This is a question more geared toward Doper parents but ultimately I welcome anyone’s input. Here’s the scenario: my daughter is five years old and we live on a fairly quiet street in a New Jersey suburb. I mean this is a really quiet town. Three murders since 1978 and some benign drug busts is all the hoopla that I can remember. Anyway, most of the time after I come home from work I need to maintain the cleanliness of the house (do chores, make dinner, etc). My five year old is constantly asking me, “Dad! Dad! Can I go outside and play? Pulll-eeaa-ssee?!” My usual go to in these situations is to knock on the bedroom door of her older sister and beg her to take her outside to play or go up the street to the playground. This is not working out so well as there is a considerable age gap between the two and the older one is constantly embroiled in some kind of teenage drama. She can’t be bothered a lot of the time. So, my house is becoming messier and messier as I can’t keep up with the chores while I’m playing outside with my 5 year old.
I reached out to my father and asked him, point blank: “How old was I before you let me play outside in the yard without supervision?” He thought about it for a second or two and said that he couldn’t honestly remember.
So my question is this: what’s a proper age for a child to play outside unattended?
*Sorry mods, I just realized what forum I posted this in and that this question probably doesn’t have a factual answer.
This is a tough one because there are a lot of factors, not just physical age of the child, but emotional age, the area (as mentioned), personal preferences, etc.
I do not think the world is nearly as dangerous as we have made it out to be. My wife never wanted to let our girls play outside since we did not have a fenced in yard. We live in a very quiet town and not a lot of traffic in our subdivision. No harm has ever come to any child in our subdivision that was out playing.
I think our girls would have been fine, but it was not a battle I was going to fight.
I think the children benefit from playing unattended (either with friends or alone), but I also think that it is more important to have time with your children than to have a spotless house.
You could tell your older child that they can either go outside and watch the 5 yr old or they can clean the house.
Or you could let the 5 yr old play in the yard while you are doing things that allow you to watch out the window to see how things go and slowly increase what you feel comfortable with.
There are definitely 5 yr olds that would do fine solo and others that I might fear would do something dangerous.
I think ultimately, it is what you are comfortable with. You know your child best.
Outside in your yard when she’s demonstrated that she won’t go in the street or leave the property, and you can periodically check on her, then age 5 is fine. Beyond that the circumstances are going to vary.
What kind of playing would she do outside alone? Are there other kids she might follow off your property? Would she try to go to the playground by herself?
I’d say it’s a transition where you slowly increase her freedom while you can still check on her. It’s not the crime that should be your main concern as much as speeding cars and other neighborhood kids.
Thanks brother, I’m happy about it too and don’t want to discourage that. It’s weird and I admit that I may be looking through rose-colored lenses, but it’s rare when I see kids playing outside these days. Staying inside SUCKED because you could get roped into doing chores.
I think it depends on the kid, as well as the safety of your neighborhood. When I was growing up I remember having pretty free reign at about age 10 or 11, but we lived in an area where everyone knew everyone, there weren’t major streets to cross, and crime was almost not existent.
I think that times have changed, and unless you live in a gated community where someone couldn’t just drive up to your house, jump out and grab your kid and drive off, you want to error on the side of caution. Even though nothing untoward is likely to happen, as a parent it’s your responsibility to make sure your kid isn’t exposed to a dangerous situation.
Keep in mind that most 10 year olds aren’t going to be able to make good decisions. I would say 13 years old is fairly safe, but if it was my small, naive/trusting 13 year old daughter I might even think twice about that.
She would be playing with her toys on the side, front, or back lawn. She loves to invent stories with her dinosaurs and action figures and building tiny outposts from sticks and rocks. She’s quite inventive that way. Once in a great while there are teenage kids walking down the street but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t follow them. I’ve asked her many times if she understands the concept of not leaving the yard and she says, “I KNOW Daddy! DUH!!”
