Parents beware of their maid

I agree with Woodk6, there is no way i would leave my child alone in a hotel room even if i could see it. If you can stump up the cost of a holiday you can surely stump up the cost for a babysitter for a couple of hours. What is more precious than your child? A meal, undisturbed by your children? I think not.

I feel very, very sorry for Maddy. As for her parents - they will have to live with their reckless decision for the rest of their lives while Maddy might have to pay for it with her life. Bad things happen every day but why up the chances of it happening by leaving your kids alone in a room?
 
I don't really want to get involved in this argument but I actually have to agree with happy v on one account.Back home in Australia we own a large three storey house. The bedrooms are on the top floor and the kitchen and a lot of the living area on the ground floor. The distance between me in the kitchen and my childrens bedrooms would definitely be further away than Maddies parents were. Consequently if someone was to break in throught the bedroom window and take them away, would that then make me liable? I have to say that once they are asleep, I don't keep checking on them.

Also, I feel blessed to have a DH. Yes, she's not perfect, but hey, back home I wasn't paying much less for a cleaner to come in for a mere four hours per week. My DH works a 12 hour day, does most things without being prompted, and above all she appears to love my children. What more could I ask for?:thanks
 
I think there's a difference between letting your kids play in your own garden or in their room, albeit a few stories away and leaving them alone in a hotel room whilst you go out to dinner. For one you don't have strangers walking past their room all day and all night long like you do in hotels. Valuables go missing in hotels all the time (from people breaking into rooms) so why would you leave your kids alone? It's just a risk that doesn't need to be taken.
 
You can't make a blanket judgement in this situation.
Just last week my husband and I weighed up the decision of leaving our 9 mth old asleep in our hotel room while we ate dinner.

We discussed the Maddie situation, I felt a little nervous at first but there was basically no rear access to our villa, the resturant was about 50m across a patch of lawn, to enter someone would have to walk by us, and we could see the door.

We had the monitor on and we could hear every noise inside the room.
It was absolutley no different to sitting in a backyard, with the baby asleep inside the house.
 
"It was absolutley no different to sitting in a backyard, with the baby asleep inside the house."

I still don't agree. You simply don't have hundreds of strangers walking, sleeping, hanging out right outside the room your children sleep in when at home as you do in a hotel.

At least you had a monitor on so you could hear what was going on whilst your children slept but personally i still couldn't do it.

Each to his own however.
 
At the risk of playing devils advocate here, if you are in the backyard, couldn't 'strangers' still be walking past the front door? What about the mail man, Jehovas witnesses or just the neighbours visitors ?And wasn't the point that the intruder came through the window anyway? I know when we go on holidays we usually get adjoining rooms, so in theory, we could be in one room and the intruder could still have come through the childrens window and taken them without our knowledge.

Personally I have never done what Maddies parents did, but to sit back in judgement is just wrong! Retrospect is always allows us to have 20 20 vision.No one really knows what they would do until they are in the situation. Sorry, I am in a cranky mood this morning, but I am sick of people placing judgement on others so easily. Shouldn't we mothers all be supporting each other instead of taking the first opportunity to criticize and tell them where they went wrong.

At the end of the day, we all love our children and do our best to the best of our knowledge. None of us would intentionally put our child in harms way, but sometimes we just need to step back a little and 'get a life.' I want my children to have the freedom to run and explore, roll in the grass and get really dirty.I will do everyting in my power to make sure I don't become a 'helicopter parent' who constantly hovers over them monitoring their every moment. Instead I hope they develop wonderful imaginations and the ability to get on in social situations without having to have me around all the time for confidence.:thanks
 
Sophwillsmum, I was merely expressing my opinion on the subject and stating that I would never do it and why. I clearly stated 'each to his own' showing I'm not judging the parents though i can't understand what they did. I'm allowed to express my own thoughts on the subject.

I stand by my comment that you cannot compare leaving your children in your own backyard or upstairs to in a hotel room. I know you are from Australia so unless you lived in a house on Oxford st or on a very, very busy st there's no way the same number of strangers would walk past your house as happens in a hotel filled with people you don't know.

