Same, 11 is usually well within the realm of being able to stay home alone for short stretches of time. But the article it links out to says "police officers responding to a noise complaint found two children alone and in need of medical attention." Sounds more like an actual neglect situation than just a kid staying home alone for a few minutes:
>Police responding to a noise complaint from other guests at the hotel at 487 Washington Ave. found a 12-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy unsupervised in the room, police said. Officers described the room as “in complete disarray” with garbage “strewn throughout.” The children appeared to be “victims of maltreatment and in need of medical treatment,” police said.
I suspect that part of the issue with hotel rooms is that the hotels don't want to accept any liability.
In Finland it's normal for kids to stay home alone after school starting at age seven and we don't have a massive number of fires or accidents caused by that. Turns out, when you give kids responsibility, they become... responsible.
I was a latchkey kid in the US in the early 2000s and I was far more independent and self sufficient than most of my peers even in adulthood. Sheltering your kid for their “safety” is horrendous for their development
My son is 21. I made him start taking the public bus home in middle school (after we practiced together.) He was embarrassed because none of the other kids took the public bus.
His senior year of high school (he was 18) he lived mostly on his own at our old house walking distance to his school for 2 weeks while I was at our new house about 25 miles away getting things set up. He, half joking, says I abandoned him...
This summer he has an internship in NYC and he found his own apartment, is paying for it himself (despite me trying), and is figuring out the subway systems all on his own. And he's confident in his ability to navigate all this because he's had the opportunity to be responsible already.
Not exactly the same but when I was in kindergarten I had to take a bus from my aunts house to my daycare facility and then another bus to a bus depot that had around 12 other buses, all went to different schools. I then had to hop on one more bus to get to school. Mind you, these were all school buses, not public transit so less dangerous for a 6 year old but it’s still crazy to me that my mom let me do that. She didn’t really have a choice since she had to work but man the 90s were a different time. Definitely prepared me to take public transit when I got older.
I mean... is it really that crazy? Kids can figure out how to switch buses. I think I had the switching schedule for my favorite local lines memorized before I got to high school.
Interesting. Lots of kids took the city bus home from school when I was that age, including me. I lived in a different neighborhood from my friends, so we didn’t take it together, but it was pretty normal in my area. My spouse was riding a bike 7 miles each way to martial arts classes at age 9.
Of course, we’re in our 40s now, so it was a different generation. Still, this was at about the height of the “stranger danger” panic.
So how is my baby less safe in a hotel room in his crib than he is sleeping upstairs in my house? Hotels have better fire safety than our ancient wooden house, someone could just as well break in here without us noticing...
They're in an unfamiliar space that was not designed for a baby and there are potential risks that you have not accounted for (e.g. the room has not been baby-proofed, might have access to choking or strangling hazards).
You are ALSO in an unfamiliar space, and it is more difficult for you to assess risk than if you were at home. In a hotel, if you keep seeing a person, you assume they are another guest, another tourist, you smile, move on. At home, you would sure as hell notice if the same person kept hanging around your backyard.
A hotel room, by nature, is easily accessible to many people and you are not in control of that access.
Depending on the situation, it is not as easy or quick for you to access your child when an issue comes up. If you are downstairs in the living room and you notice something amiss on your monitor, you go upstairs, you're there in 30 seconds. If you are down the block in a restaurant and you notice something amiss on your monitor, you have to exit the restaurant, make your way back to the hotel room, wait for the elevator, go 6 stories up, etc – it could be precious minutes.
Yeah, I’m not a super paranoid person that things the hotel staff are likely to human traffic my child, but there are a lot of people who theoretically could come into a hotel room with a master key. My husband and my dad are the only other people with a key to my house.
I suppose what makes the difference is the age of the child. A baby in a travel cot is not going to suddenly climb out. Hotels have surveillance, fire safety and security personnel. The length of time to respond again depends on how far away you are. I guess I just don't live in a world where I'm constantly getting ready for someone to break into my hotel room to steal my baby. It's just not something that happens here.
My perspective is that people want to focus on how dangerous unfamiliar places and people are to children when in fact the people who are most likely to hurt children are those who are present in their home...
I very much agree that the age of the child is a big factor.
<1 year old, sometimes things go bad for no real reason (SIDS) and I would want a trusted adult to be "with" the baby (e.g. at least in the same home/next room over) pretty much always.
1+ you start entering the territory where kids have zero self preservation but increasing abilities to fuck their own shit up. leaving a 2, 3, 4 year old unsupervised is madness.
6+ you start having a better understanding of safety rules and better maturity, but it's really variable from kid to kid and also dependent on context, and a hotel room introduces a whole boatload of new context. a 6 year old that knows not to answer the door at home might not understand it the same way in a hotel room. what's obvious to an adult is not always obvious to a child.
the risks to the kid involve both the kid themselves, the room and what's in it, and the potential of other people acting badly. agreed that people seem hyperfocused on kidnappers, but i'm focused on things like... you think you can leave your 5 year old in the room to sleep while you have a cocktail down at the hotel bar, but they wake up, they're bored, they notice the finial on the bedside lamp looks like a big gumball, they unscrew and put it in their mouth and start choking.
a greater risk in one area (e.g. your children are at greater risk of harm at the hands of the people you know well) does not eliminate risk in another area (e.g. other people can indeed hurt them if you leave ample opportunity)
A little different. It was many years ago. There was no monitor, and I believe they left the back door unlocked. (There is also the often mentioned possibility that they drugged their children so they would sleep, and they accidentally gave Madeleine too much.)
I would agree that most 11 year olds could be responsible, but my suspicion here if they needed medical attention, is that
The 11 year old was attempting to get authorities attention by essentially trashing the hotel room and being loud, knowing this would attract attention. This could be because they suffered from prior abuse at home, and this was the first time they were around other adults, or I don't know, maybe they genuinely injured themselves and needed to attract attention but didn't have a cellphone to call 911 with. Hell maybe they didn't even trash the place themselves, maybe the mess was pre existing and done by negligent parents.
The 11 year old was one of the rare children that can't be left alone at that age for whatever reason. Maybe disability. Who knows.
This is so true. My US state has a law explicitly allowing children a reasonable level of independence. When I was a kid, some families here put their 4y/o in charge of two younger siblings, but these days it’s not quite that extreme. My friend had one kid who didn’t want to stay home alone until she was 12, but another child was happy staying home for 30 min or so at 7.
And that’s exactly why my state passed a law explicitly allowing kids a reasonable level of independence. I think that’s the actual language in the law. Something about reasonable for age and maturity. Basically, it’s fine to let your kid walk to the store alone, but not if she’s, like, three.
True but I think the author including the story about 11 year old is disingenuous. Most people would find that to be unreasonable and overstepping. Whereas I imagine most people would object to a baby or toddler left alone.
If I remember the McCann’s, they didn’t use a monitor. They had a rotating group of people going to check on the kids. I suspect that when something like that occurs, there is 10x more risk (not closing/locking the door properly, alcohol consumption, etc.)
It's not exactly. Because the were having drinks like like 2 buildings away, not exactly on monitor range.
