Can you think of a time you may have made a mistake with your children?

I think that we all may have done the same and everything was fine. We thought that everyone was as trustworthy and kind as ourselves.
It is a case of being in the right place at the wrong time.

There are far more horrors happening in children's own homes.

I’ve made the holiday chalet mistake once and still feel sick 35 years on
Everyone left their sleeping little ones in the small friendly site we went to every year for several generations. Baby patrol walking round all evening, I did my share of that as well.
One evening my 3 year old appeared in the ballroom having walked passed an open air pool in the dark
I still feel like I should have been charged and imprisoned. Never again have I made such a dreadful mistake
This was late 70’s early 80’s and everyone thought it was hilarious and so clever of him, except me.

Any parent who believes they never made a mistake is either kidding themselves or deluded .There is no such thing as a perfect parent .I was a bit too "old school " with mine ,They didn't get to eat or even talk in the car Their dad doesn't like noise when he's driving.
I dont think it affected them ,but I was strict in other ways too.I took them to work with me so they learned young to amuse themselves and not get up to mischief ,they ate out from they were months old with no great disasters ,they went to parties with us and slept in peoples spare rooms until we were ready to go home.
Maybe I should have left them with other people more.They did spend a couple of weeks a year with Gran and Papa at the farm but I preferred looking after them myself.They are both very sociable ,easy going people which I think is because they spent days with our staff and clients .Would I do it again? I'm not sure I might be inclined to give them some space away from me .The upside is we are very close and still speak daily at least once a day and normally see each other most days .
SueDonim my doors aren't locked even now ,only when we go out ,visitors knock and enter

I think it's good to allow them to amuse themselves, paddyanne.
Helicopter parents don't do their children any favours in the long-term.

Oopsminty are you Luckygirl’s daughter!!?

Ha! Yes, a similar story, Toadinthehole!

Nobody's perfect and mistakes happen

I made far more mistakes with my eldest than my third. I was very young and wild when I had my daughter no: 1. Poor girl was dragged all over the place when we lived in the Canaries. The youngest two had a far more stable version of me

But I would never have left any of them in an apartment.

Do you mean the Mcannes ?

We were, in hindsight, quite careless with our two children when on the beach. They were very happy playing with a lilo (between them) in the water etc. We’ve always liked sunbathing so we used to lie back and sunbathe, hardly ever even looking up to see where they were! I’m so ashamed of myself now, I should have had them in my eyesight all the time! I only found out later that our son was always cold and shivering with blue lips!

A friend used to leave her crawling baby downstairs in the lounge whilst she decorated upstairs for hours! The baby was fine, never touched anything and was fine, she just took it for granted! Different times!

When we were on holiday in Suffolk in the 1970s we used occasionally to leave the children (about 8 and 6 years old) in the church, while we did something we felt they wouldn’t enjoy. There were children’s books, puzzles and so on at the back of the church. They were quite happy and nothing bad ever happened, but if course the church was open to anyone and we were unthinkingly taking a big risk. I think we felt they’d be safe in a church.

I should add we never left them in the church for very long. Probably about half an hour.

It’s about assessing risk, I suppose. My parents used to send my unaccompanied older bro and sister from London to Wales by train. They also took themselves to school alone from the ages of 8 &5. Another friend travelled on her own from London to Yugoslavia and back every summer from the age of 7 until 14.

Many times I failed parenting tests.
I once was invited to next door's Tupperware party. I didn't want to go but she offered her 12yr old son to babysit so I lost my excuse.
I was quite enjoying myself with a glass of wine and lots of girly giggling when I noticed her son was in the room with us.
"Ah" said I "did DH come home?" "No" he said "but you said you'd be an hour so I came home". He had shut the door to my house and I didn't have a key.
DH came home soon after and wasn't impressed.
Luckily our boys slept through.

We also sent them on long train journeys by themselves. From Scotland to Suffolk and back, changing twice, when they were 10 and 8 and every Summer to stay with DGP. They loved it.
Would I do it now? Probably not.

DH used to travel by train by himself over 200 miles to and from school from the age of 8.

My sons are in their 30s now but I can honestly say they were never, ever left alone. We never once had a babysitter either.

In Benalmadena daughter and friend 6 and 8 met a nice Spanish family who invited them to the beach to play with their daughter.
Off they went but when my friend heard this she cracked up and we searched all the beaches looking for them.
It had never occurred to me that they might have been in danger.
A while later they came back and I felt bad that we could not invite them in because of hotel security.

We once took our 16 year old and 14 year old to Heathrow and let them fly to Germany on their own and allowed DD to fly from Germany via Amsterdam when she was 13. I did not consider that bad parenting at the time but perhaps it would be now.
The children did become very self sufficient young people.

Lots of children have travelled the world to and from boarding schools in the UK, harrigran. They still do.
It is just so dreadful that there are the occasional predators around that cause us to be fearful.

I lost my son for a few minutes once as he had managed to undo the straps of his pushchair and wandered off. Scared the life out of me. There are no perfect parents, everyone let got of a little hand for a moment or looked away for a second, they were just lucky. To be honest, I didn't even like sitting in my garden when the children were small, too many awful things happened to me as a child. I've managed, despite being anxious, to raise confident children but I still sometimes worry I was too over protective at times.

