have used OP. I'm sure the mum will be kicking herself for getting angry when she realises she will have to pay for someone to ferry HER child around from now on

you might have rung her

I don't really speak to their mum. I'm certainly not going to ring her to ask her permission to do anything. I rang DH, he's DSCs parent as well and he came and sorted it.