baby home alone? | Imamother

saw50st8

Tue, Nov 30 2010, 9:08 pm

yoshi wrote:

gold21 wrote:

I agree with marina. Do I think its normal to leave a baby alone in an apt for 2 hours with a monitor by a neighbor? No way, not at all. However, I find it interesting how some moms are so obsessed with certain risks and so un-worried about other risks.... Like the Car-seat-a-phobes who would never take a friend's 7 year old child home from school when the kid's mom is in labor, because you don't have a booster seat, and children must be in boosters til age 8..... We all have to be careful and cautious, and certainly don't leave babies home alone to go to a party, but we should evaluate all risks, no picking and choosing, and make appropriate decisions based on the info we have.....

Would you change your opinions if you were aware that MVAs are the leading cause of accidental death in the entire U.S. More children die from car accidents than any other accident in the country. I wouldn't hold by the "minimum" requirements for child restraint safety.

If the seven year old was a hefty size, I might bend the rules in case of a sort of emergency. If the seven year old was tiny and wouldn't hit minimum requirements any time soon, I would try to borrow a booster seat.

If it were a true emergency, I would take the child without the booster seat. But that is rare. Although, school buses don't have booster seats.

observer

Tue, Nov 30 2010, 10:17 pm

AlwaysGrateful wrote:

If you have a house full of kids, would you let some of your older kids go down to a basement playroom to play by themselves? How could you do that? Let's say there's a fire and you can't get to them in time??!?!?!

The responsible thing to do is to keep all of your kids in the room with you at all times so that they are always adequately supervised. Get a large one-room house - it's worth it for your kids' safety!!

we're discussing specifically babies. a seven year old is a whole different story. I know that wasn't your point but I think you are being sarcastic in general and not differentiating between different levels of danger and safety.

cubbie

Tue, Nov 30 2010, 11:29 pm

AlwaysGrateful wrote:

cubbie wrote:

do you know how many times I realized I left my cellphone in the car outside my building and put the baby for a nap already and I'm ground floor yet I won't go get it until the baby has woken up and I can take her with me - it would take me 30 seconds, but I't not something I'd consider. But then again I'm one of those people who doesn't leave the baby outside the store, or in the car.

Um, is this normal? How do you bring in the groceries from your car? You shlep them with your baby in your arms because you don't wnat to leave her safe in her crib for thirty seconds while you bring them in?

I'm all into safety, really. But this seems a bit excessive.

Firstly I live in an apartment building with 36 flats in it, it is a quiet neighbourhood of Jm, but with a lot of building going on and arab workers/delivery men all the time.
We have parking underground with an elevater up, so when I do shopping I fill my stroller with my shopping and carry the baby, anything that isn't urgent (dry goods) can stay in the car until dd gets home and if it's going to be a very large shop (erev chag or something) I'll get it delivered.

Barbara

Wed, Dec 01 2010, 12:08 am

marina wrote:

sorry, to clarify, I am talking about this induction thread http://www.imamother.com/forum.....rt=20

not the angry husband thread, but the regular old "how can I induce myself" one.

I just find it interesting that there is really zilch discussion of risk on that thread in contrast to this thread.

Maybe it's because people perceive risk on both sides of the equation when it comes to induction, but only on one side when it comes to leaving the baby alone. I don't know if people are that logical or if it is some primal emotional reaction.

Do people understand that there somewhat of a risk when mom stays home too? Like Andrea Yates' kids would have been better off had she left them with a monitor and took off for two hours or even two days or years.

If there's one risk that people underestimate, it's the one about a small child being home with a stressed out, overwhelmed parent. this thread illustrates it nicely http://imamother.com/forum/vie.....ight=

Again, in that thread, MOST people mentioned natural means of induction. Only one poster talked about refusing a medically-suggested induction, and in her case, she was only 2 days overdue which (AFAIK) is not a medical basis to induce labor, absent other medical reasons.

Hopefully, the OP here is not Andrea Yates, who not only lived in isolation, but was also suffering from long-term and then-untreated mental illness. In the past, she had tried to mutilate herself, tried to commit suicide, refused to feed or care for her children. Yes, we can blame her husband for a lot of things. Yes, the isolation was terrible. But in the end, she was a seriously ill woman in desperate need of medication and therapy. A couple of nights out wouldn't have helped her, unless those nights were spent in a mental hospital being stabilized on Haldol.

Andrea Yates has nothing whatsoever to do with the idea of leaving a baby home alone.

amother

Wed, Dec 01 2010, 12:29 am

Here we go again! Another 'the worlds best mothers bashing the worlds worst mothers' thread. Rolling Eyes

I agree with marina, eschaya, alwaysgreatful.
The hysteria over this is way out of proportion compared to other risks that people take. Do you know that every time you cross the street you are putting yourself at risk of being struck by a drunken driver? Very small risk? Not any smaller risk than leaving a sleeping child for an hour with a monitor. Now of course we cant just sit home all day every day. We have to go out in the streets. But do people only go out when necessary? Does anyone think twice before going out? People go 'shpatziring', people go jogging with jogging strollers, crossing street after street. Shouldnt there be some paranoia about that too?

ftr, I never left my kids alone with a monitor, but I know of people who do.

marina

Wed, Dec 01 2010, 1:08 am

Barbara, if we are talking about hypothetical statistical risks, you must admit that the risk to a child from a stranger kidnapping or a preventable fire is not less than shaken baby syndrome or any other form of abuse (feel free to include spanking, as you wish Smile

) that children experience at the hands of stressed and overwhelmed parents.

