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Anonymous wrote:Can't people sometimes pick up other people's baby monitors? Upthread, someone said hotel security told her people do this all the time. So if you were a monster, maybe you'd get a baby monitor to pick up on little ones left alone in a hotel room?

From a purely logistical perspective this is a pretty silly concern. There are 138 rooms in the Yale Club and appear to be at least 5 other hotels in a 3-4 block radius of this hotel. Even if someone did hack the camera, they would have no idea what room. This would be akin to a thief in a parking garage knowing one car in 1000 was unlocked. Except in this case the cars themselves (IE, hotel rooms in fairly upscale hotels) are much harder to break into. Even if a bad actor had a hotel room skeleton key they would have to just randomly start picking rooms to open and are far more likely to accidentally open the door on multiple guests and expose themselves then find these kids.

But if they worked in the hotel and had access to enter a room in the hotel, it would be a lot easier. I've worked in the hospitality business for 20 years and would never leave my kids alone in a hotel room. There are so many people who can gain access to your room (and I hate to say this but there are some sketchy people working in hotels, high-end or not). I always use the metal bar lock when I am in my room alone. A baby can't do that.

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Anonymous wrote:This is crazy! You don’t leave your young kids/babies in a hotel room by themselves so you can go out for dinner. There are no excuses for this! It was a stupid and careless parenting decision.

I wouldn't do this because I'd be stressed the whole time about something like this happening but honestly I don't think that badly of her. They were a block away from the hotel and had cameras on the kids. They were not in any danger if they were asleep and not in any more danger then they'd be in their own home on another floor.

No sorry being a block away in a whole other building while your kids are presumably several floors up is not at all the same as different part of the house. Not at all.

How quickly could you get to them in a fire? How many hotel staff have keys to that room? What if they get sick and the building elevators aren’t working? It’s just a huge amount of response time required to get back versus walking upstairs in your own house.

The only one of these things that is actually concerning is the fire. And while its concerning, there are plenty of situations where my kids are far enough away from me where if a fire spontaneously broke out I wouldn't be able to get to them. Normal situations. I don't live my life taking extreme precautions based on highly unlikely outcomes. I understand some people think this is insane but honestly they have a camera on them and I imagine they could, if running, be back to the room in 3 minutes. And the stairs work even if the elevator doesn't. No kid is harmed from crying for a few minutes. And if they get sick (suddenly?!) in such a dramatic fashion that would alert me if I was in the room, like vomiting I guess? Then that would be evident on camera. But honestly my 3/5/7 year old are DEAD TO THE WORLD when they fall asleep. I could 100% leave the house to go run an errand and have no one be the wiser and no one endangered.

I do think leaving the hotel is a little much but if they were eating in the hotel restaurant would people be saying this? I dunno I just can't get onboard with demonizing this they were close and had a camera.

What's more likely than something happening to the kids is something happening to the parents. Like they fall down and hit their head, they get hit by a car, they get detained for some reason, etc etc etc or how about they have a heart attack? What if it had just been him in charge of the kids, wife was out with her girlfriends somewhere else? Who would have known that he was monitoring the kids on his camera?

Simply not worth the risk and not that hard to make other arrangements. Well, if you really care about your kids that is.

What if he’d done this solo and had the heart attack and died?

This is also why you can never leave a child in a car alone. Not just because something might happen to them—because something might happen TO YOU.

But this is just as much a risk in a home. That’s what I don’t understand. If I was home alone watching my kids and I had a heart attack like this guy and dropped dead they would eventually wake up to find me. Or wake up and turn the stove on or the hot water or anything else. Anytime a single parent is caretaking children for many hours this is a risk. Now I agree that the risk is harder to quantify in a situation like this because people might not know where the kids are. But honestly there are horrific stories of children who are in apartments for days after a tragedy.

I’m not like, trying to weirdly go to bat for these people. They made a decision I would not have made, and likely the mom here learned this lesson in the worst and most traumatic way possible. But I think that parents are routinely vilified because we act like anything short of constant vigilance is adequate. But it’s not really healthy or practical. It’s either dangerous or it’s not. All of us want to say that a poor woman leaving her kids napping to run to the store for dinner after working a double shift should be forgiven. But these people are grossly negligent. I don’t think either party is grossly negligent. I think both correctly evaluated the actual risk and made a choice. In my opinion the risk that comes from being found out is far more potent and why I personally would not do this. Because truly the practical danger of having dinner while watching your kids on a camera 5 minutes away on foot is not significant.