The idea is that you can go back to your room in a couple of minutes if you hear or watch something in the monitor. You can talk to them and let them know you'll be there soon. It only work in places were the restaurants are really near.
I haven't use them in hotels (the restaurants are not in the same building as the rooms), just in rentals so exactly like home, but instead of watching tv, I'm swimming in a pool.
Yes, I've been slightly judged by my parents and sister, but she doesn't leave her baby with his sleeping dad and a monitor. People have differnt risks levels even in the same family.
You can use something like a nest camera that has internet signal - so it isn’t radio - and go pretty far. My friends used a wifi cam as a baby monitor.
I think the biggest risk in a hotel is something like a fire - where you have to evacuate the building. Even if there’s a drill- is that a risk someone wants to take? But yes I think the nest cam is a pretty good option w/ good connectivity.
On the other hand, the McCann case is so well-known because of how rare and bizarre it is. There's learning lessons from the past, but there's also over-applying one incident when the vast, vast majority of similar cases don't have the same outcome.
On the other hand: many cases of child abduction, death &/or injury don't get reported in the news like the McCann case did for a number of reasons. E.g. white child, wealthy couple, 'safe' European location so therefore more click-baity, an actual large-scale search (with in-the-moment reporting) happening for this particular child, etc. etc.
I'm not a parent, but this is a very interesting article. I would love to see additional introspection about modern 'moral assessment' we are seeing and its impact on society (or what it says about us).
“Hypervigilance is driven by technology’s availability," is a very interesting premise. And we went from gossiping about people we know in our community, to expanding that to a worldwide circle of people we don't know -- getting obsessed with true crime, hypervigilance, the worst potential outcomes of any choice, and assigning responsibility for all of it, all while not knowing anyone involved which makes it very easy to do a moral assessment while holding ourselves to another standard. Could practically be its own hobby for some people. Which makes it easy to do what the article describes, that it doesn't necessarily mean we changed attitudes, but moral assessment from strangers certainly made people hide actions and opinions more often.
I think the author made a good point that anxiety is a driver of the judgmental attitudes a lot of parents have. It is also very easy to be sanctimonious on social media, which is one big outrage machine. If you’re an influencer blogging about your family I imagine you receive all kinds of criticism, warranted or not. You can easily avoid this by keeping your family life offline.
The issue of hotel staff intervening is more complicated. I get that a maid would not want to be held liable for letting it slide after finding young children alone in a hotel room. Hotel companies are likely to escalate to the police rather than risk any potential lawsuit, even if it seems frivolous.
I’m sorry, but leaving your 1-year-old alone in a hotel room in a foreign country so you can go to dinner is wild to me. Survivors bias is on full display in this article.
It is, and it isn’t. It’s an aberration that she was kidnapped. But a 4 yo (iirc) alone in a hotel room in a place she didn’t know? Anything could happen. A kid that age will wake up in the middle of the night and panic because they’re alone, or decide to wander off, then it only takes a few minutes to fall in a pool and drown, climb on the balcony and fall or whatever. That’s about the age when kids most need supervision. A baby would be safer alone in a room.
What I think the article misses is the (false) sense of security some of these parents feel, that they would be able to reach their kids in time if there's an issue. The parent who shares "she was pretty sure she’d hear [her child opening the door and wandering into the hallway] on the monitor and return to the room before he wandered too far" is absurd. Either your child is supervised or they're not. If you can't reach them in under a minute, I'd say they're not supervised, and young children need to be supervised. If a malicious person enters your hotel room, or your child starts choking on something, and you are floors away and down the block, that is significantly different from being in an adjacent room.
An older kid who just didn't want to eat in the restaurant? Fine.
A kid who is simultaneously too young to join them for dinner in the restaurant, but old enough that they could evacuate themselves from an unfamiliar building in the event of a fire? That's an underpopulated part of the venn diagram in my book.
At home, I could hear a scream from any part of the building and sprint to any other part of the building in twenty seconds or less. In a hotel evacuation where the elevators aren't available and I'm fighting my way up multiple storeys against a staircase full of people moving the other way? The timings are vastly different, even though I'm technically eating in the same building same as at home.
I'm not a parent. And I think there's a huge difference between being in a hotel/on a cruise ship versus being home. While I get the urge to be on vacation while on vacation, I think there's greater inherent risk in leaving children alone in a strange environment.
Hotels/cruise ships you're surrounded by strangers. While at home, you generally know who your neighbors are, for better or for worse. Being in your village, so to speak, is different than being in a town where you know no one (and who they are).
And I found this argument ridiculously flawed:
>"Enslaved or working-class women on farms, by necessity, left their babies in the care of other young children as they went about their work; women working in factories left infants in the care of older women in their tenements, who often looked after several babies at a time. Mothers doing piecework at home might leave their babies in the cradle for long stretches of the day. Working-class women in this situation might “dip a rag in some milk and let them suck on the rag all day,” Golden said. “You didn’t supervise babies at all times.”
They weren't supervised all the time and they DIED!!! Infant mortality was much higher during these times. 1900-1950, than it is now.
1900–1910: Estimated at \(150\) to \(250+\) deaths per \(1,000\) live births. Rates frequently spiked above \(300\) per \(1,000\) in heavily impoverished, overcrowded urban slums and tenement districts. [1, 2]
1910–1920: National averages hovered near \(100\) deaths per \(1,000\) births. Working-class rates were considerably higher, though early U.S. Children’s Bureau interventions and milk distribution programs began to yield improvements in the late 1910s. [1]
1920–1930: The national rate dropped to around \(65\) per \(1,000\) by \(1930\), but the disparity between working-class and wealthy families remained stark due to inadequate housing and sanitation. [1, 2]
1930–1940: National figures fell to roughly \(55\) to \(60\) per \(1,000\). The introduction of early antibiotics (like sulfonamides) and improved water/sewage infrastructure disproportionately benefited the working class by cutting postneonatal infectious diseases. [1, 2, 3]
1940–1950: Rates plummeted further, dropping to about \(30\) to \(40\) per \(1,000\) live births nationwide. [1, 2]
1950–1960: The national infant mortality rate slowed its rate of decline, ending the decade at approximately \(26\) deaths per \(1,000\) births. While overall health improved, the relative mortality gap separating the poorest counties from the wealthiest counties remained largely unchanged during the postwar
Exactly! People love to use the “this is how it was done in the olden days” argument for all sorts of parenting issues, but in those days a lot of children died! We changed our ways for a reason.
The reality is that things change drastically when you have kids. You can’t have carefree dinners on vacation, unless you can arrange childcare. I don’t know it’s because I am an older parent, but it always surprises me how many people think they can have kids and still have the same lifestyle.
So well said. I had a similar argument in an AIO thread about a dad taking a 4yo on a car ride a few blocks down the road without a seatbelt in the front seat. So many people on display with survivors bias, saying "no biggie, we all did this in the 70s and 80s and survived!" But, uh, lots of kids didn't survive. The rate of motor vehicle crash deaths per million children younger than 13 has decreased 81% overall since 1975, in large part because of improved child safety regulations. People don't realize that safety laws are written in blood.