The other part of the problem is the way my house is built. Most of the chores I do takes place in an area of the house that doesn’t have a 360 degree view of the outside yard, so I wouldn’t have a constant eye on her. The teenage daughter is not part of my purview, as she is not mine, but rather, my girlfriends from a previous marriage. I was told in no uncertain terms that I can ask her to do something, but not demand it.
In your own yard? I think 5 years old is old enough. I’d say for an overabundance of caution tell her she has to stay out of the front yard so she’s not in easy reach of the street & people walking by.
For the peace of mind of both of you, you could give her a whistle, so she can summon you for emergencies or urgent matters without having to yell. Just expect to get summoned a lot.
I tried the chore chart and it failed miserably, which is strange to me because I LIVED for those Friday paydays after a week of chores. The eldest doesn’t seem to be bothered by lack of money.
Depends on a lot of factors- my kids were playing unattended outside before the age of five- but it was in a fenced backyard that had no access to the front sidewalk. They didn’t play unattended in front of the house until I was confident that they could cross the street safely- I don’t recall exactly when that was but it was older than five and younger than eight.
Yup. In a family, everyone needs to contribute. Two jobs need doing simultaneously; you, being generous, will let her choose which one she wants to do.
That said, I let my 4yo play in our side yard by herself, as long as I’m in the kitchen where I can see her. I’m okay with 5yo kids monitoring themselves in the yard.
Right now, it sounds like you’re working, cooking, cleaning house, and looking after your daughter. (And for a child that age with no other playmates at hand, playing with her is part of looking after her. No way around it.) Your GF is working, and…what? And Teenage Daughter (TD) ain’t doing shit, because you can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do - Mom said so.
As Ann Landers would have said, it sounds like a great deal for GF and TD. But it’s a sucky deal for you, and you want this to change, it sounds like you need to have a serious discussion with GF about who does what.
You refer to TD, who isn’t yours, as your 5 year old’s older sister. The GF is the mother of both, then?
In one’s own back yard in a locale decently safe from intrusive encounters with strangers, in a neighborhood with known neighbors generically around and about: 3
In familiar territory, known trails, recognized streets and sidewalks and so forth, within 5 miles of home, with a cellphone in the child’s pocket: 6
In a public urban park without official supervision but in the presence of various people of various ages from diverse backgrounds, with a cellphone in the child’s pocket: 10
In a locale the child is familiar with generically, without additional qualifiers aside from “call if you aren’t going to be back by XX o’clock”: 15
If the backyard is fenced and you can periodically check on her, I’d agree that 5 is fine. If no fence, could you put one up?
I always had a fenced yard growing up and when I had kids. My oldest sister jokes that she didn’t even know we HAD a front yard until she went to school!
And yeah - housing an uncooperative teen who is not your own and whom you can’t even ask to do whatever she wants while keeping an eye on your kid, sounds fucked.
I’m not a parent, so my input may be less valuable, but here’s what we did in the 1970s in a suburban small town outside of Indianapolis. By first grade, I was allowed to freely visit with friends on my block, and walk the four blocks to school unescorted. By second grade, I was allowed to ride my bike to visit friends in a several block radius with a limit being major streets that I wasn’t supposed to cross. I also could ride to the grocery store in search of comic books, or if I really had saved my money, out to the Dairy Queen.
I wasn’t particularly exceptional in this regard. Any time I went out it was no trouble finding other unsupervised friends of about the same age on their bikes. And despite the boundaries set on my roaming, I lived under a don’t ask, don’t tell policy so I might venture much further afield if the whim took me.
There’s much less crime these days than when we were kids so the main concern is that the kid knows not to do anything stupid like run into the street without looking. We practiced that a lot before letting our kids run around alone.
That being said with our kids it’s been
Play alone in the yard… about 4 yo
Go around the corner to a friends house or to play with the pack of kids running around the neighborhood… 5 or 6
Give us a call if you won’t be home by dark… 11ish
Drive yourself to work… 16
