what age would you let your DC do the following things?

[deliverdaniel]

Trying to work out if IABU

What age would you let your DCs do the following (FWIW mine have no special needs/ unusual circumstances etc)

1. Go to the small park at the end of your own road to play alone or with a friend (safe area, no roads to cross, about 100 feet from the house round one corner)

2. Go to the local shop without an adult (4 min walk with one main road to cross with a pedestrian/ traffic light crossing and no other roads to cross)

3)Walk to school alone or with a friend- 15 minute walk, several side roads to cross but no main road.

All in a safe, quiet-ish suburban area

Thank you!

elevenclips yes but surely we should be teaching our kids not to do these things? If we lock them up then surely they will never learn how to behave responsibly in public/ how to be part of a community.

Similarly with navigating the unexpected. Surely that's a slow process of learning which starts with going to the local shop etc and ends when they are totally independent. At some point you have to let them out of the house on their own. Surely that's better built up slowly from a young age?

I'm another one in Germany, where these things are very different to the UK. All the children in our village were encouraged to start walking alone to kindergarten in the last year (age 5/6) in preparation for starting school when they absolutely would be expected to do this.
So Kindi was a good 10 minute walk along a main road, smaller roads to cross, proper crossing at the main road and then up the hill to Kindi.
School was slightly further, so 15mins, and a few smaller roads to cross, plus the main road again.
Ds is now 10, plays out regularly with friends and has done for a couple of years. Usually they go on bikes.
He has just recently started getting the bus down to town on his own (a 1 stop ride) for his guitar lessons. He'll be starting high school in September when he'll be getting the bus every day, so it seemed like a good idea to get him used to it beforehand.

Road safety is taught very young here, and although there are kids which struggle, generally I've been very impressed with how they know where and when to cross roads etc. Also, drivers tend to be more aware of children because it is still very much the norm here to have small children (from 5) walking alone.
They also bike to school, so drivers are more bike aware too, and the cycling proficiency test is quite a big deal here.

But twice I've had to stop my car dead to avoid hitting an unaccompanied child(ren). Bunch of boys 9/10 ish crossing road without looking, child 8/9yo cycling on wrong side of road. Bet those parents all think their kids are really "independent".

I regularly have to drive on the road of a secondary school and if I drive at school pick up/drop off i often have to stop for silly boys (always boys) who are pushing each other in the road, scooting out into the road without looking, crossing without judging traffic etc. These boys can be as old as 15/16. What are parents meant to do though? They have to prepare their children and help them to be independent. They can't still accompany them forever just in case.

yes yes yes to teaching them how to deal with the unexpected too - ds actually got "lost" on the way home from Kindergarten once (dreamy kid, turned up a road he shouldn't have done) and he went into a hairdresser's shop and told them. He didn't yet know our home number, so they looked us up in the telephone directory. Many shops here are "Kelly Insel" and have stickerts advertising that they are such in the window - it is a "safe place" that kids can go if they need help.

fruitcorner yy to your point,and also to a previous poster who said that by driving kids everywhere we are making things less safe for everyone else- ie the ones who are walking.

Between 7 and 9 for those things depending on the child. Ours has just finished Year 2 so is 7 and has just started playing out with friends. My biggest concern with her is the road. My husband asks that she checks in with us every 15 minutes or so as she plays around the corner.

7/8 for mine but never really in their own as they fortunately had friends living next door so would generally go with the neighbours, or to the park straight after school. They did need to text me though and I would often walk the dog passed the park to check they were okay.

They're now 13 and 15 and I still worry if they're not home by 6pm

Small son is nearly 9. He's allowed to go to the park if he doesn't go further than the first clump of trees (i can see what he's up to out of the living room window and it's safer than playing out in the street.) There is no road crossing involved, the park gate is about 100 yards from the front door.

We used to walk to the shops and sometime to and from school and the kids always had to tell me when they thought it was safe to cross, this is a great way of knowing for sure how good your kids judgement is for roads. They always had to do it even when we were walking with other families so hopefully it drummed into them not to be distracted by friends talking or messing around.