100% agree with you. Great response.

Do you know anything about a 5 month old infant?

I actually think the 2 year old is a bigger deal. The five month old can’t walk itself out of the room. They can listen for crying and go to the five month old. Nothing bad is happening to it in a hotel room unless the parents don’t come when it cries.

Lying on its back, it could spit up and choke.

I have had three babies and never had a single incident where my not ill child spontaneously started choking while asleep. You put babies on their backs to ensure they have good airflow. There is a massive safety campaign encouraging people to put babies on their backs specifically because babies do not die if they are on their back. And if I had been asleep when that happened, I wouldn't know anyway.

So glad you haven't had a crisis with a baby. Mine stopped breathing in his sleep (on his back) twice at 4 and 6 months. We happened to have a breathing alert on him because I was an anxious mom and couldn't sleep, and it alerted us both times. It was terrifying. Thankfully he survived both incidents.

Anonymous wrote:The bottom line for me is that I would never walk out of a hotel room close the door behind me, and then walk out of the hotel knowing my infant and toddler were in a room by themselves. Never ever could I do that and feel okay about it.

Anonymous wrote:I guess a fire could happen (just as it can happen in a home, on a plane, etc) but that’s really rare in hotels. I think the last US hotel fire of note was in 2006.

Anonymous wrote:I guess a fire could happen (just as it can happen in a home, on a plane, etc) but that’s really rare in hotels. I think the last US hotel fire of note was in 2006.

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Anonymous wrote:Can't people sometimes pick up other people's baby monitors? Upthread, someone said hotel security told her people do this all the time. So if you were a monster, maybe you'd get a baby monitor to pick up on little ones left alone in a hotel room?

From a purely logistical perspective this is a pretty silly concern. There are 138 rooms in the Yale Club and appear to be at least 5 other hotels in a 3-4 block radius of this hotel. Even if someone did hack the camera, they would have no idea what room. This would be akin to a thief in a parking garage knowing one car in 1000 was unlocked. Except in this case the cars themselves (IE, hotel rooms in fairly upscale hotels) are much harder to break into. Even if a bad actor had a hotel room skeleton key they would have to just randomly start picking rooms to open and are far more likely to accidentally open the door on multiple guests and expose themselves then find these kids.

But if they worked in the hotel and had access to enter a room in the hotel, it would be a lot easier. I've worked in the hospitality business for 20 years and would never leave my kids alone in a hotel room. There are so many people who can gain access to your room (and I hate to say this but there are some sketchy people working in hotels, high-end or not). I always use the metal bar lock when I am in my room alone. A baby can't do that.

I mean again, they would have to know it was THEIR hotel, which sure, some clues on the monitor could nail it down, and still have to go and open a LOT of doors, on a LOT of floors. I feel like a hotel bad actor like that is much more likely to try to get into empty rooms and rob people? But still that would be a risky, very public searching expedition, and it would depend on knowing what hotel it was, which likely would be pretty hard to determine from a blurry black and white monitor picture. But I mean, I'm not saying this could never happen, just that this is the kind of absurd fear mongering based on an event with a really infinitesimal likelihood of happening. A lot of things would have to line up for this to happen (a hacker, monitoring regularly, identifying the hotel, having broad access to the rooms, etc etc). And while this is horrible, a very high number of child abductions are committed by someone the child knows, and so playing in their front lawn they are more at risk from something like this then being asleep in a hotel room.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can't people sometimes pick up other people's baby monitors? Upthread, someone said hotel security told her people do this all the time. So if you were a monster, maybe you'd get a baby monitor to pick up on little ones left alone in a hotel room?

From a purely logistical perspective this is a pretty silly concern. There are 138 rooms in the Yale Club and appear to be at least 5 other hotels in a 3-4 block radius of this hotel. Even if someone did hack the camera, they would have no idea what room. This would be akin to a thief in a parking garage knowing one car in 1000 was unlocked. Except in this case the cars themselves (IE, hotel rooms in fairly upscale hotels) are much harder to break into. Even if a bad actor had a hotel room skeleton key they would have to just randomly start picking rooms to open and are far more likely to accidentally open the door on multiple guests and expose themselves then find these kids.

But if they worked in the hotel and had access to enter a room in the hotel, it would be a lot easier. I've worked in the hospitality business for 20 years and would never leave my kids alone in a hotel room. There are so many people who can gain access to your room (and I hate to say this but there are some sketchy people working in hotels, high-end or not). I always use the metal bar lock when I am in my room alone. A baby can't do that.