This is without even approaching the gobsmacking entitlement of essentially saying "(Poor) parents used to sacrifice their child's safety (out of necessity), so it's totally okay if I do the same totally voluntarily because I don't want to feel limited by my role as a parent while I'm on vacation"
Turn of the century poor in a city was probably the worst time to be a baby in human history. Because mom was forced away they got cow's milk that was full of tuberculosis and random chemicals. Don't do anything the way they did!!
right? once, my two baby cousins (around 3 to 4 yrs old) woke up from a nap and saw that their parents weren’t responding to their calls and couldn’t find them, so both of them started BAWLING. the catch? they were home. my baby cousin’s parents were doing yard work 😭 kids can panic so easily and act stupidly bc well, they’re KIDS. leaving a 1yr by themselves, in an unfamiliar place like that is fucking bonkers to me
I guess to me that’s why it’s NOT bonkers? Like kids are gonna occasionally be dumb and panic no matter what you do, as long as you’re close by and able to keep an eye on them it’s fine.
I don’t know how to feel about that. On one hand the kids are most likely safe, on the other hand… when you have young kids, there are things you can no longer do, or rarely, or differently, like enjoying a nice dinner with your spouse while on travel. That’s part of having kids. When they grow up you go back to having more freedom.
I think the incident where the parents were down the street, and the dad had a cardiac event was egregious.
Being in the hotel lobby... eh, I think it also depends on the kids, the age, etc. Like if you know your kid is a good sleeper, and once they're down, they're DOWN, going to the hotel restaurant isn't a big deal.
If you know they're runners, or have bad anxiety, or frequently wake up and need help, then that could be a different story.
If there's an older kid, say, 8ish around, and they're a fairly responsible 8 year old, and have a way to contact you, sure.
Even if there's smaller kids in the room too: having some responsibilities over younger siblings occasionally =/= parentified! It teaches soft skills too! We all need to learn how to be responsible for someone younger than us sometime!
Again, all that to say IT DEPENDS.
Every kid is different, and every situation is different.
Parents should be able to use technology to help them parent in ways like these, so they can have fun, and not get burnt out!
And all these parents out here that sit their kids in front of an iPad before 1yr old, are the same people saying parents shouldn't use a baby monitor to keep an eye on their kids when they step away.
I’m shocked at how often this has come up in talking with other parents.
We see this a lot when camping - kids will be sleeping in an RV, trailer or tent and the parents will go several hundred feet away to party with other parents. WiFi & cell is always spotty or nonexistent and more than a few times we’ve heard young kids freak out in nearby campsites with no adults around.
On the other hand, we own acreage and when my kids were little I’d put them down for a nap with a security cam on, then go out on our property to do yardwork, gardening, tend to animals, etc. I was never more than 100 yards away but I’ve gotten roasted in person and online for not having an adult in the house with them at all times.
As in the article, it seems that intent matters when evaluating how risky this behavior is.
Okay, this happened to someone in our community a few years ago and it was horrible. Several families in our neighborhood went on a group camping trip. At a certain point in the night, a couple put their 4 year old to sleep in their tent and returned to the "hang out" campsite a few sites down.
Their 4 year old woke up, called out, heard no one, got scared, couldn't figure out how to use the flashlight they had left her, got out of the tent, and in the dark, walked straight into the metal fire pit container, which was still hot from a fire they had built earlier in the day. It could have been worse: if it was just like, a circle of stones, they would have fallen right into the ashes. As it was, her hands got really badly burned.
All because the parents wanted to go back to the group hangout spot and couldn't accept that having a 4 year old meant that the rest of their evening was probably best spent sitting at their own campsite, within sight of their tent.
Context matters soooo much. Your own home is a controlled environment, and as parents we all have to accept that even with a lot of care and caution involved, there are still risks at home. A hotel room, a campsite, these are not environments that a parent has arranged with safety in mind! Risk potentially increases so much!
i think this is why in some cultures kids go where the adults are instead of parents staying in
as a four year old i regularly camped with my parents and i was asleep in two chairs or a comfy spot in a blanket next to my parents, through music and through laughter
Isn't that basically what happened when the dingo ate the baby? Like, the parents were camping, put the kids down to sleep, and went to chill nearby with the other adults.
Then a fucking dingo ate the baby. And nobody believed the mom and she went to jail, but then it turned out a fucking dingo ate the baby.
I feel like leaving your kids alone so you can drink/use substances is ALWAYS different than leaving them alone for basically any other reason. I have also seen this when camping unfortunately and like… the distance at that point is almost beside the point, if you’re “watching” your kid and also wasted, you’re not watching your kid
My last apartment was directly above our building's gym. The stairs were right in front of our apartment door and went to the gym door, so it felt similar to being on different floors of a house. I always thought about popping down there to workout, with the monitor, during my kid's naptime. I never did though, because I worried something would happen, but also if something did happen, would I be called a bad mom?
It didn't seem riskier than leaving your kid on the top floor and working out in your basement home gym, but somehow them being distinctly different spaces felt like an important distinction. But it also feels like overthinking and that the exercise probably would've benefitted me.
No, you would not be a bad mom. IMO, these articles fail to address how much misogyny is coated in "justice for children". Your situation sounds extremely reasonable, and heck you probably would be a better mother for being able to work out and have some you time.
Yes, I totally agree! The pressure on moms to be 100% physically and emotionally present with zero lapses is exhausting. I was going to add that fears such as "am I a bad mom for exercising downstairs during naptime" are part of why moms are so stressed and burnt out nowadays.
Not a parent yet, but at the age where my cohort is reproducing. We talk so much about wanting a village, but when the village reacts in ways we don't agree with, there are riots in the streets.
Know your kid, know your surroundings, know the neighborhood.
This is a slippery slope. I personally would never leave my child (I have a 3 year old) alone. I can recall getting home from school as a latchkey kid and not being babysat beyond the age of about 7 or 8. But little children can and should not be left unsupervised for hours especially in an unknown to you location like a foreign country. I just don’t like the taste of it!
What I'm getting from the comments is that because of Madeleine McCann (one child who disappeared 20 years ago) nobody should leave their kid to sleep alone. How is the hotel restaurant downstairs from your room different from leaving your kid to sleep upstairs while you go to do something in your garage? Your kid could fall out the window or set fire to the house or choke on a grape even at home.
Anyway, I come from a culture where 7-year-olds are expected to get themselves ready for school, walk to school, walk home from school and wait at home until their parents return from work. Both parents work full time.
My experience having worked with kids from several European countries is that our Finnish system results in kids being much more responsible and mature than kids from cultures that don't afford their children this freedom.
A seven-year old is of course a different thing than a baby, but as for babies and toddlers, we regularly leave them outside to sleep with a baby monitor. I'm usually napping inside while my baby is sleeping outside. No outside-sleeping Finnish baby has been kidnapped during my lifetime.
Most kids in the US can’t walk to school at all. They’d be run over by distracted drivers. It isn’t just culture, but our poor infrastructure built around using only a car as transportation.
"So that night, instead of schlepping our little one to dinner or ordering in, as we had elsewhere, we fed our daughter early, put her down at 7 p.m., and brought our baby monitor with us to eat at the pasta place two floors down."
