And how old was your son when you started leaving him home alone?
Guin, refrain from bringing snark and accusations into unrelated threads. There is a Pit thread you can use and this behavior begins to look like harassment.
No warning issued but don’t do this.
My daughter is eight and my son is six. It’s interesting to see the difference in age and maturity. I leave my daughter alone for short periods of time but my son not so much.
At eight, I was the occasional babysitter of a neighbor’s kid. We did have an accident at the park when the kid fell off the slide and got hurt. Fortunately, there was an adult who took over the situation because I was waaaaaayyyyy over my head. It didn’t require a trip to the hospital and in those precell phone days, there wasn’t anyway to contact the parents, so we just took the kid back to the house and waited.
They don’t do babysitting here in Taiwan, but I think I would have someone a little older than second grade take care of the kids.
My niece and nephew were really different on maturity. My nephew is now just off for college (with an academic scholarship 
) but was consistently getting in trouble all through middle school years. He needed to be tracked fairly closely.
He started doing much better in high school, played two years on the varsity football team and graduated with a 4. something GPA with a bunch of AP and college level classes.
My niece could be left alone at age six, I’m sure, but sort of fizzled in high school and never went to college.
My off-topic tangent is that maturity at different ages doesn’t necessarily reflect on the final outcome.
My daughter is eight and my son is six. It’s interesting to see the difference in age and maturity. I leave my daughter alone for short periods of time but my son not so much.
At eight, I was the occasional babysitter of a neighbor’s kid. We did have an accident at the park when the kid fell off the slide and got hurt. Fortunately, there was an adult who took over the situation because I was waaaaaayyyyy over my head. It didn’t require a trip to the hospital and in those precell phone days, there wasn’t anyway to contact the parents, so we just took the kid back to the house and waited.
They don’t do babysitting here in Taiwan, but I think I would have someone a little older than second grade take care of the kids.
My niece and nephew were really different on maturity. My nephew is now just off for college (with an academic scholarship ) but was consistently getting in trouble all through middle school years. He needed to be tracked fairly closely.
He started doing much better in high school, played two years on the varsity football team and graduated with a 4. something GPA with a bunch of AP and college level classes.
My niece could be left alone at age six, I’m sure, but sort of fizzled in high school and never went to college.
My off-topic tangent is that maturity at different ages doesn’t necessarily reflect on the final outcome.
Well, this 8 year old kid seemed to do pretty well on his own…
I was about 10 or 11 when I became a latchkey kid for a couple hours after school. My parents’ house is still standing and I still have all my fingers and limbs so it worked out just fine. Nowadays, my parents even let me stay all by myself all the time!* 
I think middle school age is fine, as long as the kid is reasonably responsible, doesn’t have developmental or anxiety issues or anything like that that might be a problem, and ground rules are set.
*Possibly because I’m all growned up now and they can’t stop me from doing anything since I moved out a long, long time ago.
I don’t have kids, but for me it was 8 or so. If Minnesota law says 13, that’s insanity. From what I understand, most states don’t legislate an age and police are only supposed to interfere if the child is in danger. That goes for kids outside without supervision as well. Although in reality cops these days will intercept 10 year olds walking down the street to the park if another parent complains.
No set age. When they’re established to my satisfaction that they can handle the responsibility of staying home alone.
It was a different time.
As I remember, I was first left alone at 11-12. Of course we had played outside, in the forest or the streets by ourselves or in packs as far back as I could remember. We knew to be back for dinner and the older kids would keep an eye on the younger.
I was put on the family bank account at 13.
I used it for money when my parents went off to Spain for the winter, 3-6 months. I was left with the house the dog and the bank account. And a note to the teachers that I could write my own notices for school. I was 16 when that started.
My parents was quite old when I was born. I think it was a generation earliers experiences,
This was 25 years ago when helicopters were only airships, but I let my elder son come home and stay alone after school when he was 10 years old. My boy came to my husband and I at the beginning of the school year and made his case for coming home after school on his own, and after considerable conversation on the topic, we decided on a trial run of the four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas break. At any time during the expsriment, either the adults or the child could pull the plug. The experiment went off without a hitch, and he was on his own after school going forward.
Our neighbor to the right worked from home, so there was nearby emergency assistance (and a watchful eye making sure rules such as no friends over and no leaving the house without asking were followed). Plus, I worked a mere 10 min from home and could come home immediately, if needed.
Based on our own experience this past weekend, apparently it’s 20 years old.
Our daughter MilliCal has been to Europe, to Camp, and spent a semester away at college, but it wasn’t until Pepper Mill and I had to go somewhere together this weekend that MilliCal said that she’d never spent a night at home alone before.
She HAD spent nights without either of us there, but in those cases she was having a party or something, with lots of people over. This was the first time she was stuck in the house all by herself. And wasn’t fond of it, apparently.
I left my daughter home when she was eight. Even more she was left in charge of her brothers. Those teenagers needed watching.
It was a different time, and a more dangerous time. Which makes the current trend of trusting kids with less responsibility all the more ridiculous.
I had a co-worker who’d started leaving her three kids at home when her eldest (a boy) was about twelve. During the school year when it was only for a few hours after school things were pretty calm but during the summer she’d get a couple “Mo-o-om!” calls a week. One afternoon the call went something like, “What?.. No, I’m pretty sure Toby’s not dead… He’s just run off; go look for him and you’ll probably find him…”
About then we’d started drifting over to her cubicle.
“No, he’s a little dog. He’s most likely hiding under a bush, either scared or asleep. Put Sean on, will you?.. What are you telling your sister the dog’s dead for!”
By now the bunch of us were stifling laughter, making her put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Will you guys knock it off? I’m trying to be stern here!” and the conversation went on for a bit longer before she hung up and we could all laugh. The next day we got the assurance Toby’d been found two doors down.
My kids are 13 and 11. The 13-year-old I will leave by himself for 2-3 hours. He is responsible and has a cell phone so he can contact me if needed. The 11-year-old I will leave by herself for up to about 1/2 hour as she is younger and a bit scatter-brained. I will leave them home alone together sometimes but I typically avoid it as they fight a lot these days.
Yeah, times have changed. I was a latchkey kid when the term was starting to make the news, around age 8 or so. Bus would drop me off, I’d go get the key, let myself in, and wait about 2 hours for the folks to get home from work. Sometimes I’d have stuff to take care of, like feeding the chickens and getting the eggs and such.
When I was 12, I took my first airplane trip. I flew from New Mexico to Minnesota by myself, with a plane change in St. Louis. Then, back again a month later. My parents were pissed when they found out that no one helped me find my way to the new plane, because they had paid for someone from the airline to look out for me, but hell, I could read the big departure boards fine, and found the plane with no problem.