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Anonymous wrote:Can't people sometimes pick up other people's baby monitors? Upthread, someone said hotel security told her people do this all the time. So if you were a monster, maybe you'd get a baby monitor to pick up on little ones left alone in a hotel room?

From a purely logistical perspective this is a pretty silly concern. There are 138 rooms in the Yale Club and appear to be at least 5 other hotels in a 3-4 block radius of this hotel. Even if someone did hack the camera, they would have no idea what room. This would be akin to a thief in a parking garage knowing one car in 1000 was unlocked. Except in this case the cars themselves (IE, hotel rooms in fairly upscale hotels) are much harder to break into. Even if a bad actor had a hotel room skeleton key they would have to just randomly start picking rooms to open and are far more likely to accidentally open the door on multiple guests and expose themselves then find these kids.

Anonymous wrote:Can't people sometimes pick up other people's baby monitors? Upthread, someone said hotel security told her people do this all the time. So if you were a monster, maybe you'd get a baby monitor to pick up on little ones left alone in a hotel room?

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Anonymous wrote:This is crazy! You don’t leave your young kids/babies in a hotel room by themselves so you can go out for dinner. There are no excuses for this! It was a stupid and careless parenting decision.

I wouldn't do this because I'd be stressed the whole time about something like this happening but honestly I don't think that badly of her. They were a block away from the hotel and had cameras on the kids. They were not in any danger if they were asleep and not in any more danger then they'd be in their own home on another floor.

No sorry being a block away in a whole other building while your kids are presumably several floors up is not at all the same as different part of the house. Not at all.

How quickly could you get to them in a fire? How many hotel staff have keys to that room? What if they get sick and the building elevators aren’t working? It’s just a huge amount of response time required to get back versus walking upstairs in your own house.

The only one of these things that is actually concerning is the fire. And while its concerning, there are plenty of situations where my kids are far enough away from me where if a fire spontaneously broke out I wouldn't be able to get to them. Normal situations. I don't live my life taking extreme precautions based on highly unlikely outcomes. I understand some people think this is insane but honestly they have a camera on them and I imagine they could, if running, be back to the room in 3 minutes. And the stairs work even if the elevator doesn't. No kid is harmed from crying for a few minutes. And if they get sick (suddenly?!) in such a dramatic fashion that would alert me if I was in the room, like vomiting I guess? Then that would be evident on camera. But honestly my 3/5/7 year old are DEAD TO THE WORLD when they fall asleep. I could 100% leave the house to go run an errand and have no one be the wiser and no one endangered.

I do think leaving the hotel is a little much but if they were eating in the hotel restaurant would people be saying this? I dunno I just can't get onboard with demonizing this they were close and had a camera.

You need to read the details about Madeleine McCann. Ground floor apartment, parents only 180 feet away, checked on the kids supposedly more than once in person. It still ended horribly.

And before you insist that it's super rare for a stranger to abduct a child like that: Do you really not comprehend that on a camera set up in some random hotel room or apartment, you would NOT necessarily be aware f your child were vomiting, for instance? A young child might cry if he vomited...but of course you insist that "no kid is harmed from crying for few minutes" so you'd be at dinner, waiting to see if your kid would just cry it out and go back to sleep....

And who "could, if running, be back to the room in 3 minutes"? From down the block and maybe multiple stories to climb on those handy stairs you reference? Even if the elevator's working it'll be more than three minutes.

As for "my kids are dead to the world when they fall asleep," well, in a strange environment with unusual noises around, like a hotel, hooray for you if that's true. It won't always be true and you cannot know if the one time you leave a child alone in a hotel room is the one time the child will wake, wonder where the adults are, go looking for them, etc. By the time you look up from your dinner to check the camera and see them gone, well, you'll have no idea how long they've really been out of bed, maybe out of the room.

You're preening yourself on how "I don't live my life taking extreme precautions based on highly unlikely outcomes." Fine. But read the post at 11:16: The odds that nothing would go wrong are extremely high, but the unexpected does happen sometimes. It would never cross your mind that your young, seemingly healthy husband would just drop dead, but it does happen to some people. It could happen to any of us at any time. You don’t leave your kids alone because even though, most likely, they would be just fine, what if they weren’t? What if something would happen? You just don’t roll the die when it comes to your children’s wellbeing.

