7yo often home alone in the morning, WWYD? If anything?

[Hufflepuzzpig]

I genuinely don't know. Neighbour's DS (nearly 8 but acts very young for his age) always goes in the car with his mum in the evening to pick up his dad from work, and he's not allowed to stay home/on the shared front lawn on his own while his mum goes.

In the mornings though, DH has noticed the DS is never with them, so the mum comes back and then takes him to school. I guess he must still be asleep or just doesn't get dressed on time or doesn't want to go.

Is that ok at that age? I wouldn't leave a 7yo home alone, but I expect many do and I don't think it's as terrible as DH does. He is generally more paranoid/helicoptery than me though. I know it's a really subjective issue, and the age at which parents let DCs be home alone varies massively.

I'd be happy for him to just come over for that time (about 30mins) in the mornings, even if he's in his PJs, should I suggest it? We don't know the parents that well, they are lovely but very shy and his mum in particular struggles with English. I could suggest it to the DS though, he likes it here.

I guess what I'm basically asking is - is nearly-8 old enough for this to be absolutely none of my business and I (and DH!) should chill because it's fine? Or is it a bit young to be home alone even for a short time?

I agree with you exoticfruits.

Your posts this morning talk a lot of sense.

Thanks Animation , people very rarely say that!

DCs need to risk assess for themselves, in an age appropriate way. I think some adults have lost the skill.
It is common sense. If you have to phone ss to ask whether you can leave a DC then you are abdicating responsibility. You are responsible for anything that happens to your DC as a minor. How will it make you feel better in an accident to say 'SS said it was OK'? In actual fact SS will never say it is OK -how could they-it leaves them carrying the can if things go wrong.
Even frantic agreed that someone could leave a 9yr old in bed to walk the dog for 15mins and yet the person who asked had asked her ss friend who gave her the official line-she couldn't have done anything else.
If someone asks me if they can leave their DC, I am not going to take any responsibility for it, I would say 'I would leave my DC but it is up to you if you leave your DC'.
If you wait until official guidlines say you can leave a DC there is a very small window between doing it and them going off to university in a strange city with complete freedom.I prefer a larger window and amore gentle learning curve.I think it is the more responsible option.

frantic, if you're going to use me as an example, please do so correctly - I didn't 'thumb my nose' as you put it. As I said, I regularly contacted them whilst I was travelling. But because I wanted to - not because it was a condition of their permission.

We live in a horribly mollycoddling society :(

if you don't consider the child old enough to answer the phone or door, if they have to be locked in, creating a potential problem in case of fire, and don't give me the "I'll leave them a key" crap,

With a yale lock they can open it from the inside easily, if they need to get out. Locking them in would be highly dangerous.

Everyone keeps changing the goal posts to suit their own point of view. We started with a 7 year old in the OP, a "young" seven year old at that, being left for 30 minutes with no evidence of any contingency plans. (Doesn't mean to say the parents haven't any, but OP is next door neighbour, child plays on the "the shared front lawn" regularly and "likes it here" ,so, pretty obvious choice to be look out/emergency phone contact, or seems like that to me) I've said I wouldn't go panicking to SS, I would be asking questions of the mother, in a kind, considerate way, not a judgey pants way and if I was still concerned, I might think about ringing SS. Leaving a 10 year old for 10 minutes is an entirely different kettle of fish and I do wish people would stop clouding the issue here.

frantic51 Mon 18-Jul-11 14:49:20

"HopeForTheBest I don't know the figures for childhood accidents in the home in the countries you mention. I base my judgement and decisions purely on statistics and keeping risks to my children to a minimum without mollycoddling them to an extreme. I wouldn't leave a 7 year old at home alone under any circumstances. Statistics show that they are still at a pretty high risk of having an accident (compared to older children/adults) and I wouldn't be comfortable thinking that, should something unfortunate occur, they might be unable to summon help as, quite apart from the immediate physical danger of such a situation, such an experience might dent their confidence, resulting in them actually regressing wrt coping alone."

Seems hard to find statistics, but there was a survey done not long ago, which showed that older British children scored very low on general wellbeing, but worryingly highly on being at risk from dangerous behaviour. Personally, I think this might partly be because Scandinavian children are encouraged to have a certain amount of oldfashioned adventure and risk taking in their daily lives, so are less likely to feel the need to experiment with illicit risk taking.

ifancyashandy did I mention you specifically? Did I? No need to be so touchy, its not all about you, a personal vendetta!

OK, it was hyperbole, tongue in cheek, flippancy, to lighten the mood, a bit like Christine's remark about the long legged, friendly, blonde, 18 year old (though not, I hope, in quite such bad taste ) In retrospect, ill-judged and I apologise if I have offended anyone personally, it was not my intention.

