My wife and I are having a disagreement on child laws in Ontario.
I have a 12 yr old daughter (very mature/responsible) and a 9 yr old son (not so much).
I believe I read a short time ago that in Ontario somewhere that a child can be legally left alone at 12yrs, but cannot be responsible for other children until age 14.
My wife is convinced my daughter can legally babysit my son. She cites the fact my daughters school offers babysitting courses for her age, and looking at the Toronto Childrens Aid Society website they claim the law is ‘vague’ in regards to children being left alone (due to things like the difference in maturity in individual kids).
Can I leave my 9yr old alone with my 12yr old, or will Children’s Aid be banging on my door if found out?
Not a Canadian, nor a lawyer, not even a Children’s Aid worker. Probably not too helpful either.
If you feel 12 yo is mature and responsible enough, and decide to let her babysit, as long as nothing bad happens you won’t even be on the radar screen.
However, if said 9 yo breaks his leg, sets the house on fire, gets mad and runs off forcing the babysitter to call for help, well then all bets are off, even if she is 16 yo.
My sister was grilled for over an hour when she took her daughter in to the er with a gash over her eye requiring three stitches. She had taken a nose dive out of her highchair after learning to unlatch the feeding table and landed on the open dryer door.
I am fairly certain there are actual laws about this in Ontario. Unfortunately, my source is other single fathers who may have been misinformed by (or misunderstood) their attorneys. A quick google search indicates that the law is “unclear”.
You might try calling the teacher who teaches the classes that your wife mentions and ask him or her. If you do, post back here, because I’m certainly curious.
Ontario has no law specifying an age at which a child can be left alone. The law is deliberately written that way to place the onus of responsibility on the parent.
At 12 years of age most kids (my daughter included) can take a school-sponsored babysitting course. Naturally this presumes that at 12, one can responsibly babysit younger kids. Yes, I’m in Ontario.
The Child and Family Services Act (as paraphrased on the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies) says there is no set age for when a child may be left alone (some ten-year-olds are fine alone, some fourteen-year-olds are not) or babysit. However you may not leave any child under 16 alone “without making provision for his/her care or supervision that is reasonable under the circumstances”. So it’s up to the parents’ discretion to determine whether it’s reasonable or not and to ensure safeguards are in place: cell phone available to contact parent’s, a trusted neighbour that the child can contact if in need, he child knows how and when to call 911, etc. Edit: basically the parent get to decide what is “reasonable under the circumstances”.
The Criminal Code of Canada does have a bit of stipulate that if you “abandon or expose a child” under the age of 10 so that the child is endangered, you can be charged with abandonment. So leaving your responsible 10-year-old latchkey kid at home for a few hours between school and your arrival from work would be fine, leaving your 10-year-old to find his way home from a bear-infested forest would not.
Edit: My mom worked for CAS in Ontario for more than 30 years and I was left to my own devices as a latchkey kid (from getting myself home from school walking a few kilometers, until she came home around 5:30 or 6:00) from about the age of 9 or 10.
Not a lawyer or a parent, but: you’re asking a responsible, grown-up for her age girl to watch her own, immature for his age, younger brother? How well do the two get along normally? Usually, siblings 3 years apart and of different genders will argue a lot. If there is already a history of quarreling between them, then I would advise against it. Your daughter is probably a capable and responsible babysiter for all children who are strangers; likewise, your son will probably behave far better with any 12-year old stranger than with his own sister, who he already has a history of issues with, and simply doesn’t respect as much.
There was even a Simpsons ep., where Lisa, responsible beyond her 8 (!) years was succesful as babysiter all around - until she had to babysit Bart, who resented her and started acting up and not obeying her.