When do you let a child out alone??

k1mmie

I found you tend to automatically let go by the time they start secondary, if you haven't already. A mixture of peer pressure to meet up in the holidays, after school activities and friends living further away. My youngest is now 12 and in year 7. He goes to school about 20 miles away and gets a school bus about an hour each way with his older brother. However, I noticed that you tend to become more relaxed after your first and let them do things a lot earlier. My daughter now 19 would get taken everywhere by car. My son , now 15 gets the bus and train all around and so does the youngest, as he is more street wise after being with the older one. Of course he has a mobile and is constantly tracked, but fortunately is the kind of child who only wants to go out to serve a purpose and not hang around in shoppping centres. So I think you know your own child and when the right time comes to let them start taking small steps towards their independence.

patchwork_cat

Spendless - my son is the eldest , not sure about about cotton wool kids programme it was an article in a paper and I think BBC breakfast ( could be wrong, but a news/magazine programme). It is a fair point that they do have to learn in a relatively safe environment, it is one of the reasons teenagers strop - to gain more freedom to make us as parents let them have more freedom. You see it right from babyhood with growing independence all the time challenging us as parents to let them do more for themselves, so that they grow into self reliant adults. ( Admittedly toddler tantrums are also about frustration,too, but they are also to help us and them move on from babyhood .)

tiamai_d

I wish some math genius would come along with an eqation that takes into concideration the distance from home the child would be, the number of roads, other children playing, and who knows what else and it would come out with an age to let our kids go free.

But at the end of the day it is up to parents to decide when the time is right.

For example, as above, my 6yr old is allowed to the aprk and one friends house, if I stayed where my friend does (who has a dughter the same age) he would not be allowed out till he was going to secondary school!

jembie

My children are 14 and 16 now so I hardly ever see them lol but I started letting them play in the front since they were about 6. There were lots of children the same age in our street and a lot of the other parents used to sit out side on the doorsteps so I thought it was safe enough.

My daughter started going to the corner shop for me when she was about 8 although my son was older than that when I let him go out as he was always a little less mature (As boys seem to be)
They started going to town with their mates about 11 years old.

As for leaving them alone. When my daughter was 14 and my son 12 I started leaving them at home so I could have nights out. My daughter was babysitting by then so I figured if she could look after a baby and a 3 yr old she could look after her brother.