Would you leave a 14 year old and 9 year old alone for an hour?

[RVectensian]

As per the title really, would you leave a 14 year old and 9 year old boy home alone together for an hour to collect another child? Both insist they just want to watch TV and play xBox.

14 year old has a phone.

Yes and I have done.

Many times

Tragic as that case is, that kind of incident is thankfully very rare. It doesn't say whether they were siblings. If you're going to think like that you wouldn't let your child do anything. Children are killed in car crashes, would you not let your child ride in a car ever? The list is endless.

Absolutely.

We left our two boys (12 and 8) alone for almost 4
hours once and it was fine.

By that logic no one should even have children at all.

Depends on the kids. My mum would leave me or my sister alone individually from about 9 if she needed to nip to the shops but she wouldn’t have left us together until much older because we were awful with one another.

As tragic as that case is, it's also incredibly rare.

Children are more at risk every time they get in a car or cross a road.

Are you always so hyperbolic and unable to assess risk?

It’s completely fine.

I left both of mine alone for that amount of time when they were 9. Ds was always fine with it, but when it was dd's tuen sometimes she woukd stay home and sometimes she would rather come wjth me to take ds to sport or whatever it was. I am quite surprised that this is even a question. I accept not everyone would leave a 9 year old but WITH a 14 year old? No problem.

Yes. I think it’s fine. Presumably the fourteen year old has a phone and they are both well versed in what to do in an emergency?

I don’t think there is a problem with it tbh and in fact it’s good to start building the teen up gradually using blocks of time where they are responsible and in charge as long as this is done responsibly. How do they learn otherwise?

Tbh, I had, and have, no concerns that my 14 year old might be tempted to stab his 9 year old brother...no matter how annoying he may be at times 😬