1. 7
2. 9/10
3. Secondary school as long as sensible

jupitar that's a really good idea- might start that with mine! thanks

My eldest is 28 and did 1 and 2 at 6
Walking to school with a friend about 9
My dd is 20 and was about 9 or 10 when she did 1 and 2
Walking to school was a bit later at 11

Why did that post?

2. He's not yet allowed to go to the corner shop on his own even though that's about a 100 yds in the opposite direction because I can't see it from the house, and I don't really trust him yet with the whole spending money wisely thing. He'll probably be ready for that in a year or so.

3. I'll probably let him walk to school "on his own" (he won't be on his own as lots of other children walk the same way) from the start of next school year if I've got a job that I can't juggle the start of. He will be walking up straight through the park, no roads, and the school is on the other side of the park. (Annoyingly there used to be a gate out of the park and into the school, but they closed it off a few years ago.)

Big son (who is 30 this year) was walking to school at 8.

My dd walks to park and shop down the road and that was from aged 8. She started meeting her friend in park from age 6, however we lived opposite a park back then.

1. 6/7 when we're staying with friends or family who have this sort of set up, aged 10 for the big parks local to us.
2. 8 - DD1 wasn't interested before then, DD2 has been accompanying her for the past couple of years.
3. 9/10 (Y5)

For our family, the reason it's not been sooner is mainly to do with where we live and how little regard many drivers pay to zebra crossings and the like.

I will also add my dd is behind academically and autistic I still let her out though. She has her phone and I call her. She likes to go round town looking in all the shops. She is 9 now.

For most kids 8/9, same as when I was young really.

6
8
9 or 10

1. 6/7. Dd2 is 7 and goes to the park on her own now, and has been allowed to for a little while.

2. about 8/9, depending on how sensible the child is. Dd1 was going to shops alone at 8, but she didn't have a main road to cross.

3. 9/10. Dd1 started walking to school alone in y5, as she hated going to breakfast club. I will say there was some judgement from other parents that we let her do it that young, but she loved that bit of independence and only had one big road to cross with a pelican crossing. Where we used to live, absolutely everybody sent their y5 children to walk to school because the schools were different and they moved to middle school in y5, so parents were often walking younger siblings to the first school.

I'm in Finland and here the norm for those things is between 6-8. Me personally I'd say 5 for number one, and 6 for the other two, obviously depending on the child.

DD is 6 now and has free rein on our estate which has no busy roads, but she's not yet allowed to cross the main road on her own (I just told her today she can cross it with her older friend to go visit his other friend) as there are no traffic lights and its the equivalent of an A-road so cars go fast.

She'll be walking to school alone when she starts next month but her walk is through the forest so no roads at all except for walking to the end of our road and crossing one road opposite the school.

There's a danger in not letting children have some independence before they get to 10/11ish because that's the age when children can get really silly and show off so combining that age with crossing roads by themselves for the first time is not a good mix - far better that they start crossing roads by themselves at a younger age before the risk-taking behaviour kicks in.

1&2 - 7
3 - 9/10 maybe.

I do wonder if these 5/6 year olds who go to the park alone are also left at home alone for a few hours. Just curious really as I feel that home is safer than walking to the park (our nearest park is 15 minute walk away and couldn't imagine our 10 year old wanting to walk there alone, although she is looking forward to walking to school when she starts year 6 in September).

I would say the same as drinkingtea given the environment you have described.

I'm surprised by the first few comments.

When we lived in a village, both DS were out playing at the park or calling round friends houses. We had a decent size front garden, which seemed to fill with children from the neighbourhood (we put the outdoor toys in the front garden in the end) so from 4, DS were playing with friends in the front garden and going between friends front gardens in the same street, so technically playing out.

There's a danger in not letting children have some independence before they get to 10/11ish because that's the age when children can get really silly and show off so combining that age with crossing roads by themselves for the first time is not a good mix - far better that they start crossing roads by themselves at a younger age before the risk-taking behaviour kicks in

Agree

I do wonder if these 5/6 year olds who go to the park alone are also left at home alone for a few hours

Not for a few hours as yet as there just hasn't been a need for it but she'll be coming home two days a week to an empty house once school starts until I start maternity leave in November so will be there for about an hour alone depending on how slow she is walking home. She'll be 6.5 then.