Bottom line, It's all about risk assessment. I don't believe anyone can cover all eventualities, everything that might happen while they are out, not even me! I don't feel that many seven year olds, however mature they may "seem", are capable of performing their own risk assessment if things don't go according to plan. What if someone does come to the door and persist in knocking, knowing someone is in there? What if the lights do go off for whatever reason? (Ours went off once because of a burst water main nearly two miles away!) What if they phone you and can't get through? There's nothing quite so strange as the mysteries of mobile signals, it has been my experience that they can be very erratic indeed.

I'm a private music teacher and my pupils ages range from 5 to 18. I look at my 7/8 year olds and wonder how anyone could ever leave a child of that age alone, needing to be pro-active in summoning help and therefore having to make a judgement call about when to summon help. It's an unfair burden to put on a child of that age even a "mature" one. (I have mostly bright, intelligent, mature kids because, quite frankly, trying to teach music to a "late developer" of that age is a miserable task both for teacher and pupil and a complete waste of parents' money so it never continues for long in this establishment! )

Don't have time to read the whole thread, but imo, part of our job as parents is preparing our children for the future. At 11 my ds1 will have to get the bus to the other side of the city for secondary. How will he be able to do this if he has never even been left at home for a short while? Accordingly, he has been left at home for 30mins or so from age 8, and dd at age 7 is also ok to be left. At 10 he is now walking home from school alone, including crossing roads, and he loves it. I also send him on short errands to the shops,. I would love to keep him at home, and keep him small forever, but reality says he has to learn independence, otherwise he is at far more risk of an accident.

I find it interesting that people think preparing your child properly is neglect, but wrapping them in cotton wool is 'good parenting'. Not my view at all. And fwiw, thinking about potential car accidents vs axe murderers, I don't know anyone whose parents were in a fatal car crash while they were home alone, but I do know someone who was killed whilst out with their parent, and I do also know someone whose home was visited by an axe-murderer, and their parent was there, and the parent was killed. Having a parent there doesn't protect you from the extreme, unpredictable, hideous accidents. But learning to cope with normal levels of independence might prevent you falling victim to a small, predictable one.

cory I think it might be that Scandinavian children are not pushed into formal education at 4 years old and therefore have more time to become street savvy than their British counterparts, but there have been no studies done in this area to my knowledge (if you can prove otherwise, please let me know, I'd be genuinely, very interested) so we only have our own personal conjecture to work on here which, I don't think is very helpful, do you?

About as helpful as your own conjectures as to what 7yos can or cannot do. Personally, I think it is to do with Scandinavian children being encouraged to explore their locality and getting to know how it works.

Round here we have enormous trouble with teens jumping off a bridge in the summer, very dangerous as water levels are low, and it's basically a stupid place for jumping. This is seen as ASBO behaviour here, and the police regularly get involved. The general consensus is that the parents should keep their teens under constant supervision to prevent this happening.

In Sweden, otoh, it would be considered normal for 13yos to go swimming on their own, so they wouldn't need to sneak off to a stupid place like this, they could discuss suitable beaches with their parents quite openly and take off for the day and the police would not be in the least interested. That's the sort of thing I'm on about. The Swedish tendency would be to rely on the general sense of the teens and all the safet procedures they have been taught over the years.

We knew from babyhood that the natural environment is dangerous (you can die from sitting down on a park bench for long enough in winter) - but we also knew that dangers were something you had to negotiate in a sensible way.

And btw pretty well all Swedish children are in nursery by age 4, so they are not out on the streets during school hours. They get street savvy in their free time.

Some British children are not street savvy because they are not allowed out alone, and prior to being allowed out alone, children are not taught basic skills. If you are driven everywhere you are not going to be very savvy about cycling/walking/using public transport from place to place.

I would say an ordinary 7 year old should be able to walk to a friends house or a shop alone.

A 10 year old should be able to get a bus into a town centre and back and attend an activity/cinema/go to a shop or cafe without an adult.

A 13 year old should be able to cycle 10 miles/hike/camp/swim outdoors/tend a fire with friends but without adults.

But a lot of 18 year olds now struggle with some of these.

Seeker and exoticfruits, genuine question, it has been said by (I think) you two that 7yo kids can be left regularly for a "short time", but why not for a long time? If you don't believe they're in more danger without an adult with them, why do you say a "short time" is all that's acceptable?
Leave them water, sandwiches, snacks etc, you don't ever need to be with them.

PS I suspect the chances of a 7yo in charge of a house is more likely to either have an accident or be hysterical if they break something (or whatever), than the chance of them being in a car accident.
Anyway, back to my first point, it's nothing to do with "being safer" that some of you would be happy to leave a young child REGULARLY, so again the car crash thing is a red herring and more barrel scraping.

Surely the reason that you don't leave a child for a long time is because if they are too young to make the decision that they want to go out and visit a friend, go for a walk, or see a neighbour, then you are essentially telling somebody that they are in solitary confinement for a long period, and we don't treat human beings like that, regardless of age.

