Locking children in their bedrooms

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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!

Jeni thought of you leaving your hotel room ajar.
I once got spooked when i booked into a hotel room that was part of a 2 room arrangement with adjoining door, that did not appear to be lockable. OMG no! Even if there was no-one in the other room...

Bagitha I'm with you. A bit of response from the poster wouldn't go amiss either.

I NEVER shut my bedroom door! I have mild problem in hotels! I must have slight claustrophobia! I don't like small rooms either , which is why I dread the thought of a care home as I get more disabled

Not everybody can log in every day so I am keeping an open mind about the OP. Humbert is the man in 'Lolita'.

I have never even shut my bedroom door when there is a child in the house. The thought that a frightened or ill child was not able to reach an adult is unthinkable. I think the powers that be would take a dim view of locking a door from the outside for whatever reason.

No - not trivial at all, bagitha - and I know I was checked regularly!

arty, there has been no suggestion by the OP that the child is distressed ("screaming in panic" were your words). The OP just said her granddaughter "told her about it".

green, I wouldn't call trying to prevent you falling downstairs a 'trivial' reason. In addition, I don't think stair gates were very common when we were small.

We have always left bedroom doors open. I don't know how common that is. In the house where I grew up all the door handles are out of reach to small children so even just closing the door would 'lock' them in. If 'containment' — as in putting a baby in a cot for safety, or a playpen, or fastening it into a high chair — is all that is intended, then it is not intrinsically wrong. We do not know all the reasons why the child's door is locked, nor even if it actually is being locked, just that the child has reported to her grandma that she is shut in by, in gran's words, "caring" and "protective" parents.

The longer the OP leaves before she re-posts, the more I feel this was a wind-up.

That's what I meant when I commented that my parents used to lock me in my room at night, too. It was a trivial reason - nothing to do with anything sinister - they simply didn't want me to fall downstairs. As is very likely the case with the parents of this little girl. Perhaps our reactions (well-intentioned) have startled Humbertbear a bit?
If this is the case, Humbert, just come back on and tell us what you think?

artygran I wasn't debating the whys and wherefores – I was just pointing out that I have first-hand experience that this does happen and for very trivial reasons so the OP may well have been genuine and not a wind-up (as has been suggested).

How does it help sleep deprived parents to have a child screaming in panic behind a locked door, wondering if said parents are still there and why they have locked her in? Sorry, but in my book it doesn't do to debate the whys and wherefores of the supposed problem; it is wrong on every level.

It is not the fact that someone would lock a child in their bedroom that defies belief (I was a SW for 25 years), but the idea that there are so-called experts out there whom parents are paying for this sort of advice!

Completely agree, absent, but I don't get the impression from the OP that that's the problem here. I sincerely hope not anyway. We don't know enough to make a judgment in this case, though the idea of locking a child in a room alone does ring alarm bells whatever the reason.

bags The mum I knew who used to lock her child in at night simply did it so she and her husband wouldn't be disturbed by the child wanting a glass of water, having a bad dream, etc. Trivial and wrong, I thought then and think now.