On occasion, I’ll read a story about a parent who is charged with something like reckless endangerment because authorities believe they endangered their child’s life by allowing them to walk too far from their home alone. In 2024, Georgia police arrested Brittany Patterson after her son walked nearly a mile from their house to a nearby Dollar General. In this particular case, Patterson took her older son to a doctor’s appointment and her younger son was supposed to stay home, but he decided to take off to the Dollar Store. Perhaps for some RC Cola? Apparently the crux of the problem is that Patterson didn’t know exactly where her son was at all times.
How far is too far for a kid to walk alone? I realize this might seem like simple answer on the face of it, but there are a lot of variables here. Age, environmental conditions, etc., etc. So let’s just agree on a few ground rules. Let’s say the kid is 10 and the area they’re walking through is reasonably safe.
I think a mile is reasonable but I’m basing that off my own childhood when I was in 5th grade living in Colorado. Thanks to Google Maps, I can easily see how far I roamed from my home in 1986-87.
.7 miles - Was the distance between my house and my elementary school. I literally had to walk uphill in the snow on my way to school and cross North Union Blvd. which was and continues to be a very busy street. (I’m almost certain they had a crossing guard for us kids.)
1.1 miles - Was the distance between my house and what used to be the Peter Piper Pizza (now the sight of a driving academy) where I used frequented throw some quarters into Super Mario Bros. Though I typically rode my Huffy rather than walk.
What’s a reasonable distance for your average 10 year old to walk alone?
Ten years old would be about 4th grade. In the safe, suburban neighborhood where my elementary school was located - with one major street and a traffic signal - 4th graders regularly walked about 3/4 miles between home and school. But they generally walked most of the way in groups, either with siblings or neighbor kids.
Walking a mile in any direction would have put us in other, less safe neighborhoods that only eighth graders would dare to enter.
My mother was always calling the police and filing a missing persons report on me. The police used to laugh because she would always tell them I had never done this before. They knew I would be in either a local storm drain channel or a local field. I was about 8 when started loosing track of time and staying gone from sun up till dark. Our school was a bit less than a mile and all the kids would just walk together.
From Grade 1 to Grade 4 I had a 650-meter walk - roughly half a mile - each way to and from school, usually walked alone. My school was on the other side of a fairly busy major road, but there was a crossing guard.
When I was 9, I walked to my friend Patty’s house, about a mile away across one major road. This was in the Baltimore suburbs in the early 60s. I seem to recall walking to the movies about a mile away, usually with my younger sibs, around the same time.
The thing that might raise eyebrows today is that at 12, I babysat my 4 younger sibs in the evening if our parents went out. There were always at least 2 neighbors I could call just in case, but it was never a big deal. I can’t imagine the reaction today…
It seems that Brittany is in trouble, not because her son was walking alone, nor that she didn’t know exactly where he was, but because she left him home alone?
Here in NZ its not legal to leave children home alone till they’re14 - but kids walking home from school or visiting the local park would be very different.
I’d have given my eye teeth to walk more than a block alone.
To be not watched and monitored, all the time.
Alas, was not to be.
I swore if I had children I would not do that. But…I did.
They had the run of the place. Walking away from home was not possible.
Unless they packed a lunch and a change of clothes. Too far to anywhere.
There were dangers out here, to be sure. Seems like Son-of-a-wrek found every one of them.
I could keep tabs on them by just looking outside.
I lived in a small town, so we walked to school unaccompanied. My sister started walking with us when she started. That was short, just about 2km. (1.2 miles). My mother took each of us on our first day of school by car, but after that we walked, or later rode bicycles.
But also my brother and I walked out into the surrounding bush and farmlands, occasionally making it over 10km (6.2 miles) to visit a friend.
We were 11 and 9 at the time.
This was, as I say, a small, but extremely safe town. We had more risk of meeting a cobra than anything else.
Yes, I think about 20 minutes is reasonable. That’s about as far as I would want to walk at my age, so I don’t feel comfortable inflicting longer distances on others.
When I was 8, 0.6 miles: the school was next to the local pool, which was also the only other place I walked to. When I was 11 I was taking public transport alone, (20 miles, two changes) but I knew what buses and trains. When I was 14, I was walking 3 miles home from school rather than wait for the bus.
