It is so weird for me to read all the answers here. My daughter was home alone by the time she was 6. She walked to school alone at that age and went to the playground by herself. But obviously she didn’t grow up in the US, all those things are perfectly normal in Germany. What is everybody in the US so afraid off? I mean this as a serious question, I just don’t understand?
My daughter was 10 and my son was eight when I left them alone for the first time. I was desperate for a run, so I drew a map of my route and left it with them. I told them I would be back in 40 minutes. They were perfectly fine. They were both readers and introverts so they didn’t really miss me and certainly didn’t interact with each other.
This experiment went so well that after a few months of leaving the house periodically, my husband and I decided that we could actually go out to dinner locally and leave them to take care of each other. Whenever we would go, we would pay each one of them to take care of the other. Just a few bucks and although neither one of them was actually motivated by money, the fact that we paid them to take care of their sibling made them take the task much more seriously.
I remember one night we came home at about 10 and found our son sleeping in our daughter’s bed. She told us that he had become scared and since we weren’t home (we let the kids in our bed when they were scared or ill), she let him sleep in her bed. And then she asked us to put him back in his bed because it was really annoying having him there!
Well, I am not sure what the legal guidelines are, but I know that, within schools where I worked, Child Protective Services looked into a situation where a six year old was left home alone for hours with a two year old sibling, but did not take the case of a ten year old who got burned cooking dinner for himself when home alone.
In our suburban area, parents are very protective and wary of kidnapping, etc., and parents do not let their kids do much alone. I certainly was an overprotective parent myself. But this year, a principal I know brought in a “Let Grow” initiative, that encourages parents to let their children be more independent. The elementary school kids get to go on the public announcement system in the morning to celebrate things like, “I rode my bike to the store alone,” “I cooked dinner for my family,” “I crossed the street by myself,” “I made my own bed.”
Children used to be treated as far more capable than they are now. In 1976, the public schools in the NY city where I lived required all 7th and 8th grade girls to complete home economics, which included cooking a full meal from scratch. Other than the obvious sexist stereotyping, it was a good experience. I can’t imagine a public school allowing 11 and 12 year old kids to do that now-use sharp knives, hot stoves, etc. The funny thing is, every single girl was completely capable of it by the end of class, regardless of intelligence or experience. We used to assume children were competent, and they usually were.
We’re unusual for Americans TBH, but our guys started walking and riding their bikes to the school bus stop (1km away from home) when they were 6 and in first grade. They’d stash their bikes in the hedgerow to ride it home when they got off the bus. No one around us batted an eye. Plenty told us it was good that we let them do that.
But now at the same bus stop - elementary parents are always there for pick up and drop off. Middle/high schoolers still walk or bike. Parents are much more afraid of kidnapping I think - even though stats say it’s very unlikely. I bet statistically more kids are killed by the guns their parents or fellow neighbors keep for “safety.” It’s only one data point, but I know IRL a kid killed by a gun kept in the house - his friend shot him. I know more killed/injured from just local news. I don’t know any (IRL) who’ve been kidnapped - and none locally that I can think of either.
Americans don’t really understand statistics and safety.
With all due respect, can a parent assign a probability to the likelihood their kid will be kidnapped or otherwise harmed and decide to not worry about it? Sure it’s very unlikely, but it happens. Whether it happens more often or we just hear about it more often, the unlikely negative outcome is so horrific that most parents I know err on the side of caution. Would anyone disagree that a parent’s primary responsibility is to ensure their kids survive to a point when they are capable of ensuring their own survival?
@RandyErika That wasn’t my point TBH. My point was many parents in our area have a greater danger in their home than the one they worry about. It’s more along the lines that many think they are safer driving than flying when the opposite is true.
Whether one wants to drive, fly, or remain in their house is totally up to them.
The irony is around here, of all the hazards mentioned in the previous few posts the most risky would be riding bikes. Between the old people and tourists, locations in Florida usually end up highest fatalities as a % of population for pedestrians and bikes.
Off the top of my head I can list 7 people I know that have been hit on their bikes (only one died) and that doesn’t even count the kid that was hit in front of our kids’ school. We didn’t see that one and don’t know the kid, just came on the scene right after it happened.
Randyerika, you are taking risks every so glad time you wake up. Did you allow your child outside? Children can be struck by lightning. Stay in the house? Danger of falling down the stairs. Does he bathe? Drowning in bathtubs is a cause of death. We need to realistically manage acceptable risks to have mentally healthy, functioning children turn into competent adults. Fearing life is not the answer, it just produces anxious kids
I’m well aware of the concept of risk, having spent the last 30+ years working as an actuary. Letting a 6 year old run around the neighborhood unattended is just not an acceptable risk - for me. We don’t all have the same level of risk aversion regarding our finances, relationships, gambling or apparently our kids well-being. I’m sorry I don’t feel differently, but in this day and age… it is what it is.
I feel folks can decide their own level of risk. We all have different personalities and like/dislike different things, so why should “risk” be any different? I only get “amused” when folks don’t understand the level of risk - things like getting bitten by a shark, etc.
We’re a high risk tolerance family. We mountain hike. We scuba dive (youngest got certified at age 10). We raise and ride ponies/horses. We travel a bit, including to the Jordan in the Middle East (something really scary for many from what they tell us - though statistically far less risky than the US).