I see nothing wrong with this, and it sounds like you can run quickly in case of emergency. Heck, if more people did this- maybe there wouldn't be such high rates of anxiety, particularly around mothers. I recently made a new mom friend who went to Mexico with her husband and baby. They did the monitor thing when they had a room that faced the pool, two flights of stairs away. The monitor picked up signal and they were watching it like a hawk.
Kids can get into accidents in their own home. Look at that influencer, Emilie Kiser. Her husband was literally home when their 3 year old fell into an unsecured pool. At their house.
Yeah, it was such a sad story. Apparently they didn't use a pool fence because they didn't like the 'aesthetics' of it & didn't even have properly locking doors (or door alarms) to the back yard / pool area. The dad was inside watching sports, watching their younger baby & using a gambling app on his phone while he left the 3 year old out to the yard/pool area unsupervised. The poor little boy drowned.
10000%, and they paid the consequence. Their own home had more severe risk by having their toddler unsupervised near an unsecured pool outside, then a 1 year old sound asleep in their travel cot while mom and dad ate dinner two floors down. The cot is the safest spot for them, assuming there wasn't anything like a curling iron or clothes iron being left on (fire risk).
Even before I had a kid, I was always mindful of leaving things plugged in, leaving the stove on (which I did once when I was single-ran home at lunch to check and learned my lesson) etc. So I'm very careful, as is my husband. But you have no way to know if the people in the room next to you are as careful. That's why I'd never have left my daughter alone in a hotel room as a baby.
I don't think that Emilie Kiser and her husband are a good example. They were not following pool safety rules, their followers kept warning them and they kept ignoring them. Dad knowingly left the child by the pool alone and was placing bets inside. It wasn't an accident, it was negligence. They thought it couldn't happen to them.
Do people really watch monitors like hawks though? I knew I would never be able to do that, so I never relied on a monitor as childcare. It doesn’t even sound enjoyable!
Same! But also I'm old(er) so I think 25 years ago, maybe it was okay I didn't have a monitor?
My MIL did want us to get one, but I explained to her that there was nowhere in our 600 sqft home that I wouldn't be able to hear the child.
I guess my "freedom" was less valuable to me than being instantly available for my child. That was my choice. And others may choose differently--that is okay! But monitor as babysitter was definitely not something I was personally comfortable with
I'm a single mum of twins and have been since they were born. I also work at a large sporting and entertainment complex where lots of families attend.
On the surface it all seems reasonable, but my issues are with responsibility and blaming others for situations we find ourselves in.
If there was a fire and (god forbid) kids died, then blame is going to be attributed. Will it fall to the parents, the hotel owners, the fire alarm manufacturer, the hotel reception?
At my venue I'm going to be mindful of kids that get lost or mums that need help, but sorry you chose to bring a child here and it's your responsibility to ensure that child is looked after.
It's not my job to make sure your kid doesn't get lost, or hurt themselves or choke on popcorn because you left them to get a drink or visit friends in another seat.
Babysitting is not in my job description, I don't get paid for it and I'm not doing it.
If I see a child under 10 deliberatly left alone, I call the on-site police.
Being a parent IS about making sacrifices. These include limiting vacations, evenings out to those you do when your kids are somewhere safe (ie supervised by a responsible person).
I didn’t finish reading it it’s so LONG even for long reads, maybe it’s just too boring?
Anyway I know yall remember Madeline McCann- but what about that couple where the husband had a heart attack at a hotel during dinner and the mom also went in the ambulance with him?
The dad passed away and the mom got charged with neglect. I don’t know how that ended up- but emergencies happen!
Yikes maybe I click the wrong ones. My favorite in the last few months was the one written by a woman whose sister was dealing with addiction and the author’s parents were raising the grandkids. That one was thorough without being too long for me.
I would never leave my baby anywhere that my eyes, or the eyes of her aunt, cannot see, Just the thought of leaving my child (let alone a baby) in some hotel room, with some stupid whatever (thank god that stupidity has not taken off in my country), makes me wish I was never born. No person capable of something like that (I am not reading that stupid story) deserves to be a parent.
Oh yeah, that's fair. I wasn't thinking it was that extreme, but you are right.
Tbh, i thought she meant like, someone was always with the kid, but not literally for every moment. But I was reading into that statement what I wanted to (ie., was not thinking "taking a piss" = unattended child). Was more thinking she just meant, like, in the house with
raphaellaskies | a day ago
The eleven-year-old anecdote is crazy. My cousins and I got to chill in the hotel room alone when we were younger than that!
parachutecord | a day ago
Same, 11 is usually well within the realm of being able to stay home alone for short stretches of time. But the article it links out to says "police officers responding to a noise complaint found two children alone and in need of medical attention." Sounds more like an actual neglect situation than just a kid staying home alone for a few minutes:
>Police responding to a noise complaint from other guests at the hotel at 487 Washington Ave. found a 12-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy unsupervised in the room, police said. Officers described the room as “in complete disarray” with garbage “strewn throughout.” The children appeared to be “victims of maltreatment and in need of medical treatment,” police said.
I suspect that part of the issue with hotel rooms is that the hotels don't want to accept any liability.
DeeperEnd84 | a day ago
In Finland it's normal for kids to stay home alone after school starting at age seven and we don't have a massive number of fires or accidents caused by that. Turns out, when you give kids responsibility, they become... responsible.
Glad-Pollution-4346 | a day ago
I was a latchkey kid in the US in the early 2000s and I was far more independent and self sufficient than most of my peers even in adulthood. Sheltering your kid for their “safety” is horrendous for their development
punctuation_welfare | 20 hours ago
I’ve said it before, if I raised my kids the way I was raised, CPS would take them away immediately. And I came from a good family.
QualityKatie | 11 hours ago
Same with me. Full stop.
Mother-Pen | 20 hours ago
My son is 21. I made him start taking the public bus home in middle school (after we practiced together.) He was embarrassed because none of the other kids took the public bus.
His senior year of high school (he was 18) he lived mostly on his own at our old house walking distance to his school for 2 weeks while I was at our new house about 25 miles away getting things set up. He, half joking, says I abandoned him...
This summer he has an internship in NYC and he found his own apartment, is paying for it himself (despite me trying), and is figuring out the subway systems all on his own. And he's confident in his ability to navigate all this because he's had the opportunity to be responsible already.
itsmikaybitch | 19 hours ago
Not exactly the same but when I was in kindergarten I had to take a bus from my aunts house to my daycare facility and then another bus to a bus depot that had around 12 other buses, all went to different schools. I then had to hop on one more bus to get to school. Mind you, these were all school buses, not public transit so less dangerous for a 6 year old but it’s still crazy to me that my mom let me do that. She didn’t really have a choice since she had to work but man the 90s were a different time. Definitely prepared me to take public transit when I got older.
standish_ | 18 hours ago
I mean... is it really that crazy? Kids can figure out how to switch buses. I think I had the switching schedule for my favorite local lines memorized before I got to high school.
