My parents, being how they were, would have had parental controls up the whazoo. There would simply not have been a way for me to get on the 'net without them in the house.
Heck, gaining the right to have a radio in my room required a lot of work, several bribes and a pair of bets, and that was when I was* fourteen*! (In the end it came down to “you can let me have the old radio in my room, or you can put up with me studying in the living room - with the radio on… in a station you can’t stand…”)
I didn’t, only because my roommates boys were younger than Kid Kalhoun and the three of them together could be all kinds of trouble. I didn’t want my kid to have to assume responsibility for her kids, so I left him at daycare until we moved to our own place. He was pretty pissed off about it, but I still think it was the right decision.
My niece is ultra-responsible and was left alone at the age of 10, I think.
It makes me wonder, though, what has changed. In some ways its safer to leave our kids home alone than it ever was. My kids aren’t any less responsible than I was. We can lock the TV with a password - internet is the same - if we don’t want them in when we aren’t home, we set the controls so they can’t get in. Like us, they are told not to answer the door to strangers and no friends in the house. They are permitted to stay only in our yard or the two adjoining where there are kid. No bikes. Similar rules to what I had. Unlike us, if there is an emergency, they call 911 - I’m old enough that 911 was a regional thing - we would have had to call the operator and have her put us through to the police. We carry cell phones, so they don’t need to make complex decisions like “mom said no candy, I wonder if I’ll get in trouble for ice cream” - they can call and ask. Or just call if they are scared, or if someone suddenly gets a fever.
I had my own key when I was eight, my parents worked night and day just to get by. I wasnt alone for too long as my older sister usually got home an hour or two after me. As long as he is a sensible child I see no problem.
My kids are older now, one is off to college this week (sniff). My mom was a widow with 4 little kids, so we were latchkey very early, and I’m aware that my point of reference is skewed a bit.
But what has changed is us. Our (my) generation of parents. We’re control freaks. Yes, we’ve been inundated with statistically distorted horror stories that scare us into our clutching mentality, but we aren’t inclined to temper that with a reasonable understanding of our responsibility to hand over the keys to our children’s lives.
I didn’t really appreciate how intense it had become until my kids started kindergarten, four blocks away, and the other parents threw a fit when I let my kids walk to school. They weren’t worried about my kids, but some of the other kids wanted to do it too and that put them at odds with their folks. Some of the other parents are still on edge about my role in planting the seeds of rebellion in their kids.
I’ve been pondering this question of why my generation produced such over-protective (and, in my view, irresponsible) parents. My mom’s youngest sister was a hellcat as a teen, but the strictest, most uptight, priss of a mom. I wonder if my cohorts and I scared ourselves back in the sixties and seventies.
I’m not a control freak, and I would like to see my kid, now 10, become independent. But a lot has indeed changed between my childhood and his:
There is no “911” to call here.
No one around him except for his parents speaks English, and he doesn’t speak a useful amount of Indonesian.
We have a swimming pool.
We have frequent power outages.
The streets have no sidewalks.
During my childhood it was safe to ride my bicycle all through the suburbs; I wasn’t dealing with motorcycles roaring through narrow passages, a lot of blind curves, and open sewers.
My friends all lived a short walk or bike-ride away, instead of half an hour away by car through heavy traffic.
We didn’t have any Internet, video games, videos, Wii, or other enticements to lure us away from pastimes such as reading.
I didn’t have 2-3 hours of homework a night that needed the watchful eye of a parent to ensure it was done neatly and on time.
These are significant differences. Some directly affect the extent to which he can be safely left to his own devices, others don’t. But they all suggest that I parent my child differently than I was parented because he lives in a different world than I did, not because I have some kind of Boomer neurosis.
I’m not one to answer the OP, as I don’t have children yet and my mother was pathologically overprotective (I wasn’t allowed to walk the two blocks up to the town center by myself until I was 16). But I am a bit weirded out by all of the parents I see standing with their kids at school bus stops, it seems like until high school. And that’s not counting the ones who drive them down to it!
