Locking children in their bedrooms

Funnily, that wouldn't worry me as much as being locked in! I really HATE it.
It's one reason I have to have a balcony on cruises. If I had to have an inside cabin, I wouldn't go!

phoenix and bags I am begining to think of the 't' word. Are you?

I thought of the 't' word quite a while ago, annobel. However, as greatnan says, not everyone can login every day.

T indeed, although I am always happy to be proved wrong.

I couldn't stand living in my small living room/kitchen if I did not have the French windows onto the balcony and lovely views. I could have bought a flat with no outdoor space much more cheaply but I love sitting in my lounger on the balcony in good weather.

If it is a wind-up, what purpose does it serve? I don't get it.

If it is a wind up, the purpose it would serve would be to give the OP the support she was seeking to tell the child's parents that what they are doing is wrong. Without knowing exactly why (and even if) they are doing what is reported, I'm not willing to condemn the parents. In short, strange though the behaviour seems, I can think of perfectly ordinary circumstances where a child needed to be contained for its own safety. I can even quote a couple of examples from my own family.

One morning, when DD1 was four and DD3 was two, I woke up to a quiet house. No children's voices. No sounds of playing. Eerie. I got up and checked their bedroom. No kids. Checked the rest of the flat. No kids. (We lived in an upstairs flat but had a garden beyond the garden of the downstairs flat — very Scottish arrangement). Looked out of their bedroom window and there they were, starkers, in the garden in the early morning, daubing themselves with mud and having a whale of a time! When the relief had washed through me and I'd smiled, I called them in. Hosed them down a bit at the back door and put them in the bath. It was a cold morning in May (Edinburgh still gets frosts into May some years). I can't remember what I said to them about going outside without telling me, but it didn't happen again. It scared me that they could get up and out without my hearing a sound, especially as my bedroom door, always open, was right beside the first exit door.

What if they had been devious and it kept happening?

A couple of years later, when DD2 was four, I discovered chocolate biscuit wrappers under her bed and chocolate smears under the pillow. It turned out she had been getting up in the night, going downstairs (we'd moved to a standard semi by then), moving a chair from the dining room to the kitchen, and climbing up onto a kitchen worktop to reach the top shelf of the cupboard where I kept the choc biscs, then putting the chair back again. Again, the scary thing was that she had done this several times without my hearing a thing! Anything could have happened!!!!!!! I promised DD that she could have a chocolate biscuit every day if she would promise me not to go climbing about in the kitchen (or anywhere else) in the night. It worked. What if it hadn't worked? What if she had done more dangerous things or if her actions had threatened a sibling's safety? (Playing with fire?).

I can imagine circumstances where a child did not respond to parental reason and explanations and kept on "disturbing their peace" or that of their other children so that they felt forced to take drastic measures, at least for a while.

If I'm barking up the wrong tree, I just wish H.bear would come back and give a bit more explanation as to the whys and wherefores.

This also has the classic look of a troll post — it's the only post the OP has made and s/he has not returned.

Just re-read the first sentence of my long post. It doesn't make sense.

Hey ho! Shower time!

Butty, who knows what drives stirrers?

Oh, bagitha! You hosed them down a bit on a cold Scottish May morning
- I'll bet they didn't do it again!
If the OP wanted support to confront the parents, that does not constitute trolling, which I always regard as posts made simply to sow dissension on a forum.

Yeah well, greatnan, where children doing potentially dangerous things (they could have been kidnapped! I'd no idea how long they'd been out there!) are concerned, I believe in effective messages. Besides, they were incredibly muddy. Anyway, they weren't harmed by a dose of cold water but they did remember the message so my 'plan' worked. Actually, they often got hosed down after playing out because, yes, they did get that dirty. It was all part of the fun, all the squealing and dashing in and out of cold water.

Re the OP, well, I hope she got the support she wanted, has spoken to the caring and protective parents, and discovered that they are not cruel dragons locking their daughter up.

Doesn't hurt to think about these things anyway, which is what we've done.

Another thing my two toerags got up to was biting every single raw potato and onion in the pantry one morning before I was up and, another time, finding a packet of Cheddars and scoffing the lot in various parts of the house. I wondered why they weren't interested in breakfast and then later I found little piles of crumbs in odd corners.

Blighters! But funny too.

My son got up one morning to find that his daughter, then aged 4, had cut a very neat slice of bread (with a meat cleaver) and toasted it all on her own. She still had all her fingers. Yes, they can do the most hair-raising things. I think they then decided to have sliced bread available for toasting.

My DS had just turned two at Christmas, I had a stair gate in place (it didn't open, you had to climb over) he managed to climb out of the cot, over the gate and got down to the kitchen. He pulled a chair across the floor and climbed on the worktop, found the cake tin and had a big bite out of the Yule log. Never underestimate children, there were four adults in the house and not one heard a thing.

My grandson, then aged two, took to climbing out of his bedroom window and rampaging about in the garden several times a night. Childproof locks were quickly fitted.

So you can see why some children, usually the ones who have to be actively supervised for their own safety ,while awake. Are locked in. Thesecaseshowever are very rare. But they do exist.

Absent I hope it was a bungalow or ground floor flat!!

Two-storey house with balconies and decking. Hence the speed with which the locks were fitted to the windows.

I wish I had been able to be firmer with my daughters - I just couldn't bear them to be uncomfortable or upset. DD1 did something really naughty when she was 13 and I knew I should have stopped her going to a party which she had been looking forward to for weeks - I let her go, with just a severe lecture about how unhappy her behaviour had made me. She didn't do it again.
I know now that I should have made them accept the consequences of their actions.

If this advice about locking the poor child in her bedroom was given by a so-called, 'sleep expert', then it should be investigated by an official authority involved with the welfare of children. Such treatment is heartless to say the least.

Sigh. Not if it's to keep the child (and possibly others) safe.

Bagithat I think Sadgran was referring to the original post! Not all the ifs and buts that this thread has turned into.

And I agree with Sadgran completely.

I realised that, j, but what has been said in the thread does make a difference to how one might look at the issue. It's not clear cut.

Yes well. Sadgran was still referring to the original post. You didn't need that sigh.