It would take me hours to recount the tales- And those hours would turn into days-

Maybe one mistake I didn't make with them was that they weren't latchkey kids-

I think after Madeleine disappeared many of us examined our own behaviour as far as being lax with our children and whether our parents were with us. I do think most of us will admit to growing up at a time when parents didn't hover over their offspring, in fact there was a benign neglect by today's standards. I recall my parents sending us to bed on Christmas Eve with the intention of getting us up later to go to Midnight Mass and if we couldn't be roused, that was sometimes the case, they went off without us leaving us asleep in the house without an adult. Like most of my peers I roamed my neck of the woods for hours without coming home, they weren't particularly worried, we lived near a common and ponds, I don't think it occurred to my parents or anyone else's for that matter that we might experience a mishap.

Later on when my parents no longer took us on holiday they started to go to more exciting places given they didn't have to pay for us. Off they went to America for about 3 weeks leaving us alone in the house, I was about 17 I think, I can't remember my older brother being around a lot, so most of the time I was on my own, but wild parties were a thing of the future, I don' think I had anyone round. At a similar age we left our son aged 16 or so to stay with a friend, whilst we and younger child went away. We had often taken the friend with us to Center Parcs so it was a bit of quid pro quo. Our son was the teenager from hell at the time, clearly paying us back for being the perfect sleeping baby in the hotel room. Anyway he came back to ours whilst we were away and threw a party. His sister came round and found out about it and broke the news to us in stages with a "he's had a couple of friends round" us "how many is a couple?" her "about half a dozen, or maybe a dozen" Then when we got back she upped that to twenty or so. The final figure came in from the neighbours at between 60 or 80, we'd just moved into this house at the time, which shares communal grounds adjacent to the Thames. 3 day party, kids all over the gardens making a hell of a noise, neighbours asking them to be quiet them responding with "aren't we allowed to have a bit of fun?" cheeky sods The chairman of the residents committee came to see us soon after we came back with the comment "it was quite clear that your son had lost control of the situation" Although there was some mess, the house wasn't wrecked as my son was later to inform me that I should be grateful to him because he got a couple of mates to act as bouncers to oversee the house for us he always had an answer

As far as my own children were concerned with our first, we often left him asleep as a baby in hotel rooms where they had baby listening services whilst we had diner in the hotel. He was such a sound sleeper, we were lucky he never woke, when number two came along, he didn't go off like a light and if I remember rightly those carefree evening meals came to an end.

I did have a horrible experience with my second child on holiday when he was about 7 or 8, fairly large hotel, we were all sitting round the pool, after a while I became aware that he had disappeared he was gone for about 2 hours, I was nearly frantic searching the hotel grounds, getting the reception to put out calls on a loud speaker. Phew! eventually he emerged had made friends with another little boy and they had gone off to his room to see his action men, that was the longest couple of hours of my life he got the lecture over and over after that "tell me where you are going, don't just disappear"

I have made so many mistakes but like so many here the times were so different I remember one very rainy day there was something I desperately needed (no idea what now) from the shop and I left my two who would be 3 and 5 to run to the shop five minutes away I was only gone ten minutes but they were both screaming when I got back I also remember the dreaded Tupperware parties I didn’t go to many but one at the house opposite I went to and went back every half an hour to check on them everyone used to go to these things regularly and just check on the kids throughout the evening
We also used teenage babysitters without any credentials or any checks it makes my blood run cold now
It absolutely horrified me
But I always felt for the McCanns it was a dreadful error of judgement but it could have happened to any one of us

Have made mistakes as a parent which looking back on I obviously regret but can say hand on heart I have never left any of my children alone anywhere . I did lose sight of one on a brutish beach once for a few minutes , ditto in a shop. Both time’s were the longest panic filled minutes of my life.

British not brutish

When we lived in the Netherlands our neighbours used to go out for the evening and run baby alarms to the neighbours across the street. They thought we were strange for always having a babysitter.

When my daughter was just a baby and my husband was away I had to call the doctor out to her. He gave me a prescription and expected me to leave the baby in the house while I went to get it. The Dutch always seemed to get away with it.

I urgently needed something from the shop which was a ten minute walk away. The baby was asleep in her cot and it was winter and a performance to get her dressed to go out. I decided to risk it and run down to the shop and leave the baby behind.

On the way back I tripped and fell quite badly. My head was swimming from shock and pain. The only thing in my head was I must get back to my baby. She was fine when I got in and still asleep. It really frightened me though. I kept thinking what if I had been badly hurt no one would have known about the baby. I never did anything like that again.

Dragonfly We found the same with our German friends who couldn’t understand why we needed a babysitter and didn’t just leave the children sleeping while we went out. Their idea of babysitting was telling theit children to knock at the neighbouring flats if they woke up or were upset.
When they went camping abroad they left their two toddlers in the tent while they had evenings out. A tent! In a foreign country?!

I am sure my children could list all the many mistakes they think we made but We never left them alone.
I feel for the Family of Madeleine they will live with their guilt forever.