I recently stumbled across a forum on Mumsnet where a mum had posted that her husband found someone had left a baby in a car - what followed was an interesting discussion as to if it was acceptable to leave a baby in a car and if so how long for and in what conditions. You can read the thread for yourself here but it made me think about what I normally do and if it is acceptable.

The thing is that I do leave Cotswold Kid in the car whilst I pop out and do errands. If I'm getting petrol I try to choose a petrol station which has a glass window so that I can clearly see the car whilst I'm paying but this isn't always possible and I do sometimes use the ones where the view is obstructed.

I have left him asleep in a supermarket car park (like the one in the picture above) whilst I ran in and got a sandwich and a birthday card.

I've also left him in the car parked outside the post office whilst I sent a parcel.

I also once left him in a retail park whilst I went into Argos to pick up a reservation one weekday morning - but when I realised that I had a longer wait than I was expecting I went back and got him.

Of course the one thing that all the above occurrences had in common was the amount of time I was away. On every single occasion I expected to be in and out of the shop in less than 5 minutes and in most cases I was. As every parent knows, going out is like a military operation and in my head I was thinking that by the time I'd unstrapped CK, put together the travel system, strapped him in and grabbed his bag and then reversed the routine when returning, I could have probably been in and out several times.

Certainly when CK was a baby he would regularly fall asleep in the car and so wouldn't even know I was gone half the time and as I have tinted windows in the rear of my car people can't see in unless you stand in front of my car so you wouldn't even know he was in there.

Of course there have been the odd occasion when I've come back and found his face red with tears but that's the rarity. I think that now he is a toddler, he is used to going to the petrol station, knows he will be left but that I always come back so he doesn't often get upset and can quite often still see me whilst I'm paying anyway. Also with a lot of fuel stations having pay at pump this has meant that leaving him isn't a very regular occurrence - unless I'm popping in for a pint of milk.

I don't find the weather to be an issue - especially living in the UK but on the rare day that we do have some warmer weather I do leave a window open for him and if I think its dangerously hot then I do take him out.

So to sum up - I think it's acceptable to leave a baby or toddler in a car but for no more than 5 minutes and not in very hot weather - I certainly wouldn't leave him to go into the supermarket and do a weekly shop and I don't think he'd want me to either as he loves nothing more than sitting in the trolley when we go shopping .

It's just my opinion of course but what do you think? Let me know in the comments below.