When do you let a child out alone??

Purple_Sparkles

My son is 9 and he sometimes goes out to play in the street on his skateboard or bike, I wouldn't let him out on his own for ages then I sat him down and we had a discussion about the dangers and what would he do if anything happened. We set how far down the street he could go and he sticks to it. I let him walk the dog occassionally round the block but our dog is pretty big and most people cross the street when they see him! I also ask him to nip to the shop now and again but that is still within the boundary that I set.

It's hard deciding when to let them, we are all different as are our children and I think we have to make up our own minds.

I wouldn't let him walk to or from school on his own but it's a 60 minute walk (we usually take the car). When he goes to senior school I'm still not sure as it's not on a bus route from where we live, the walk would probably be about 30 mins, I guess I'll see when it's time for him to go.

DeeDee74

katyag i'm glad someone's the same as me...
i was beginning to think it was only me who was like it..

the ex oh is allway's telling me i have to let them go sometime and yeah i know he is right..
but then i think its easy for them to say but not so easy for you to do...
well it isent for me anyway..

trying to get oldest a bit more independent as hes in high school in september and i will be going out of my mind with worry then....

good luck .

poe.tuesday

my children are 8 and 10 and I don't let them out the garden gate by themselves (not that there is anything outside the gate as we live in the middle of nowhere)

we all still hold hands when we cross the roads too and they are not allowed out on their bikes unless one of us is with them, I suppose if we lived in a residental area it maybe different but we live on rural single track road with nutty boy racers charging up and down the lane ;-(

andyrules

Re the school walk - if possible start letting them go alone before they start senior, so they can practise more safely. If you have a younger one to take, try letting the older one leave the house first and then you can discreetly observe that they have arrived. Alternatively, start by walking some of the way with them, eg past any hazard, and let them go alone the rest of the way. Walking with a friend helps too. It's really about letting go a little at a time rather than wait for a magic age. This is where all your years of drumming in road safety and Stranger Danger kicks in!

Re leaving children home alone - there isn't really a hard and fast rule, but it would be an offence to put a child at risk. Here is a useful link.

tanith

I think that depending of course on the situation that you live in and bearing in mind roads etc you should be starting to let your children independance from around age 8 or 9 , its difficult to take that first step and needs to be done in little steps of course but you are not guiding your children to become independant beings (which is what parenting is all about) if you do not allow them to grow and start making decisions for themselves... walking to school in a group or with a friend is the first step and at some point they have to do this... preferable they would be comfortable with this at least a year before high school comes along... so its up to you Mums and Dads to be brave and encourage independance in your children...

EDIT: just reading back through the posts again and please please you cannot be seriously thinking of walking or taking your senior school children to school.. it really is beyond reason that kids actually need a parents company when they are at high school...

Spendless

It will very much depend on your child, where you live, the streets nearby, traffic etc.

I'm a stone's throw away from a newly opened play park, but it is not visible from my windows. I allowed my eldest to play there from 7.5. My rules are there has to be a mixture of kids and adults there, he is checked on by me every 15minutes-ish, even if he doesn't see me, I see him. There is only 1 other child in his class currently allowed to play there alone, and a couple of others who have older siblings with them.

Mine are at seperate infant/junior schools, so the rules of infants (upto end of yr2) are that they are collected by an adult. The junior school has no such rule. Currently I walk with him, but probably this time next year I will allow him to walk to school alone. I am 2 minutes walk away from nearest school gate, but across a road, which has only recently had safety measures put around it. Prior to that there had been 3 children knocked over in past few years.

My friends with children at local secondary school have said the school has closed on more than one occassion with little notice (floods last year being an example). For this reason I want my kids to be very used to walking to and from school and crossing roads etc before they get there.

lady_stardust

We are very lucky to live one of the few remaining streets where the kids play out, and the neighbours kids are as young as five and go right up to 14. You wouldn't think that mixture of ages would combine well but it does seem to work and the older kids do watch out for the younger ones.

I think I will let my DD (due September) out to play with them from about age 5/6 but she would have to be able to do three things first:

1. Show me that she has good road sense
2. Ideally be able to tell the time
3. Understand what to do if approached by a stranger (I believe in safety in numbers and it is unlikely that anyone dodgy would approach a large group of kids like that but she should still be aware of it)

It is a privilege to be earned and I would certainly set some ground rules but I don't want her to miss out on this. The social lessons that they learn from this sort of play are vital for life.

patchwork_cat

The thing is we don't know your cul de sac or where your shop is or the walk to school, nor do we know how mature your son is.

There is no legislation regarding age that a child can be left alone. Because of all the variables I think this is a call only you can make. We all have different values and believes and my husband uses the what would people say criteria to help him make a decsion. For example should I leave my 4 year old alone on holiday in a hotel room while we go for tapas/ or to the pub? If we did and they were, god forbid, snatched what would most people think - would they feel that we had made an error of judgement bordering on neglect or would they think we did what most parents would do and the risk was so tiny that you could not allow for it.

It is not a bad system. I think we let our son have more freedom than our daughter gets, but our next door neighbour at the time had a daughter of exactly the same age and she was allowed to do more things, so that influenced us, although i did know there were 4 pairs of eyes looking out for them.

I think 5 is probably too young to play out unsupervised, but maybe a bit of discreet supervision? Google Cotton wool children to read about the opposite of letting our children have too much freedom.

Spendless

Is your son or daughter the oldest patchwork cat? My daughter is a complete dilly daydream, perfectly capable of getting lost walking in a straight line:rolleyes: and with very little road sense. For this reason I can't currently see me allowing her to do the same things her brother does when she gets to same age.

Was cotton wool kids that programme on a few weeks ago?

morganb

lady_stardust wrote: »

We are very lucky to live one of the few remaining streets where the kids play out, and the neighbours kids are as young as five and go right up to 14. You wouldn't think that mixture of ages would combine well but it does seem to work and the older kids do watch out for the younger ones.

I think I will let my DD (due September) out to play with them from about age 5/6 but she would have to be able to do three things first:

1. Show me that she has good road sense
2. Ideally be able to tell the time
3. Understand what to do if approached by a stranger (I believe in safety in numbers and it is unlikely that anyone dodgy would approach a large group of kids like that but she should still be aware of it)

It is a privilege to be earned and I would certainly set some ground rules but I don't want her to miss out on this. The social lessons that they learn from this sort of play are vital for life.

Definitely agree with this; DS1 (6) is allowed out the front but only within a certain boundary and if DS2 wants to go out (he's 4) then he can play out the front but only if its convenient for me to sit out there with him. The other kids on teh street don't get supervised and I end up looking after everyone else, but at least it's out the front and not in my back garden, and I think the kids actually really like having an adult to chat to. Wont' be taking my DS LIte out there again, though, didn't get a single minute's peace last time!