Was your helicopter mum comment a general comment or was it directed at me or someone else in particular? Either way it sounds pretty judgemental to me....

You're right that at the end of the day we all love our kids and do what we think is best for them. I'm just not a believer in taking unnecessary risks with them. This doesn't mean i mollycoddle them but they won't be getting a motoribike license as long as they live in my house if you know what i mean.
 
I believe culture plays a big part in influencing how we raise our kids. I can't speak for all HKers but my family, friends and myself (mostly ocals) are very very shocked to learn that some parents leave kids unattended in hotel room or use baby sitter provide by hotels. This is just something that a lot of us have never heard of.
 
Why is it extraordinary to use a babysitter in a hotel? Do you really sit in with the children all night, every night? Or do you now use hotels? Or you you take your helper?
 
We hire sitters - which was my original point. If you can afford to go on holiday surely you can afford a babysitter so you can go out and enjoy yourself too.
 
We recently took our baby to Philippines for a short vacation. We took him everywhere we went. We couldn't go clubbing at night or smoke or stay out too late but we thought that's what parents do -- plan holiday and activities around the kid once become parents. We were married for 9 years before we decided to have this baby. We never expected life would be the same once we have a new addition to the family.

I can't imagine trusting my baby with a hotel baby sitter not because for fear that the hotel baby sitter would snatch him. It is just that babies are delicate and I would want to be sure whoever is handling him has the skills and patience. A hotel baby sitter is not like the nanny at home who knows his moods and how to sooth him when he is distressed. Also, I don't think the baby would want to be with someone he is not familiar with. Besides, if my hubby and I had to go to a dinner having to worry what's going on with the baby in the hotel room, might as well take him with us. If the restaurant is not baby-friendly, then we'll just pick another place.

Well, it is not my business how other parents want to spend their holidays. You may also argue that the same could happen at school. I am not writing this to judge anyone. I am just expressing my opinion, that I would not leave my baby to a stranger or unattended in a hotel room. No, I can't watch him 24/7 but I would do the best I can to prevent the obvious risks.
 
HappyV said:
Why is it extraordinary to use a babysitter in a hotel? Do you really sit in with the children all night, every night? Or do you now use hotels? Or you you take your helper?
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I've never used a sitter in a hotel either. After D goes to bed, we both catch up on our reading, or watch a bit of tv with the volume on low. When he was a baby, we'd take him with us for dinner and he'd fall asleep in his stroller.
 
The hotels we use all have very strict policies on who can babysit on their premises. You must use one of their recommended agencies and though the fees are quite high they are worth it as they have screened every candidate. We've always found the babysitters to be great. Most of the time they are women in their fifties. For the most part I'd rather leave my kids with them than my own mother who doesn't have much a maternal instinct shall we say...

I agree though that when you have kids you just accept that life has changed and the kids come first. We're happy to have our days revolve around the kids but have also appreciated a night out when travelling. We were just in New York for what was my first time and couldn't imagine not going out at night at least a couple of times during the stay. That would be sacrilege. Fortunately the babysitter was so good we didn't worry at all. We've kept her number for when we go back!
 
Sorry posted before I finished! They have to live with their decision for the rest of their lives. I stayed at this resort last year, infact a couple of apartments down from where Maddie was taken. It isn't a hotel as you imagine with 100's of people traipsing past every day. It is a quiet street, with the apartments set well back from the road, screened by trees at the front (which unfortunately was why they were able to take her as they came through the front bedroom window I believe forcing the screen). The apartments are a mixture of holiday lets and people living their permanently and the McCann's would have been able to see the back patio window to their apartment from the Tapas bar. Contrary to what Mark Warner have said it was difficult to get a babysitter and their sitting service was rubbish - taking and dropping off was not an option for us as it would have completely messed up their sleep patterns. We didn't leave our kids as they aren't good sleepers but for years people have done this using baby monitors - my parents certainly left us when we were little using hotel listening services.

The McCann's were lulled into a false sense of security because of the family friendliness of the place and the fact they were so close to where their children were. I have nothing but pity for them as this was a judgment call that many people have taken but for them it has had horrific consequences.
 
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