Enjoy rolling the die all you want. Most of us wouldn't. It is not paranoid or silly to choose to go out and have fun only when there is an actual responsible adult to care for kids.

I mean it IS super rare. What happened to that girl. And it was in a ground floor apartment not up in a hotel room. It is so rare that that case is notoriously famous as the horrifying example of the time the worst actually happened. A camera will be set up pointed at the kid, thats the whole point of the camera. And a vomiting incident could go unnoticed just as easily if the parents were eating dinner in their own kitchen with a monitor on.

I mean I think you're assuming that if home a parent doesn't let the kid cry. I always let my kid fuss a bit before going up, not for a half hour or anything but a few minutes absolutely they frequently went back to sleep!

The problem with the bolded is that to really live that life you need to live in a bubble. We take risks all the time, humans are terrible at risk evaluation. The kids were likely more at risk driving to the hotel then they were in that room.

DP. Those of you depending so heavily on "the camera will be pointed at the kid" are so, so naive.

So your children never get out of bed on their own? Do you really not think that in a strange place, where they're outside their usual routines and not in their own beds in their own bedrooms, they will just sleep perfectly like logs and not possibly sleep more lightly and maybe get up and get out of bed to look for mom or dad? Yes, even out of a pack and play or crib if they're able. You look up at your precious camera trained on the kid's bed and they're not there. Not in view. What now, geniuses? You can't know if they're just out of frame or in the other room opening the mini bar or in the bathroom exploring the hot water tap that's set for scalding. Oh, but so sorry -- any mention of specific dangers in life frustrates you because you don't like to hear about them and assume that being aware of them means we..."live in a bubble," I guess.

No what I think is that if I am a block away that I could be back in my hotel room in less than 5 minutes if I was properly motivate (IE, running) and that even waking up in a strange place, very little can happen in 5 minutes. Situations that require an immediate response (ie, the incident where being 10 seconds away instead of 300 seconds away) are extraordinarily rare.

You're all mad at me, I have said I wouldn't do this, I just don't agree with you that its dangerous. I think generally it does show bad judgement because while I don't think its dangerous, the consequences of being caught are SEVERE and being caught is not nearly as unlikely as something bad happening. I mean any of the things you describe could happen if I was in the room but asleep. There is no perfect safety situation.

Re: the bold: Your concern, then is that YOU would get caught and be punished. Your concern is not that the behavior is inherently risky toward your own children.

Got it.

Yea the poster defending this woman is truly awful. And the messed up part is, I bet when a bad thing happens to her she’s like… well that’s life! When in reality, at least some fraction of the time, she’d actually just made a terrible decision that a reasonable person would never have done but she thinks it’s w in the range of acceptable. Fine to do to yourself. Not okay to do to children you brought into this world….

I am that poster you are talking about so casually. Horrible things actually have happened to me, and I do not always think 'that's life'. There are specific decisions made by specific people (sometimes me) that have led to bad things happening. My brother died as a teenager riding a vehicle my parents purchased for him and allowed him to ride. I believe they hold some responsibility for his death. And my house burned to the ground after being struck by lightening, which was no one's fault. But I actually think it is BECAUSE I have experienced fairly extreme tragedies in both extremely random ways and in ways where a single decision led to a chain of events that led to the tragedy that I have this perspective.

And I spent my first year as a mother in a state of extreme stress and anxiety about protecting my child because of these (and some other) events. And at some point I realized that I was hurting her both by being so amped up and by not allowing her to experience things and that I had to figure out how to make better risk analysis to survive motherhood. And so I worked at it, and I challenge myself to experience moments of discomfort when my children are taking risks that I find uncomfortable but that aren't actually dangerous to just sit, because they learn through failure/experience.

Anyway none of that is relevant here as there is nothing to be gained by the kids from being left in a hotel room. I just don't think anything is served when we make situations like this out to be THE WORST THING EVER. A lot of truly terrible things and terrible neglect happens to children. IMO, this isn't that, although I will say the story someone told in the early pages about a toddler wandering around and a poster finding the mother in the lobby partying horrified me. In my imagining of how I could do something like this, I actually feel like I would be watching the monitor far more closely than if I was at home (where frequently the monitor was just plugged in somewhere in the room and I'd look at it if I heard something). To the point where it just wouldn't be fun and relaxing. And the other reports that they were with a group of people made me question my own assessment here because in that situation they are less likely to be watching that monitor like a hawk. And talking about it like it is just isn't helpful and actually hurts people who are in the greyer areas (working mom needing groceries example etc)

I agree with PP's earlier assessment and this update is lovely. You seem kind and thoughtful, PP. I think people like to judge in these sorts of instances to feel better about their own choices and to reaffirm their (false) belief that their children will be safe because they do all the "right" things. There's no guarantee that anyone's chidlren will be safe and there is no definitive "right" thing. Which is terrifying, so people spend a lot of time judging others and pretending their own choices are the right ones so they aren't so scared.