Cory, Scandinavian nurseries are a far cry from British ones I can assure you! Perhaps my use of the term "street savvy" was a little loose, I apologise. What I mean is, while Scandinavian children are still in the throes of learning about their natural environment and how to safely interact with it (whether in nursery or at home), poor little British kids are swotting over the Oxford Reading Tree (or whatever it is they use now, no doubt it's changed, yet again) desperately trying to keep far enough ahead to keep mummy from nagging. Even when the poor little mites get home they'll have to "do their reading" with mum/dad/granny/sitter before they get any chance to play or "interact with the natural environment"! Also, from what I have seen of Scandinavia, although Norway rather than Sweden admittedly, there's still much more of a sense of community and adults being responsible for children collectively than we have in Britain nowadays. We are too hepped up by playing "spot the paedo". The Scandinavians don't seem to think any adult, particularly male, who takes an interest in a child which is not theirs, automatically must have ulterior, seedy, motives. Consequently, children who are left home alone in Scandinavia are not left with anxiety inducing instructions to not open the door, or answer the phone, to anyone whilst alone!

Frantic51, I think it is unlikely that British schoolchildren have so much homework that they don't have time to play outdoors unsupervised.

DS leaves for school at 6.45 and gets back at 4.30. He has one and a half hours homework a night and he still has plenty of time to do stuff outside most days.

Milly, you talk a lot of sense. I would hesitate to send a 7 year old shopping alone, but without an adult, ie in a group of two or three friends, I think it is fine. Pop down the road, or round the corner to a nearby friend's, no problem, though I'd probably ring the friend's mum on the qt to make sure they'd arrived! Everything else I agree with.

My mother would never have left me alone at home at the age of 7, effectively in charge of the house. Loneliness would have been her main worrying factor I think. However, I walked to school with friends from the age of 7, took two buses across town to the grammar school at the age of 11, went cycling for days in the holidays with friends from the age of 14 and coped with leaving home without any of the angst that some of my children's fellow students seem to suffer (and nor do mine btw) Despite the fact that some of them have been "latchkey kids" since they were 8 or 9. Very strange!

I think this trend of "being alone" people wanting their kids to be self sufficient as early as possible being weirdly "proud" of themselves or their young adult children for going around the world alone, is very interesting.

With regard to the jumping in the river, kids in this country today don't "discuss" anything with their parents any more, they don't consider the effect their behaviour may have on others, they simply don't care. In Britain we are in the age of self, self, self and it's sad, I think. People have said on here, "why would you make a child do something it doesn't want to do?" ie Go with you in the car, instead of lying in bed/watching tv/reading their book. Er, because we can't always do what we want to do/have our own way? Sometimes we have to do what we have to do because someone, mum/dad/teacher/boss tells us we must and it doesn't matter if we understand why or not because failure to comply will result in being in trouble/detention/out of work? They are "life lessons" too, you know?

Milly, how old is your DS?

I also think a lot of it depends on where you live. When my kids were very little, I felt that they were really missing out by living in a rural area, because they couldn't play out in the way that they would have been able to do if we had been living on a cul-de-sac on a housing estate. Once they got to about 8 they have really got the benefit of living in a rural area, while children living in towns might be more restricted as they might have to cross several busy roads when off the estate, and not have a lot of natural environments nearby to explore.

Frantic, he has just turned 13. I would say that I didn't become a pushy parent unless he was 9. I think all national curriculum levels/reading scheme levels/maths ability is irrelevant until that point, unless a child is struggling.

I don;t leave ds alone because I want him to grow up or be independent or anything like that - it's not an artificially created scenario to aid his development, it';s a sensible response to a situation our family finds itself in.

ANd, whoever asked why not longer - well I think he's be lonely if it was much longer than that. And he's want someone to listen to him playing Smoke on thw Water for the 14053th time. I think he's still be perfectly safe, though.

HFTB, I made it up based on experience. I would like to see a list though.

frantic - I think you're contradicting yourself. Walking to the shops with some friends at a youngish age, then walking alone as they get older so that by the time they start secondary school they can make their own way there and back. So if you think that's a good thing, why wouldn't you be proud that a young adult wants to travel the world?

I want my DC to want to leave home to go to university, to be excited at the thought, not scared that they will be lonely or that I will worry about them. It's all part of the same continuum surely?

Seeker, want, need, whatever. Trying to think back to your original post, you used to leave your DS to take your DD to the bus? He asked to be left alone? At 7 years? Don't actually see the "need" if, at first, you were getting him up anyway, (I think you said?) and putting him in front of the TV? Not much different to getting him up and putting him in the car, no need for him to get dressed if he's not getting out of the car at the bus stop (bit chilly in winter I grant you, but then, I used to get up to ice on the inside of the windows in winter, when I was that age! ) I just think that there's more than one way to "mollycoddle" a child that's all. Look, we are just going to have to agree to differ. I agree that children need to learn independence, I'd just put everything a couple of years on to make the odds in the child's favour of not having an accident and of being able to make their own risk assessment of possible courses of action, should things not go according to plan. [shrug]