leaving 12year old at home alone while we're at work?

[mofro]

Im FT at work and DH is self employed workung long hours. Eldesh DH is in Y7, settled well at new school. Hes' s dropped to school by us in the morning, and has a bus pass for coming home, has a house key and is at home alone from about 4.30pm until we get home for6.30/7pm.
He knows house rules,;is v sensible and is either doing homework, tv or playstation.- doesnt answer door or phone unless its us.
Have 2 other DC who go to family member after school which i pay for.
Had a lecture from my Dsis about abandoing him, how its wrong, what if house burnt down etc....and its kinds stuck in my head!!

Been a SAHM for years, doing crappy atrempts at self employment so i waa there for kuds and now finally gave a great FT job..but feeling guilty....

Was told by another family member she wdnt pop round this half term as i needed to spend time with my own kids as they never see me :-0

Very happy and confident kuds...but they alao moan a lot to me and obviously others about me and DH working so much, i.e. full time

To the people thinking he will be bored or lonely? Why? He has just as much homework as he would were an adult/other sibs were around and has the television and any game system entirely to himself. If he has access to a smart phone or the internet, then thats good for a fair bit of distraction too, potentially too much. Not to mention he can follow instructions well enough to get supper started, or do a load of laundry, clean the cat box, walk the dog, scrub a bathroom, sort out any breakfast dishes or vacuum the house while there is no one in the way.

No way a 12 year old should have time to be bored or lonely, given all that.

Are you thinking maybe that, if she were home, his mum woulf be actually spending a great deal of attentive time with him, day in and day out? Or would he be busy, doing all those other things plus arguing with siblings while she was busy sorting said siblings and doing all those things SAHM's usually do in the hours between home time and supper time?

Bored and Lonely? Ridiculous.

I think it's irrelevant what we used to do... culturally and health and safety wise we are light years away from the seventies. To me it seems quite a lot of time alone, but ok otherwise. OP can play it by ear...but he might get into bad habits such as eating snacks, too much gamingetc.

When I started high school (yr 7) I had to let myself in to an empty house every day until my mum came home about 5:30/6pm. One afternoon in the winter, I was walking the 10 minute journey from school down my heavily populated village road. It was dusk.

A man in a lorry drove slowly down the road, in the same direction I was walking, then parked on the other side of the road a couple of hundred feet ahead.

He got out of his cab, crossed the road and walked towards me. As he approached me he asked me the directions to a non-existent road. I tried to answer, then noticed he had his flies undone and was holding his penis on show.

He then asked me if I wanted to touch it.

I ran the short distance back home, locked the door behind me, shut all the curtains, grabbed a kitchen knife, then hid under the stairs sobbing my eyes out for 2 hours until my mum got home.

Whilst sat there I realised what danger I was in, being in an empty house all on my own.

I would never leave a child (that's what he is, your 12 yo) alone in the house for hours on end, on a regular basis.

Similar thing happened to me in a park on the way to school. So should we not allow children of 12 to walk to school unaccompanied?

that depends entirely on your priorities and your own views on what constitutes a reasonable risk to take. I wouldn't. What you do is your own business.

Something like that happened to me and my friend at 3.15 in the afternoon in summer, we were 15. Should 15 year olds not walk home from school in the daylight then?

So much scaremongering rubbish on these kinds of threads. The child is TWELVE not four.

That sounds awful littlemiss. However we do need to make sure our kids are equipped with the skills and mental and emotional resources to deal with situations such as yours, and wrapping them up in cotton wool, accompanying them everywhere will not do that.

No, but it does help if they are both older and bigger..It says on the NSPCC link children would rarely be considered mature enough to stay alone under 12. The parents have to weigh up the child's personality and needs, the surrounding environment and the length of time left.
May own feeling is that as teenagers they need structure and guidance rather than constant supervision...but they still need quite a lot of attention in different ways.

Where do people who work full time send their secondary aged children after school? If family not local

I'm an only child and i was left alone after school and in the holidays from 11yo onwards. My overriding memory of that time (and all of my childhood) is being bored and lonely and feeling scared/anxious. I was very capable and not worried about the house burning down or anything, but i was vulnerable. Because it was a pattern people knew i would be there alone and i got lots of obscene phone calls and one of my dads friends used to come round and groom me. Of course i'm not saying this is what would happen, but the regularity of it does make it more possible i suppose.

pathetically, i used to play board games with myself and even call the talking clock just for something to do. i never did homework as there was no one there to check. i never did an after school activity and just used to watch any old shit on the telly.

i wouldn't worry about it from an accident point of view, but i wouldn't do it based on my memories of loneliness and boredom.

So much scaremongering rubbish on these kinds of threads. The child is TWELVE not four.

Quite. So at what age do people deem it OK for children to be alone at home after school? It reminds me of the thread about the 18 year old whose parents insisted she was driven 1/2 a mile home by the boyfriends' mother.

