Reply to At what age would you leave your child alone in the hospital?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a 2 year old who has been hospitalized twice so far, and also had a stay in the NICU after she was born. For the NICU stay, there were no parent beds, so I went home after I was discharged, and came to visit at regular intervals during the day. She didn't really know if we weren't there, and there wasn't a ton we could do for her, as we could only hold her for short amounts of time. For the two stays as a toddler, either my husband or I was at her side 24/7. I was lucky that my job is relatively flexible so I could take PTO and make up some hours, but it was really hard and I thought often about how I had no idea what I would have done if I had an inflexible job and/or was a single parent. Having been through that, I could see leaving an older elementary kid who would be okay watching movies and might sleep on their own for periods of time, depending on how serious the situation was and how long the stay was.

Genuine question - how do those in difficult circumstances (for example, single parent with other kids, or parents with inflexible jobs) make it work to leave an active, curious toddler in a hospital room alone even for short amounts of time? I have a ton of sympathy for them and know most wouldn't choose that, but I'm having trouble imagining how it would work. How to avoid the toddler pulling out IVs, sneaking out of the room, etc? I felt like I couldn't even leave to grab a glass of water in case she decided to jump out of bed and follow. [/quote]

I am sure different hospitals have different protocols but when my DD was at Childrens for 6 months the kids on their own (and she was mostly in the PICU but spent some time on 'the floor') the ones in cribs - babies that could sit up through 2/3 yo - they had cage tops for the cribs to keep kids inside. It was always so sad to see this not to mention the single moms/dads who either had to show up at jobs or had other children. In the PICU they did allow young children to sometimes visit but that was a situation in itself. There are volunteers that will come in and sit with your child but they are limited to 30m each time so that they don't get attached to your child/your family - something along lines of overstepping. We had friends/family come to sit with our DD the very few times neither of us could be there but one of us slept at hospital every night - even when we were in multi-kid in a room situations. There was only one night that they didn't allow this: I could be there but not asleep. I think that has changed on all floors at Childrens now. Hopkins at the time did not allow - I hear that MAY have changed[/quote]

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