There are things that are preventable and things that are not. This is neglect and parent deserves to be charged criminally.

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Anonymous wrote:This is crazy! You don’t leave your young kids/babies in a hotel room by themselves so you can go out for dinner. There are no excuses for this! It was a stupid and careless parenting decision.

I wouldn't do this because I'd be stressed the whole time about something like this happening but honestly I don't think that badly of her. They were a block away from the hotel and had cameras on the kids. They were not in any danger if they were asleep and not in any more danger then they'd be in their own home on another floor.

No sorry being a block away in a whole other building while your kids are presumably several floors up is not at all the same as different part of the house. Not at all.

How quickly could you get to them in a fire? How many hotel staff have keys to that room? What if they get sick and the building elevators aren’t working? It’s just a huge amount of response time required to get back versus walking upstairs in your own house.

The only one of these things that is actually concerning is the fire. And while its concerning, there are plenty of situations where my kids are far enough away from me where if a fire spontaneously broke out I wouldn't be able to get to them. Normal situations. I don't live my life taking extreme precautions based on highly unlikely outcomes. I understand some people think this is insane but honestly they have a camera on them and I imagine they could, if running, be back to the room in 3 minutes. And the stairs work even if the elevator doesn't. No kid is harmed from crying for a few minutes. And if they get sick (suddenly?!) in such a dramatic fashion that would alert me if I was in the room, like vomiting I guess? Then that would be evident on camera. But honestly my 3/5/7 year old are DEAD TO THE WORLD when they fall asleep. I could 100% leave the house to go run an errand and have no one be the wiser and no one endangered.

I do think leaving the hotel is a little much but if they were eating in the hotel restaurant would people be saying this? I dunno I just can't get onboard with demonizing this they were close and had a camera.

You need to read the details about Madeleine McCann. Ground floor apartment, parents only 180 feet away, checked on the kids supposedly more than once in person. It still ended horribly.

And before you insist that it's super rare for a stranger to abduct a child like that: Do you really not comprehend that on a camera set up in some random hotel room or apartment, you would NOT necessarily be aware f your child were vomiting, for instance? A young child might cry if he vomited...but of course you insist that "no kid is harmed from crying for few minutes" so you'd be at dinner, waiting to see if your kid would just cry it out and go back to sleep....

And who "could, if running, be back to the room in 3 minutes"? From down the block and maybe multiple stories to climb on those handy stairs you reference? Even if the elevator's working it'll be more than three minutes.

As for "my kids are dead to the world when they fall asleep," well, in a strange environment with unusual noises around, like a hotel, hooray for you if that's true. It won't always be true and you cannot know if the one time you leave a child alone in a hotel room is the one time the child will wake, wonder where the adults are, go looking for them, etc. By the time you look up from your dinner to check the camera and see them gone, well, you'll have no idea how long they've really been out of bed, maybe out of the room.

You're preening yourself on how "I don't live my life taking extreme precautions based on highly unlikely outcomes." Fine. But read the post at 11:16: The odds that nothing would go wrong are extremely high, but the unexpected does happen sometimes. It would never cross your mind that your young, seemingly healthy husband would just drop dead, but it does happen to some people. It could happen to any of us at any time. You don’t leave your kids alone because even though, most likely, they would be just fine, what if they weren’t? What if something would happen? You just don’t roll the die when it comes to your children’s wellbeing.

Enjoy rolling the die all you want. Most of us wouldn't. It is not paranoid or silly to choose to go out and have fun only when there is an actual responsible adult to care for kids.

I mean it IS super rare. What happened to that girl. And it was in a ground floor apartment not up in a hotel room. It is so rare that that case is notoriously famous as the horrifying example of the time the worst actually happened. A camera will be set up pointed at the kid, thats the whole point of the camera. And a vomiting incident could go unnoticed just as easily if the parents were eating dinner in their own kitchen with a monitor on.