I am not suggesting it is safe to leave a child alone with a baby monitor. I am suggesting that there are risks to both doing the action and not doing the action, as there are with most decisions, including say, post term induction.

I do not think the people in this thread are assessing the risks based on anything other than emotional gut feelings.

It is personally fascinating to me to see how people assess risks and how they fail to do so. I think it is hugely societally and culturally influenced.

greentiger

Wed, Dec 01 2010, 8:34 am

I'm not embarrassed to admit that I have done this before, and that I have also "babysat" for my neighbor this way. I'm sure plenty of other mothers here do too but due to the hysterics no one will admit it. As far as I'm concerned my kids sleep till the morning and sorry... kid choking?? While they are in their bed sleeping?? Well I suppose its possible, but the kid wouldn't be any safer with me at home cooking in kitchen, because if you can't hear it over the monitor, I wouldn't hear it either. You know what else I do? I go to sleep at night and don't actually stand over my kids beds to make sure they don't strangle themselves with their blankets. Because it does happen you know. But I'm a horrible mother so thats what I do.

malkie

Wed, Dec 01 2010, 8:37 pm

Mama Bear wrote:

taking a shower while youre kids are in the crib is the same thing as leaving your kids in the crib in a different room. You dont have to be able to hear your kids 24/7. And if you take a monitor with you into the shower, it's just like being in the kitchen cooking or the couch reading.

what do you ladies do when you have to take an older child off the bus, and the baby has finally fallen asleep?

when dd is sleeping and I have to get ds from playgroup (which happens very often). I bring her down the 3 flights of stairs in the carriage and walk her to ds's playgroup. I put her to nap in the carriage for this very reason.

Chana Miriam S

Wed, Dec 01 2010, 8:59 pm

wow, I cannot believe what a bad mother I was when my kids were young. I definitely took the opportunity of a sleeping child for showers, laundry and cooking. I stopped using a monitor early on because every time the baby sighed, I woke up and was starting to hallucinate from lack of sleep.

I never left a child in a car unattended unless I could see it, and was not going to lose eye contact with it. ergo- I did take sleeping babies into school for pickup of the older one. I did not however worry about taking the baby out to put the preschooler on the bus outside my house. if she was up, she came with me and if not, she just kept sleeping- crib or whatever.

sometimes when dd was an infant, I played outside with ds while she was sleeping. cant remember if I used a monitor or just left the window open. I am thinking it was the open window.

I must say that I lived in my own house the whole time I have been a parent with the exception of when the first was 5 and the second was 2, and I sent my laundry out because I could not tolerate the idea of shlepping up and down with laundry and kids.

I would not have left a kid unattended to the point of not physically being on the property, but I would sit out in my yard if my kids were sleeping. cant remember if with monitor or not.

once a friend of mine rigged her phone so that she could use it as a baby monitor and left her 3 year old at home while at a neighbours. I never really thought of the whole fire thing, but obviously if it was close enough for a cordless phone to work, it was pretty close.

so, basically my kids, laid back as I am, always wear bike helmets, observe safety rules with regard to the street and are happily growing along at 14 and 11. both of them have roamed the neighbourhood with their friends from the time they were 9. neither can walk alone at night in the dark.

Barbara

Wed, Dec 01 2010, 11:29 pm

marina wrote:

While *I* don't spank, I don't necessarily consider it abusive. I think that people trivialize the meaning of abuse (and bullying for that matter) when they use the term to apply to all non-optimal behaviors.

In any case, I think that you're creating another straw man. If someone is so at the end of her rope that she is likely to abuse a child, then its best if she locks herself in the bathroom, or gets out of the home, whatever it takes. The risk to the child in being alone is less than that of being with a parent who is at a very high risk of being abusive.

But there's no suggestion that's the case here. What we have is someone who wants to go out, but whose husband figures he can save a couple of bucks by not hiring a sitter. Not *mom's in the shower for 10 minutes while baby is in a safe place, and knows that her primary responsibility is to the kids* but *mom is out of all contact with the child for prolonged periods, no one else is in the residence, and the only person semi-responsible is a person who wants to go about her own business, maybe half-listen to a monitor every once in a while, and is primarily responsible for her own family* Because if the person wanted complete responsibility, s/he'd have the child in HER OWN apartment, or would stay with the baby in the baby's home. IMHO, its not much different than leaving the baby completely alone.

chavs

Thu, Dec 02 2010, 7:57 am

Being at home with the baby while the baby is upstairs in his bed is very different then leaving the baby alone in a house whilst giving the monitor to a neighbour. When I take a shower or I am cooking downstairs and my kids are elsewhere in the house I still keep an ear out and am aware of them and thats without a baby monitor, either my kids are loud enough or my hearing got beter since having kids but either way I don need to be in the same room to hear them. This can not be said of leaving the actual premises and leaving a monitor with a neighbour who wouldnt be able to run upstairs as quickly and where many things could potentially go wrong such as: the monitor not working, the neighbour being busy with her own family (seeing as she is in her home), the neighbour forgetting to listen out for the monitor if someone comes to the door, her phone rings, her own child wakes up etc etc, seeing as its not her own child and what she is lisening out for is a machine that could more easelly get forgotten about even momentarily.
Not to mention that the baby is more vulnerable when no one else are iin the house, if anyone knew that there would be a child alone in a house with no one else there kidnapping suddenly got easier and although this is rare, one doesnt need to help matters along. Other dangers are fires that a baby monitor wouldnt be able to detech but a person in the house would hopefully be able to smell.
In short I dont understand how anyone can equate leaving the house with no one else in the home to being in another room.