Bright_Ices | 16 hours ago
Interesting. Lots of kids took the city bus home from school when I was that age, including me. I lived in a different neighborhood from my friends, so we didn’t take it together, but it was pretty normal in my area. My spouse was riding a bike 7 miles each way to martial arts classes at age 9.
Of course, we’re in our 40s now, so it was a different generation. Still, this was at about the height of the “stranger danger” panic.
TheAskewOne | a day ago
Of course. But a 11 yo in their own home is fully different from a toddler in a hotel room in a foreign country.
DeeperEnd84 | a day ago
So how is my baby less safe in a hotel room in his crib than he is sleeping upstairs in my house? Hotels have better fire safety than our ancient wooden house, someone could just as well break in here without us noticing...
parachutecord | a day ago
They're in an unfamiliar space that was not designed for a baby and there are potential risks that you have not accounted for (e.g. the room has not been baby-proofed, might have access to choking or strangling hazards).
You are ALSO in an unfamiliar space, and it is more difficult for you to assess risk than if you were at home. In a hotel, if you keep seeing a person, you assume they are another guest, another tourist, you smile, move on. At home, you would sure as hell notice if the same person kept hanging around your backyard.
A hotel room, by nature, is easily accessible to many people and you are not in control of that access.
Depending on the situation, it is not as easy or quick for you to access your child when an issue comes up. If you are downstairs in the living room and you notice something amiss on your monitor, you go upstairs, you're there in 30 seconds. If you are down the block in a restaurant and you notice something amiss on your monitor, you have to exit the restaurant, make your way back to the hotel room, wait for the elevator, go 6 stories up, etc – it could be precious minutes.
Lost_Garden_8639 | 23 hours ago
Yeah, I’m not a super paranoid person that things the hotel staff are likely to human traffic my child, but there are a lot of people who theoretically could come into a hotel room with a master key. My husband and my dad are the only other people with a key to my house.
DeeperEnd84 | a day ago
I suppose what makes the difference is the age of the child. A baby in a travel cot is not going to suddenly climb out. Hotels have surveillance, fire safety and security personnel. The length of time to respond again depends on how far away you are. I guess I just don't live in a world where I'm constantly getting ready for someone to break into my hotel room to steal my baby. It's just not something that happens here.
My perspective is that people want to focus on how dangerous unfamiliar places and people are to children when in fact the people who are most likely to hurt children are those who are present in their home...
parachutecord | a day ago
I very much agree that the age of the child is a big factor.
<1 year old, sometimes things go bad for no real reason (SIDS) and I would want a trusted adult to be "with" the baby (e.g. at least in the same home/next room over) pretty much always.
1+ you start entering the territory where kids have zero self preservation but increasing abilities to fuck their own shit up. leaving a 2, 3, 4 year old unsupervised is madness.
6+ you start having a better understanding of safety rules and better maturity, but it's really variable from kid to kid and also dependent on context, and a hotel room introduces a whole boatload of new context. a 6 year old that knows not to answer the door at home might not understand it the same way in a hotel room. what's obvious to an adult is not always obvious to a child.
the risks to the kid involve both the kid themselves, the room and what's in it, and the potential of other people acting badly. agreed that people seem hyperfocused on kidnappers, but i'm focused on things like... you think you can leave your 5 year old in the room to sleep while you have a cocktail down at the hotel bar, but they wake up, they're bored, they notice the finial on the bedside lamp looks like a big gumball, they unscrew and put it in their mouth and start choking.
a greater risk in one area (e.g. your children are at greater risk of harm at the hands of the people you know well) does not eliminate risk in another area (e.g. other people can indeed hurt them if you leave ample opportunity)
ario62 | 12 hours ago
Oof. Idk, ask Madeline mccanns parents
Pale-Fee-2679 | 4 hours ago
A little different. It was many years ago. There was no monitor, and I believe they left the back door unlocked. (There is also the often mentioned possibility that they drugged their children so they would sleep, and they accidentally gave Madeleine too much.)
Monitors are a game changer.
purpleplatapi | 22 hours ago
I would agree that most 11 year olds could be responsible, but my suspicion here if they needed medical attention, is that
The 11 year old was attempting to get authorities attention by essentially trashing the hotel room and being loud, knowing this would attract attention. This could be because they suffered from prior abuse at home, and this was the first time they were around other adults, or I don't know, maybe they genuinely injured themselves and needed to attract attention but didn't have a cellphone to call 911 with. Hell maybe they didn't even trash the place themselves, maybe the mess was pre existing and done by negligent parents.
The 11 year old was one of the rare children that can't be left alone at that age for whatever reason. Maybe disability. Who knows.
Bright_Ices | 16 hours ago
This is so true. My US state has a law explicitly allowing children a reasonable level of independence. When I was a kid, some families here put their 4y/o in charge of two younger siblings, but these days it’s not quite that extreme. My friend had one kid who didn’t want to stay home alone until she was 12, but another child was happy staying home for 30 min or so at 7.
XelaNiba | 18 hours ago
In the US, parents have been arrested for letting their kids walk to the store.
Bright_Ices | 16 hours ago
And that’s exactly why my state passed a law explicitly allowing kids a reasonable level of independence. I think that’s the actual language in the law. Something about reasonable for age and maturity. Basically, it’s fine to let your kid walk to the store alone, but not if she’s, like, three.
ItJustWontDo242 | a day ago
Everyone whines about helicopter parents but then complains about stuff like this.
hahasadface | 5 hours ago
True but I think the author including the story about 11 year old is disingenuous. Most people would find that to be unreasonable and overstepping. Whereas I imagine most people would object to a baby or toddler left alone.
zygoma_phile | a day ago
All I could think reading that intro is “That’s exactly what Madeline McCann’s parents did.”
ladyluck754 | 23 hours ago
If I remember the McCann’s, they didn’t use a monitor. They had a rotating group of people going to check on the kids. I suspect that when something like that occurs, there is 10x more risk (not closing/locking the door properly, alcohol consumption, etc.)
DeadWishUpon | 23 hours ago
It's not exactly. Because the were having drinks like like 2 buildings away, not exactly on monitor range.
The idea is that you can go back to your room in a couple of minutes if you hear or watch something in the monitor. You can talk to them and let them know you'll be there soon. It only work in places were the restaurants are really near.
I haven't use them in hotels (the restaurants are not in the same building as the rooms), just in rentals so exactly like home, but instead of watching tv, I'm swimming in a pool.
Yes, I've been slightly judged by my parents and sister, but she doesn't leave her baby with his sleeping dad and a monitor. People have differnt risks levels even in the same family.
cranberryjuiceicepop | 23 hours ago
You can use something like a nest camera that has internet signal - so it isn’t radio - and go pretty far. My friends used a wifi cam as a baby monitor.
DeadWishUpon | 23 hours ago
Thanks, I will look into it.
cranberryjuiceicepop | 20 hours ago
I think the biggest risk in a hotel is something like a fire - where you have to evacuate the building. Even if there’s a drill- is that a risk someone wants to take? But yes I think the nest cam is a pretty good option w/ good connectivity.
GhostOrchid22 | a day ago
And exactly how they rationalized it.
