It’s really hard to say what an ‘appropriate age’ is in some instances - my five-year-old does not play outside without supervision (whether it’s myself or one of the neighbors). Then again, we’re on a fairly heavy-traffic thoroughfare and people are speeding by my driveway at speeds of 40-50MPH. Makes a parent worry!
We (a few neighbor kids, their parents, my daughter and myself) usually walk to school each morning. It’s about half a mile, with sidewalks most of the way and cutting across the school playground to reach the school.
When they get older, it’s hard to say what I’ll do - I guess it depends on whether the man down the street who had the police visit him for exposing himself to kids at the neighborhood pool still lives in the area! :S
Dominic is 7, and this is the first year that we’ve let him go out unsupervised. He does have to tell us where he will be, and come home and tell us again if he is going to go somewhere else.
I had a housekey in kindergarten. At that time I did walk to school, and often came home to an empty house until my mom got home from school at about 5pm.
(I should add that at that age I was also flying unaccompanied cross country with layovers of up to 6 hours in various cities and other things that I’d never do with my child. My mom used to think it was funny to tell me that she was a neglectful parent.)
I walked t school from Grade 1 to Grade 4, about two thirds of a mile.
In Grade 5 I started going to a new school for a French immersion program which was about 12 miles away, so I had to take the bus. Ironically, I had to walk THREE QUARTERS of a mile to get to the bus stop.
Just a WAG, but I’ll bet that walking to school is statistically safer than going by bus or car (assuming that there’s a sidewalk, of course - the shoulder of I-95 is no place for a pedestrian!). Abductions by strangers are extremely rare, but car and bus accidents are depressingly common.
Considering that school was almost three miles away, no. They do now, but only because all they have to do is come upstairs. (They are both homeschooled).
I walked to both elementary school and high school, but both were just a little over a mile and did not involve crossing a very busy intersection. My SO, on the other hand, walked to elementary and high school, a distance of over 6 miles each way, and routinely road the bus by himself to downtown Atlanta when he was 9. Of course, this was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, so it was a bit different then.
Depends on the child, really. My older kids all walked/biked/bussed from grade1, depending on how far from the school we lived, with the occasional lift from us.
My youngest gets driven every day to and from, and he is going into grade 5 this year.
He has a mild disability, but we are taking the plunge and trying the bus this coming semester. When he was a little bloke and in his first year at school and not diagnosed with anything, he went on the bus for a few weeks, but I got tired of having to drive back to the school every afternoon to pick up jumpers, hats, shoes and even the school bag. (Did I mention an executive function disorder here ? ) His organisational skills have not improved vastly, but he needs to become independent.
School buses are arguably the safest form of motorized transportation in the world. Going by CAR is likely dangerous; going by bus is probably as safe a mode of transportation as you’ll ever find, probably safer than walking.
Of course, you still have to get to the bus, and many more kids are killed going to and getting on the bus than are killed riding it.
We live in an older suburb of Chicago, with sidewalks. Approx 1/2 mile from the elem school (k-5), maybe 1 3/4-2 miles from middle school (6-8), and about 3/4 mile from high school. My kids are in 6, 7, and 9th grade. They all walked to elem school from k, they bus to middle school, and the oldest walks to HS. No matter what the weather.
With the oldest, we walked her a few times to show her the route, after which she was on her own. As situations permitted, my wife might either walk with her, or walkpart of the way to meet her coming home. For te 2d and 3d kids, they had older siblings to walk with.
Growing up in Chi, I walked 3/4 mile to grade school (k-8), and walked about 3/4 mile to public bus which I rode about 5 miles to HS.
While it should not be the sole factor, given the prevalence of childhood obesity, I believe it is not a bad thing for young kids to get in the habit of regular exercise, and walking or biking instead of driving. And I personally consider the fears of child abduction by strangers incredibly exaggerated.
I’m more afraid of the getting-hit-by-cars thing than the kidnapping… but since as a child (elementary school) I had people try to pull me into their cars twice I am worried about that, too.
I also had a masturbating guy pull up next to me and ask me to get in with him. :eek:
Thank you everyone who replied to this thread. I feel a little better. At least I’m not the only one worrying about this. Opal, man! How was it that you we’re so popular with the sickos?
We live very close to the elementary school. In recent years, the number of kids walking home from school has increased, it’s a lot faster than taking the bus. Until a couple years ago they would walk in small groups. Not always on the side of the road, ahem. But recently the mothers have gotten organized to walk with the kids. It gives the subdivision a real “neighborhood” feel to see them in the afternoons.
I lived about three blocks away from my elementary school. There was a moderate amount of traffic on the road that I sometimes walked along (later rode my bike), but I could also take a side street that paralleled the main roadway and I could get to school this way, so this was the way I usually went. I did this all the way through grades 1-6.
That was about 20-25 years ago. I still live in the town in which I went to school and it’s grown a lot. There is much more traffic than there used to be. The main road, however, has had sidewalks and lighting added since then, which, in spite of the increased traffic, would make the walk safer. Without these improvements in place I doubt my mom would have let me walk to school if there were as many people and as much traffic back then as there is now.
One reason is that the bus stop downtown where I changed busses was near a place that apparently dealt with emotionally/mentally challenged people. Most of whom were adult men. These were the ones who would try to kiss me at the bus stop, chase me into the gas station, tell me they loved me, try to sit by me on the bus, etc. I had one offer me a sip of his Sprite, and when I declined, he chased me round and round the bus stop bench trying to force it on me!
The people in the cars, I have no idea. One tried to pull me in at the bus stop itself, fortunately I was able to back away from the curb and they sped off. The other pulled over while I was walking home from the bus stop, and I just started running.
The masturbating guy was really gross. I was a bit older by then, though, and I told him to fuck off and kept walking.
Oh, then there was the truck that pulled onto the curb like they were going to hit me, then swerved away. I think they were hoping to “scare me” because it would be “funny”.
) His organisational skills have not improved vastly, but he needs to become independent.