Try having the preschooler whose mother indulges her in an exploration of ethical vegetarianism (we are a omnivourous household). You’d have thought my daughter was encouraging their kids to engage in Voodoo ritual with my encouragement.
Eleven is generally old enough to do this. However, there are two issues to consider:
Is the child responsible enough to stay out of trouble of his own making?
Is the child mature enough to know what to do in an emergency not of his own making?
Both can be managed with proper training and practice (but do not practice dialing 911 on a live phone )
My county actually has explicit guidelines (not the law) for this, which are pretty good; check the page for more info.
Children vary widely as to what they can handle at this age, so you are the ultimate judge.
When I was a tot, once of my evening babysitters was 12.
I guess it depends on the child and the surrounding circumstances, but whe I was younger, kids spent time on their own, and time alone with their friends, long before they were 11.
I was left (alone) to babysit my younger sisters, ages 7 and 3, when I was 10. I was probably left home alone (sick) when I was 8 or 9. I was babysitting other people’s children by the time I was 11.
I think it’s all about how responsible/trustworthy/mature your kid is.
WHile I have had no problem leaviing and letting my kids stay home alone for a couple hours when the youngest was 8/9, I am a little leary of them going home after school to a house that has been empty all day and letting themselves in to wait for my arrival a few hours later. Once they’re in the house and call, it’s ok. But the idea that someone could be watching and awaiting for the latchkey kid is alway on my mind.
Irrational considering where we are, but then again, its rural and somewhat isolated. And I have seen enough ugly idjits in front of my house trying to figure out what that “Road Ends” sign means that I worry about young unaccompanied minors going home by themselves.
At this time last year our daughter got off the school bus alone and let herself into the empty house for an hour or so. She was 3 months short of her 10th birthday at the time. The rules were that she had to unpack her backpack, put the dog out, and get a head start on homework. All-in-all it has been very good for her. It shows her that we have trust in her, and it has helped her independence and self-confidence.
Our son is 9 1/2 and he could probably start spending some time alone too now. But trusting the two of them alone together is too much at this point. There would be fights over the computer and the TV. Maybe next school year we’ll start trusting the pair of them together. Hopefully with limited bloodshed.
What has changed is Society, whose “Safety First!” motto has permeated every aspect of life, from anti-smoking laws to anti-trans-fat-in-restaurants legislation. So now we have laws against leaving your kids home alone. In Illinois, the age is 14, and if your home-alone under-14 kid has to call 911, and DCFS finds out he was home alone, congratulations! You just made it into their database, and you will have home visits and endless paperwork to fill out, for years to come.
I used to babysit a 12-year-old before and after school, a classmate of my daughter’s, for precisely this reason. It wasn’t that she wasn’t competent to be left alone, it was that her mom couldn’t take the chance of her dad finding out she was being left home alone and using that technicality to get custody.
Last year, when my kids were eight and nine, we started letting them get off the bus by themselves. I thought that the school was going to give me a hard time - particularly with my eight year old (who was in second grade) - but both their teachers and the aftercare staff said “yeah, they are ready for that.”
Um, well, to show everyone else they aren’t that old and not all parents are like this, I was a latchkey kid at 9 - this was in the mid-90s. I got home at around 4, parents got home from work around 6. This was a farm though, not the suburbs.
My son’s the same age. He doesn’t usually have opportunites to be home alone, but I would let him. Today he rode his bike to school all alone for the first time, and it went fine. I’ll still be wound up about it for a while, but I know it’s good for him.
Check what’s allowed where you live, should you end up in trouble (say, the kid calls the police because he sees someone breaking into a neighbour’s house, and the police wonder why there wasn’t a parent there). But in terms of practical safety, if he’s a responsible kid, I’d say a couple of hours would be fine. Especially if you have a mobile/cellphone and are within walking distance.
)