Google maps tells me it was about 1.2 miles ~=25 minutes walking ~= 10 minutes biking from my home as a 10yo to my elementary school. And more like 2 miles / 35 minutes / 15 minutes to or from the public library that was beyond the school. All in comfy “safe” suburbia.
I walked or biked that alone most days. Were other kids around outdoors? Yes. Was I in a chattering group of them? No. Did we have to cross a major street w a 45 mph speed limit? Yes. And walk along it for about 3/8 mile before crossing? Yes.
But the OP is asking about now in 2025, not the late 1960s. Which raises several new issues.
What’s the 2025 “community standard” by which kid or parent behavior is judged?
How much experience does a 2025 10yo have walking alone vs a 1970 10yo?
How much has the actual hazard changed?
How much does the fact this kid is the only one out wandering around, not one of dozens or hundreds, in that zip code change things?
At the age of 11, I regularly walked just short of 3 miles to and from school. Yes there was a bus service, and yes my parents thought I was on that bus, but if I missed it or wanted to avoid the bullies, I walked. Nobody thought anything of it.
These days, it seems like parents are afraid to let their children go outside for any reason.
Mom’s rule for my sister and I was that we could play outside, but when the street lights came on, we had to go back in. It was a nice, noticeable, discrete signal.
I was also frequently home alone, because Mom was single and worked, and my sister and I would usually get home from school before she did.
For the actual hazard part, it’s much, much safer now than when we were kids. Some people might think that it’s more dangerous, but that’s probably just because now, when something bad happens anywhere, everyone hears about it.
How far is too far? It depends on what your tolerance for it is, what your nosy, busy-body neighbors think and do, and what the local laws and community standards are.
By the standards expressed in the op, my parents would have been in prison, convicted of neglect and child endangerment most likely. I can’t speak for my older siblings, but I was all over town as soon as I learned to ride a bike. It was common for me to walk, starting at about age 5, to my grandparents who lived almost 3/4 of a mile away.
I track Vaderling’s phone, he tracks mine. No secrets there and he knows it’s for safety. The limits I put on his wanderings are what I consider age appropriate based on my childhood, not what nervous nellie the nosey nitch down the block thinks is right.
My mom (a widow with four kids, so she HAD to allow us a lot of independence) used to say that a lot, back in the 50s. Even then, news reports made the world far scarier than it really was. The effects of information glut have really poisoned our behaviors and attitudes in so many ways, and that problem is compounding rapidly.
I’m a Gen-X kid. I walked alone to school (1 mi each way) in 3rd and 4th grade. I took the city bus to school (sometimes with friends, sometimes alone) from 6th to 12th grade. Summer rules were ask before we leave the block, and be at least in our yard by the time the streetlights come on. Summer roaming was mostly with friends, but often walking or biking alone to the library (2 mi) or Grandma’s (1 mi). All this was in inner-city Cleveland during the 80’s and 90’s.
Fast fwd to today - In theory, I was fine with my son being as independent as I was, but the reality is that being a single kid in a suburb where most ppl were afraid to let their kids out of their sight for a sec (eye-roll)meant that there wasn’t much for him to do outside, alone or otherwise. So he grew up with mostly planned/scheduled extracurricular activities, as is the norm these days. He’s 16 now, still a kid, but he gets to (and is heavily encouraged by his parents) to get himself to wherever he wants to go, via motorcycle or public transportation.
I appreciate the sentiment behind this, but it seems insane to me. Maybe 9 years. But 12 and 13 year olds are certainly old enough to be left at home alone for a few hours.
Illinois law here in the States is 14, too. Now, how many people know that or actually follow that? I don’t know. In my neighborhood, I’d be absolutely shocked if a majority stuck to the law all the time. I definitely would not have a problem leaving a 9-year-old at home if I needed to do a quick (<20 minute) run to pick up another kid from school or grab something from the grocery. I would put the dog in the crate, though.
As for walking alone, the general rule growing up for me is that we can walk up to the “busy” street in either direction. Roughly, that’s about 1/4 mile on each side square (the busy streets were west and south of us; the other directions had a railway or a shopping complex). With a crossing guard at the busy street (like for school), I walked a little short of a 1/2 mile each way from when I was about 7 or 8. Usually alone, sometimes I would run into a classmate on the way up.