BeanEireannach | 23 hours ago
SAME. Lessons not being learned from the past.
Quouar | 21 hours ago
On the other hand, the McCann case is so well-known because of how rare and bizarre it is. There's learning lessons from the past, but there's also over-applying one incident when the vast, vast majority of similar cases don't have the same outcome.
BeanEireannach | 21 hours ago
On the other hand: many cases of child abduction, death &/or injury don't get reported in the news like the McCann case did for a number of reasons. E.g. white child, wealthy couple, 'safe' European location so therefore more click-baity, an actual large-scale search (with in-the-moment reporting) happening for this particular child, etc. etc.
MaterialWillingness2 | 23 hours ago
If they had a baby monitor, how come they didn't hear the intruder?
magkruppe | 22 hours ago
and they didn't do anything wrong
fastidiousavocado | a day ago
I'm not a parent, but this is a very interesting article. I would love to see additional introspection about modern 'moral assessment' we are seeing and its impact on society (or what it says about us).
“Hypervigilance is driven by technology’s availability," is a very interesting premise. And we went from gossiping about people we know in our community, to expanding that to a worldwide circle of people we don't know -- getting obsessed with true crime, hypervigilance, the worst potential outcomes of any choice, and assigning responsibility for all of it, all while not knowing anyone involved which makes it very easy to do a moral assessment while holding ourselves to another standard. Could practically be its own hobby for some people. Which makes it easy to do what the article describes, that it doesn't necessarily mean we changed attitudes, but moral assessment from strangers certainly made people hide actions and opinions more often.
GlitteringFlame888 | a day ago
In many situations, but not all, modern parents need to mind their business.
PerfectPrescription | a day ago
I think the author made a good point that anxiety is a driver of the judgmental attitudes a lot of parents have. It is also very easy to be sanctimonious on social media, which is one big outrage machine. If you’re an influencer blogging about your family I imagine you receive all kinds of criticism, warranted or not. You can easily avoid this by keeping your family life offline.
The issue of hotel staff intervening is more complicated. I get that a maid would not want to be held liable for letting it slide after finding young children alone in a hotel room. Hotel companies are likely to escalate to the police rather than risk any potential lawsuit, even if it seems frivolous.
metadatame | a day ago
Totally agree.
LouCat10 | a day ago
I’m sorry, but leaving your 1-year-old alone in a hotel room in a foreign country so you can go to dinner is wild to me. Survivors bias is on full display in this article.
TheAskewOne | a day ago
The McCanns got hell for doing this.
[OP] comingupmilhaus | a day ago
Devils advocate, the reason Madeline McCann’s case is so notable is because it’s such an aberration
TheAskewOne | a day ago
It is, and it isn’t. It’s an aberration that she was kidnapped. But a 4 yo (iirc) alone in a hotel room in a place she didn’t know? Anything could happen. A kid that age will wake up in the middle of the night and panic because they’re alone, or decide to wander off, then it only takes a few minutes to fall in a pool and drown, climb on the balcony and fall or whatever. That’s about the age when kids most need supervision. A baby would be safer alone in a room.
thenightitgiveth | a day ago
Even worse, she wasn’t alone. Her younger siblings (2yo twins) were left in the hotel room too.
AmethystMercy | 4 hours ago
I think they were 1 year olds, but literal babies at any rate.
Physical_Treacle9950 | 21 hours ago
They also didn’t use a monitor and instead were “checking” the room every once in awhile
parachutecord | a day ago
Agreed, survivors bias in full effect.
What I think the article misses is the (false) sense of security some of these parents feel, that they would be able to reach their kids in time if there's an issue. The parent who shares "she was pretty sure she’d hear [her child opening the door and wandering into the hallway] on the monitor and return to the room before he wandered too far" is absurd. Either your child is supervised or they're not. If you can't reach them in under a minute, I'd say they're not supervised, and young children need to be supervised. If a malicious person enters your hotel room, or your child starts choking on something, and you are floors away and down the block, that is significantly different from being in an adjacent room.
tourmalineforest | 17 hours ago
How do you feel about the parents who do this who are specifically going down and eating at a restaurant that’s in the hotel?
ceelo_purple | 11 hours ago
An older kid who just didn't want to eat in the restaurant? Fine.
A kid who is simultaneously too young to join them for dinner in the restaurant, but old enough that they could evacuate themselves from an unfamiliar building in the event of a fire? That's an underpopulated part of the venn diagram in my book.
At home, I could hear a scream from any part of the building and sprint to any other part of the building in twenty seconds or less. In a hotel evacuation where the elevators aren't available and I'm fighting my way up multiple storeys against a staircase full of people moving the other way? The timings are vastly different, even though I'm technically eating in the same building same as at home.
arianrhodd | 23 hours ago
I'm not a parent. And I think there's a huge difference between being in a hotel/on a cruise ship versus being home. While I get the urge to be on vacation while on vacation, I think there's greater inherent risk in leaving children alone in a strange environment.
Hotels/cruise ships you're surrounded by strangers. While at home, you generally know who your neighbors are, for better or for worse. Being in your village, so to speak, is different than being in a town where you know no one (and who they are).
And I found this argument ridiculously flawed:
>"Enslaved or working-class women on farms, by necessity, left their babies in the care of other young children as they went about their work; women working in factories left infants in the care of older women in their tenements, who often looked after several babies at a time. Mothers doing piecework at home might leave their babies in the cradle for long stretches of the day. Working-class women in this situation might “dip a rag in some milk and let them suck on the rag all day,” Golden said. “You didn’t supervise babies at all times.”
They weren't supervised all the time and they DIED!!! Infant mortality was much higher during these times. 1900-1950, than it is now.
LouCat10 | 21 hours ago
Exactly! People love to use the “this is how it was done in the olden days” argument for all sorts of parenting issues, but in those days a lot of children died! We changed our ways for a reason.
The reality is that things change drastically when you have kids. You can’t have carefree dinners on vacation, unless you can arrange childcare. I don’t know it’s because I am an older parent, but it always surprises me how many people think they can have kids and still have the same lifestyle.
parachutecord | 21 hours ago
So well said. I had a similar argument in an AIO thread about a dad taking a 4yo on a car ride a few blocks down the road without a seatbelt in the front seat. So many people on display with survivors bias, saying "no biggie, we all did this in the 70s and 80s and survived!" But, uh, lots of kids didn't survive. The rate of motor vehicle crash deaths per million children younger than 13 has decreased 81% overall since 1975, in large part because of improved child safety regulations. People don't realize that safety laws are written in blood.