That's what I'm asking Mrs Koala. How will you not do it? Thee isn't childcare for secondary age children

Please just make sure he keeps the doors locked. We had an intruder last week just after 6pm, just snuck into the house through the unlocked front door. If dd1 (11) had been home alone she would have been utterly unable to deal with this. Has shaken my confidence in leaving her tbh.

I suppose for me it was the everydayness of it. i dreaded the holidays because of it. Just days and days on end of staring at the tv. so if there were 'activities' after school like a sports club once or twice a week or something. Or try to be home earlier if possible - friends whose parents worked were usually home by 5.30, but mine was 6.30-7ish. I think that extra hour really made it feel like a long time.

I know that isn't always possible tho, as the clubs cost money and often you can't change your hours. My dc are too wee atm and i don't work, so it isn't something i have had to think about. I just know how i felt personally at the time. I always vowed i wouldn't do it. Different if you have more than one dc i think.

Every parent has to make their own decisions based on their child, their circumstances and as I said before, their views on taking risks (leaving a child on their own IS a risk... it might be a small one, it might be a risk you're willing to take. But it IS still a risk.).

As for 'scaremongering' TooOld, hardly! I was relaying an actual event, that happened to me. All fact.

Yes, to wrap children in cotton wool probably isn't a good idea.

However, I was allowed the freedom to 'gain some independence' as a teenager and quite frankly I'm surprised I made it to 20.

I come from a very regular, middle class family in a 'nice' county where crime and violence is pretty low. I didn't experience any greater independence than most of my friends, and yet from the age of 11 through to late teens I was indecently exposed to, almost raped by a family friend, given alcohol by those who should have been old enough to know better, threatened with physical violence by a convicted child rapist, picked up in cars (willingly, to get a 'lift'!) by several unknown, lone men after a night out underage-clubbing... the list goes on tbh. I don't think these experiences were particularly out of the ordinary either.

I was too young to be left in the house on my own at 11. IMO, I was also too young to be walking home on my own, at the same time every day, often in dusk.

I was flashed at loads of times , approached by weird people sometimes and had to report twice to the police. I was always walked home from the pub etc by a male friend( its just what we did) and I was independent, but careful and sensible.
I think a lot also depends on your area, local support and whether its dark etc. there is a risk in your teens and you do have to be sensible about things.

YANBU. If he's comfortable and sensible then why not. You do what is best for you and your family.

I've had to do the same with my DD now 13, since she started high school
as I don't get home until 5.30, 3 days a week.

She also stays at home in the holidays, unless of course DP and I are on leave. She can go to her aunties or grandmas if she wants to but often she has a friend round or nips into town etc. I think everyone of her friends does the same as both parents work.

DD2 will do the same next year, and she'll be fine too. I have to work and only get the standard amount of leave.

I'd be quite hurt by your relative's comment too OP. I'd probably suggest they keep their opinions to themselves, or something a little less polite.

Is there a neighbour/ friend's mum who he could go to for help if he got home to something he couldn't deal with? (someone else in the house, smell of gas, burst water pipe etc.)

I think a twelve year old needs a safety net. If he's got that, I wouldn't have an issue with it (and didn't - at that age my kids were home alone during the holidays and fairly often after school. But we had elderly and always in NDNs on both sides who they knew they could go to for help in an emergency.)

Agree with others it's perfectly fine if he's sensible & he's happy to be home alone. He'll enjoy the responsibility. Mine did at that age.

Nope not a good idea to leave your 12 yr old at home alone all day. Not so much from a safety pov but he will get bored, surf the internet find all sorts of stuff / do things he shouldn't. I was left at home at that age before the internet and didn't like it at all. Sorry but yabu.

My niece is 12 and would definitely trust her implicitly, kids need responsibility! You are not doing anything wrong! X

Sorry thT did t sound very coherent. Both my parents used to work and I was home alone after school until about 6:30. Watches loads of tv, felt a bit lonely and wished for someone to be home. I think it's not nice for anyone to be home alone for a long stretch of time but a 12 yr old is still a fairly young child imo and shouldn't be left alone regularity or more than a couple of hours or so. I also think that it's easy to spend hours on the internet social. Media which is not really much of a half term.

Sorry for awful spelling am on phone.

Without wishing to overthink things, there's an article somewhere about the definition of introverts and extroverts.

Rather than being to do with being sociable or talkative, it's to do with where you get your energy from. So, extroverts get their energy from being around others and metaphorically grow in strength from it. Introverts enjoy the company of others but find it draining and need time on their own to recharge.

I am a very loud & chatty introvert!

I think my point is, it really depends on whether your DS will benefit from the time alone or not.

He might be lonely, or it might be just what he needs.

I think a couple of hours after school sound fine, but what is he doing over half term?