What we don’t do - ever - is use our cell phones or other devices while driving, drive while sleepy, or drive after any sort of alcoholic drink. Then too, we always wear seatbelts. We’re risky where it enhances life and our experiences and stay safe when stats tell us things are too dangerous for any perceived gain.
We shot a highly likely rabid animal along our typical walking route yesterday (2nd one in 2018) - yet tonight I was out there walking that route again - alone - without fear. We won’t handle the potentially rabid animal without gloves and all of our critters are vaccinated.
Everyone assesses their own tolerance. We each decide risk. It’s only when we decide to make others conform to our standards that the line is blurry. (That line IS blurry, esp when someone taking a risk can affect others - like texting and driving. I’m all for that being illegal. Letting kids have some freedom? That depends upon the kid and the situation.)
These days one of the riskiest things one can do is send a child to school where they may be shot.
In Maryland, where we live, a child has to be 8 to be left unsupervised, and a teenager has to be 13 to be left in charge of a child under 8.
These seem like pretty good guidelines to me (although in real life, before we moved to Maryland the following year, I did leave my 7-year-old at home alone for short periods of time at her own request – she was irritated at having to come with me to drop off and pick up her brother at his piano lesson, which occurred at the same time as her favorite TV show).
That said, there’s a continuum. It’s one thing to leave a child alone at home for 15 minutes while you pick up a sibling. You can place restrictions on the child that limit some of the difficulties of being home alone. (For example, the child may be required to stay indoors and forbidden to answer the door or prepare food.)
I think it’s easier to leave kids home alone now than it used to be because of cell phones. Usually, a parent is reachable for those situations that the kid can’t handle alone but that don’t justify calling 911 (here I’m thinking of things like overflowing toilets).
There are individual differences, though. My kid who started learning to be home alone at 7 was allowed to have one specific friend over when she was 10 even if there was no parent present. She could also go to that friend’s house, which was a half-mile walk away. Both kids were extremely trustworthy. But I wouldn’t have allowed this with other friends until much later, and her brother didn’t have friends over while home alone until he was about 14 – mostly because he was afraid of rough behavior that could damage things in the house.
I left both my kids alone for short periods of time (20 minutes) starting from when they were 8. My kids babysat themselves for the evening when the eldest was 11 and the youngest was 9. I was a little nervous, but we were dining at a restaurant less than a mile away. We returned home at 10 pm and every single light in the house was off, all the doors were locked, and both kids were fast asleep. I never worried about them after that.
It seems to me the biggest killer of those students around here has been ODing (though many post graduation or dropping out), car accidents (esp if only thinking of those still in school), then cancer and similar medical issues. Suicide would come in next, then the individual things like the student shot, a drowning, a pedestrian and probably one or two I’m not thinking of. These come from more school districts than just mine, but all local.
So far we haven’t had any students die at school (any reason). I hope it stays that way.
Actually, that’s not true. Driving your child to school is the riskiest. Once a child is there, he or she is still statistically very safe.
When I was a kid, we were allowed complete freedom on our block and adjacent blocks – essentially, the neighborhood, which was full of kids, friends and enemies. Basically, as soon as we could walk and talk and find our way home. It wasn’t without incident. I only saw my mother cry twice when I was a kid. The first was when her mother died, but the second was when she didn’t know where my four year-old sister was. (Down the block, at a friend’s house, losing track of time. That sister was super-social.)
That was a city neighborhood. An affluent one, to be sure, though not so affluent there weren’t school-aged kids in almost every house, and not far at all from much less affluent neighborhoods. I had plenty of anxiety about “bad” kids from other neighborhoods coming to steal things and to beat me up. During nice weather, we played outside a lot – elaborate, neighborhood-wide kick-the-can games, touch football in a vacant lot nearby, pretending to be spies or guerillas in a small patch of woods. We went home when it got dark. I didn’t even especially like it – most of the time, I would have preferred to stay home and read, but my mother would kick me out of the house and not let me back in for at least an hour.
My wife was the same way, although she lived in ex-urbs more than cities. Some years ago, we were doing a college visit in one of the places she lived as a child. She couldn’t remember the address for her old house. But she found it by finding the elementary school, then walking home from there. Forty years later, she still knew how to walk home half a mile from school. She was 6 when she moved away from there.
My wife and I moved our family to a different neighborhood years ago precisely because no one in the neighborhood where we were living then would let their kids do anything unsupervised outside the house. We didn’t want our kids to grow up like that.
It makes me sad that I’m surprised when I see a kid out riding his or her bike. It’s a rare sighting these days.
With respect to the “Let Grow” philosophy, a few years ago a mom was charged with child neglect or child endangerment for letting her 6 year old daughter walk to school alone on a route that included a couple of major streets.
Times change. At one time a parent who did not use corporal punishment for “correcting” misbehavior was thought to be a poor parent, today it leads to a visit by the authorities & possible criminal charges & arrest.
Society has changed. Cities now hold the overwhelmingly majority of the US population & fewer attend church, for example. Risks are higher. The US population is very diverse, unlike Germany or Japan which have less diversity & more values held in common.
I bet risks are not higher, if you look at statistics.