I mean I think you're assuming that if home a parent doesn't let the kid cry. I always let my kid fuss a bit before going up, not for a half hour or anything but a few minutes absolutely they frequently went back to sleep!

The problem with the bolded is that to really live that life you need to live in a bubble. We take risks all the time, humans are terrible at risk evaluation. The kids were likely more at risk driving to the hotel then they were in that room.

DP. Those of you depending so heavily on "the camera will be pointed at the kid" are so, so naive.

So your children never get out of bed on their own? Do you really not think that in a strange place, where they're outside their usual routines and not in their own beds in their own bedrooms, they will just sleep perfectly like logs and not possibly sleep more lightly and maybe get up and get out of bed to look for mom or dad? Yes, even out of a pack and play or crib if they're able. You look up at your precious camera trained on the kid's bed and they're not there. Not in view. What now, geniuses? You can't know if they're just out of frame or in the other room opening the mini bar or in the bathroom exploring the hot water tap that's set for scalding. Oh, but so sorry -- any mention of specific dangers in life frustrates you because you don't like to hear about them and assume that being aware of them means we..."live in a bubble," I guess.

No what I think is that if I am a block away that I could be back in my hotel room in less than 5 minutes if I was properly motivate (IE, running) and that even waking up in a strange place, very little can happen in 5 minutes. Situations that require an immediate response (ie, the incident where being 10 seconds away instead of 300 seconds away) are extraordinarily rare.

You're all mad at me, I have said I wouldn't do this, I just don't agree with you that its dangerous. I think generally it does show bad judgement because while I don't think its dangerous, the consequences of being caught are SEVERE and being caught is not nearly as unlikely as something bad happening. I mean any of the things you describe could happen if I was in the room but asleep. There is no perfect safety situation.

Re: the bold: Your concern, then is that YOU would get caught and be punished. Your concern is not that the behavior is inherently risky toward your own children.

Got it.

Yea the poster defending this woman is truly awful. And the messed up part is, I bet when a bad thing happens to her she’s like… well that’s life! When in reality, at least some fraction of the time, she’d actually just made a terrible decision that a reasonable person would never have done but she thinks it’s w in the range of acceptable. Fine to do to yourself. Not okay to do to children you brought into this world….

I am that poster you are talking about so casually. Horrible things actually have happened to me, and I do not always think 'that's life'. There are specific decisions made by specific people (sometimes me) that have led to bad things happening. My brother died as a teenager riding a vehicle my parents purchased for him and allowed him to ride. I believe they hold some responsibility for his death. And my house burned to the ground after being struck by lightening, which was no one's fault. But I actually think it is BECAUSE I have experienced fairly extreme tragedies in both extremely random ways and in ways where a single decision led to a chain of events that led to the tragedy that I have this perspective.

And I spent my first year as a mother in a state of extreme stress and anxiety about protecting my child because of these (and some other) events. And at some point I realized that I was hurting her both by being so amped up and by not allowing her to experience things and that I had to figure out how to make better risk analysis to survive motherhood. And so I worked at it, and I challenge myself to experience moments of discomfort when my children are taking risks that I find uncomfortable but that aren't actually dangerous to just sit, because they learn through failure/experience.

Anyway none of that is relevant here as there is nothing to be gained by the kids from being left in a hotel room. I just don't think anything is served when we make situations like this out to be THE WORST THING EVER. A lot of truly terrible things and terrible neglect happens to children. IMO, this isn't that, although I will say the story someone told in the early pages about a toddler wandering around and a poster finding the mother in the lobby partying horrified me. In my imagining of how I could do something like this, I actually feel like I would be watching the monitor far more closely than if I was at home (where frequently the monitor was just plugged in somewhere in the room and I'd look at it if I heard something). To the point where it just wouldn't be fun and relaxing. And the other reports that they were with a group of people made me question my own assessment here because in that situation they are less likely to be watching that monitor like a hawk. And talking about it like it is just isn't helpful and actually hurts people who are in the greyer areas (working mom needing groceries example etc)

I agree with PP's earlier assessment and this update is lovely. You seem kind and thoughtful, PP. I think people like to judge in these sorts of instances to feel better about their own choices and to reaffirm their (false) belief that their children will be safe because they do all the "right" things. There's no guarantee that anyone's chidlren will be safe and there is no definitive "right" thing. Which is terrifying, so people spend a lot of time judging others and pretending their own choices are the right ones so they aren't so scared.