This is without even approaching the gobsmacking entitlement of essentially saying "(Poor) parents used to sacrifice their child's safety (out of necessity), so it's totally okay if I do the same totally voluntarily because I don't want to feel limited by my role as a parent while I'm on vacation"
InvisibleEar | 7 hours ago
Turn of the century poor in a city was probably the worst time to be a baby in human history. Because mom was forced away they got cow's milk that was full of tuberculosis and random chemicals. Don't do anything the way they did!!
vy-neru | a day ago
right? once, my two baby cousins (around 3 to 4 yrs old) woke up from a nap and saw that their parents weren’t responding to their calls and couldn’t find them, so both of them started BAWLING. the catch? they were home. my baby cousin’s parents were doing yard work 😭 kids can panic so easily and act stupidly bc well, they’re KIDS. leaving a 1yr by themselves, in an unfamiliar place like that is fucking bonkers to me
tourmalineforest | a day ago
I guess to me that’s why it’s NOT bonkers? Like kids are gonna occasionally be dumb and panic no matter what you do, as long as you’re close by and able to keep an eye on them it’s fine.
magkruppe | 21 hours ago
ok they cried and...? what's the big deal
TheAskewOne | a day ago
I don’t know how to feel about that. On one hand the kids are most likely safe, on the other hand… when you have young kids, there are things you can no longer do, or rarely, or differently, like enjoying a nice dinner with your spouse while on travel. That’s part of having kids. When they grow up you go back to having more freedom.
SpooktasticFam | 21 hours ago
I agree, it's definitely nuanced.
I think the incident where the parents were down the street, and the dad had a cardiac event was egregious.
Being in the hotel lobby... eh, I think it also depends on the kids, the age, etc. Like if you know your kid is a good sleeper, and once they're down, they're DOWN, going to the hotel restaurant isn't a big deal.
If you know they're runners, or have bad anxiety, or frequently wake up and need help, then that could be a different story.
If there's an older kid, say, 8ish around, and they're a fairly responsible 8 year old, and have a way to contact you, sure.
Even if there's smaller kids in the room too: having some responsibilities over younger siblings occasionally =/= parentified! It teaches soft skills too! We all need to learn how to be responsible for someone younger than us sometime!
Again, all that to say IT DEPENDS.
Every kid is different, and every situation is different.
Parents should be able to use technology to help them parent in ways like these, so they can have fun, and not get burnt out!
And all these parents out here that sit their kids in front of an iPad before 1yr old, are the same people saying parents shouldn't use a baby monitor to keep an eye on their kids when they step away.
Okay.
winecherry | 9 hours ago
fantastic point about having slightly older kids take care occasionally of younger ones is a good thing!
i think having to soothe a younger sibiling or cousin that fell down (i.e) is an appropriate responsibility that can help the kid develop emotionally
Ok_Abalone_8344 | a day ago
I’m shocked at how often this has come up in talking with other parents.
We see this a lot when camping - kids will be sleeping in an RV, trailer or tent and the parents will go several hundred feet away to party with other parents. WiFi & cell is always spotty or nonexistent and more than a few times we’ve heard young kids freak out in nearby campsites with no adults around.
On the other hand, we own acreage and when my kids were little I’d put them down for a nap with a security cam on, then go out on our property to do yardwork, gardening, tend to animals, etc. I was never more than 100 yards away but I’ve gotten roasted in person and online for not having an adult in the house with them at all times.
As in the article, it seems that intent matters when evaluating how risky this behavior is.
parachutecord | 23 hours ago
Okay, this happened to someone in our community a few years ago and it was horrible. Several families in our neighborhood went on a group camping trip. At a certain point in the night, a couple put their 4 year old to sleep in their tent and returned to the "hang out" campsite a few sites down.
Their 4 year old woke up, called out, heard no one, got scared, couldn't figure out how to use the flashlight they had left her, got out of the tent, and in the dark, walked straight into the metal fire pit container, which was still hot from a fire they had built earlier in the day. It could have been worse: if it was just like, a circle of stones, they would have fallen right into the ashes. As it was, her hands got really badly burned.
All because the parents wanted to go back to the group hangout spot and couldn't accept that having a 4 year old meant that the rest of their evening was probably best spent sitting at their own campsite, within sight of their tent.
Context matters soooo much. Your own home is a controlled environment, and as parents we all have to accept that even with a lot of care and caution involved, there are still risks at home. A hotel room, a campsite, these are not environments that a parent has arranged with safety in mind! Risk potentially increases so much!
winecherry | 9 hours ago
i think this is why in some cultures kids go where the adults are instead of parents staying in
as a four year old i regularly camped with my parents and i was asleep in two chairs or a comfy spot in a blanket next to my parents, through music and through laughter
Tink50378 | 20 hours ago
Isn't that basically what happened when the dingo ate the baby? Like, the parents were camping, put the kids down to sleep, and went to chill nearby with the other adults.
Then a fucking dingo ate the baby. And nobody believed the mom and she went to jail, but then it turned out a fucking dingo ate the baby.
tourmalineforest | a day ago
I feel like leaving your kids alone so you can drink/use substances is ALWAYS different than leaving them alone for basically any other reason. I have also seen this when camping unfortunately and like… the distance at that point is almost beside the point, if you’re “watching” your kid and also wasted, you’re not watching your kid
Pheighthe | 21 hours ago
>>>>All states are required by federal law to operate hotlines that make it very easy to report suspected abuse or neglect
This author did not research well. No law requires this. The federal government provides funding to states that choose to do this.
The author needs to pay more attention to detail. First she gets the location in the 2016 survey wrong, now she’s just making up laws.
element-woman | a day ago
My last apartment was directly above our building's gym. The stairs were right in front of our apartment door and went to the gym door, so it felt similar to being on different floors of a house. I always thought about popping down there to workout, with the monitor, during my kid's naptime. I never did though, because I worried something would happen, but also if something did happen, would I be called a bad mom?
It didn't seem riskier than leaving your kid on the top floor and working out in your basement home gym, but somehow them being distinctly different spaces felt like an important distinction. But it also feels like overthinking and that the exercise probably would've benefitted me.
ladyluck754 | a day ago
No, you would not be a bad mom. IMO, these articles fail to address how much misogyny is coated in "justice for children". Your situation sounds extremely reasonable, and heck you probably would be a better mother for being able to work out and have some you time.
element-woman | 23 hours ago
Yes, I totally agree! The pressure on moms to be 100% physically and emotionally present with zero lapses is exhausting. I was going to add that fears such as "am I a bad mom for exercising downstairs during naptime" are part of why moms are so stressed and burnt out nowadays.
venus_arises | 23 hours ago
Not a parent yet, but at the age where my cohort is reproducing. We talk so much about wanting a village, but when the village reacts in ways we don't agree with, there are riots in the streets.
Know your kid, know your surroundings, know the neighborhood.
tellmeitsagift | a day ago
This is a slippery slope. I personally would never leave my child (I have a 3 year old) alone. I can recall getting home from school as a latchkey kid and not being babysat beyond the age of about 7 or 8. But little children can and should not be left unsupervised for hours especially in an unknown to you location like a foreign country. I just don’t like the taste of it!
DeeperEnd84 | a day ago
What I'm getting from the comments is that because of Madeleine McCann (one child who disappeared 20 years ago) nobody should leave their kid to sleep alone. How is the hotel restaurant downstairs from your room different from leaving your kid to sleep upstairs while you go to do something in your garage? Your kid could fall out the window or set fire to the house or choke on a grape even at home.
Anyway, I come from a culture where 7-year-olds are expected to get themselves ready for school, walk to school, walk home from school and wait at home until their parents return from work. Both parents work full time.
