Incensed by children being left

Everyone must be feeling for the parents and family of the three-year-old girl who has gone missing in Portugal.

But also, I imagine many, like myself, are incensed at the couple, both doctors, for leaving three very small children alone in the apartment with no babysitter.

Maybe it could be understood if one of the children were in their teens, but no, three children of three years and under were left alone, whilst their parents ate dinner with friends at a restaurant a few hundred yards away.

The holiday complex offered a babysitting service, but the parents decided not to use it and instead decided to leave their children alone and check on them at intervals throughout the night.

Would these parents have left their children alone in the UK and gone off to a neighbour's?

Being doctors they should realise that young children can become sick, or get up to mischief in a very short time.

And for a young child to wake up in a strange place without their parents would be extremely frightening for them.

The least these parents could have done was to use a baby monitor. These monitors have a long distance range nowadays and would have allowed the parents to have heard if the children awoke, or were disturbed by an intruder.

Maybe this will be a wake-up call to other people taking their children on holiday, especially as this is not the first time a child has gone missing on holiday.

Maybe people will be reminded of the child who went missing in Greece several years ago.

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