My experience having worked with kids from several European countries is that our Finnish system results in kids being much more responsible and mature than kids from cultures that don't afford their children this freedom.
A seven-year old is of course a different thing than a baby, but as for babies and toddlers, we regularly leave them outside to sleep with a baby monitor. I'm usually napping inside while my baby is sleeping outside. No outside-sleeping Finnish baby has been kidnapped during my lifetime.
cranberryjuiceicepop | 23 hours ago
Most kids in the US can’t walk to school at all. They’d be run over by distracted drivers. It isn’t just culture, but our poor infrastructure built around using only a car as transportation.
stormchaser405 | 22 hours ago
Anyone have a gift link?
LaiskaKate | 21 hours ago
https://removepaywalls.com/https://slate.com/life/2025/04/baby-monitor-iphone-children-parenting-family-hotels.html
stormchaser405 | 21 hours ago
Thanks!
ladyluck754 | a day ago
"So that night, instead of schlepping our little one to dinner or ordering in, as we had elsewhere, we fed our daughter early, put her down at 7 p.m., and brought our baby monitor with us to eat at the pasta place two floors down."
I see nothing wrong with this, and it sounds like you can run quickly in case of emergency. Heck, if more people did this- maybe there wouldn't be such high rates of anxiety, particularly around mothers. I recently made a new mom friend who went to Mexico with her husband and baby. They did the monitor thing when they had a room that faced the pool, two flights of stairs away. The monitor picked up signal and they were watching it like a hawk.
Kids can get into accidents in their own home. Look at that influencer, Emilie Kiser. Her husband was literally home when their 3 year old fell into an unsecured pool. At their house.
parachutecord | 23 hours ago
leaving a pool unsecured in a home with a 3 year old is an absolutely insane risk to take
BeanEireannach | 23 hours ago
Yeah, it was such a sad story. Apparently they didn't use a pool fence because they didn't like the 'aesthetics' of it & didn't even have properly locking doors (or door alarms) to the back yard / pool area. The dad was inside watching sports, watching their younger baby & using a gambling app on his phone while he left the 3 year old out to the yard/pool area unsupervised. The poor little boy drowned.
ladyluck754 | 23 hours ago
10000%, and they paid the consequence. Their own home had more severe risk by having their toddler unsupervised near an unsecured pool outside, then a 1 year old sound asleep in their travel cot while mom and dad ate dinner two floors down. The cot is the safest spot for them, assuming there wasn't anything like a curling iron or clothes iron being left on (fire risk).
LoHudMom | 18 hours ago
Even before I had a kid, I was always mindful of leaving things plugged in, leaving the stove on (which I did once when I was single-ran home at lunch to check and learned my lesson) etc. So I'm very careful, as is my husband. But you have no way to know if the people in the room next to you are as careful. That's why I'd never have left my daughter alone in a hotel room as a baby.
tourmalineforest | 22 hours ago
In a house with a pool and a gun, a child is statistically ten times as likely to be killed by the pool than the gun
Labelloenchanted | 17 hours ago
I don't think that Emilie Kiser and her husband are a good example. They were not following pool safety rules, their followers kept warning them and they kept ignoring them. Dad knowingly left the child by the pool alone and was placing bets inside. It wasn't an accident, it was negligence. They thought it couldn't happen to them.
LouCat10 | 21 hours ago
Do people really watch monitors like hawks though? I knew I would never be able to do that, so I never relied on a monitor as childcare. It doesn’t even sound enjoyable!
Tink50378 | 20 hours ago
Same! But also I'm old(er) so I think 25 years ago, maybe it was okay I didn't have a monitor?
My MIL did want us to get one, but I explained to her that there was nowhere in our 600 sqft home that I wouldn't be able to hear the child.
I guess my "freedom" was less valuable to me than being instantly available for my child. That was my choice. And others may choose differently--that is okay! But monitor as babysitter was definitely not something I was personally comfortable with
Worlds_tipping1 | 19 hours ago
I'm a single mum of twins and have been since they were born. I also work at a large sporting and entertainment complex where lots of families attend.
On the surface it all seems reasonable, but my issues are with responsibility and blaming others for situations we find ourselves in.
If there was a fire and (god forbid) kids died, then blame is going to be attributed. Will it fall to the parents, the hotel owners, the fire alarm manufacturer, the hotel reception?
At my venue I'm going to be mindful of kids that get lost or mums that need help, but sorry you chose to bring a child here and it's your responsibility to ensure that child is looked after.
It's not my job to make sure your kid doesn't get lost, or hurt themselves or choke on popcorn because you left them to get a drink or visit friends in another seat.
Babysitting is not in my job description, I don't get paid for it and I'm not doing it.
If I see a child under 10 deliberatly left alone, I call the on-site police.
Being a parent IS about making sacrifices. These include limiting vacations, evenings out to those you do when your kids are somewhere safe (ie supervised by a responsible person).
freshcanoe | a day ago
I didn’t finish reading it it’s so LONG even for long reads, maybe it’s just too boring?
Anyway I know yall remember Madeline McCann- but what about that couple where the husband had a heart attack at a hotel during dinner and the mom also went in the ambulance with him? The dad passed away and the mom got charged with neglect. I don’t know how that ended up- but emergencies happen!
tourmalineforest | a day ago
That also got mentioned in the article FYi, along with a parent who got charged for leaving an 11 year old alone
magkruppe | 21 hours ago
this is probably the shortest long-reads piece I've seen on here. usually they are 20mins+
freshcanoe | 21 hours ago
Yikes maybe I click the wrong ones. My favorite in the last few months was the one written by a woman whose sister was dealing with addiction and the author’s parents were raising the grandkids. That one was thorough without being too long for me.
Demiglitch | 21 hours ago
Is it a baby monitor or a ham radio?
awildmudkipz | 22 hours ago
Article was locked for me ;(
LaiskaKate | 21 hours ago
https://removepaywalls.com/https://slate.com/life/2025/04/baby-monitor-iphone-children-parenting-family-hotels.html
Key_Gap9168 | 23 hours ago
I would never leave my baby anywhere that my eyes, or the eyes of her aunt, cannot see, Just the thought of leaving my child (let alone a baby) in some hotel room, with some stupid whatever (thank god that stupidity has not taken off in my country), makes me wish I was never born. No person capable of something like that (I am not reading that stupid story) deserves to be a parent.
boomzgoesthedynamite | 22 hours ago
I’m sorry wait- your child has never been in a room alone ever? Are you insane?
Tink50378 | 20 hours ago
Eh, if the kid is their first and under 8 weeks, then not insane.
In other other circumstances, yeah. This mom is gonna burn herself out
boomzgoesthedynamite | 20 hours ago
Uh no. You absolutely can leave your kid to go pee. This is wild behavior.
Tink50378 | 19 hours ago
Oh yeah, that's fair. I wasn't thinking it was that extreme, but you are right.
Tbh, i thought she meant like, someone was always with the kid, but not literally for every moment. But I was reading into that statement what I wanted to (ie., was not thinking "taking a piss" = unattended child). Was more thinking she just meant, like, in the house with