to not want my 4 year old to play out unsupervised?

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DD has a friend who is nearly four ( dd is 4 and a half). The new friend lives a few doors away and often comes to the door by herself to see if dd wants to play. The other day she turned up when dd was at nursery. Her mum called 3 hours(!) later to ask if she was there. She wasn't - it appeared the mum didn't know where her dd was.

Other friends have told me that this child has knocked their doors ( people she doesn't know) asking if anyone wants to come and play. She must be crossing roads unsupervised to do this.

My dd is very keen to play with this child ( who is also chumming around with another of her older friends). DD is too young to play outside without me and I don't think I can trust the mother to supervise my dd in her own house.

What would you do? Looks like I'm going to be hosting a lot of playdates...

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i think from the age of 3 it is ok to play out but only if the parents know exactly where they are.

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My kids have only just started to play out and they are 5,6 and 9 (to be fair DS,9 has CP and dd1,6, has CP and ADHD) but they have tp play where I can see them from the windows.

normally the driveway after DH has taken the car out.

i actually meant to say 4 in my last comment. round here all the kids play out from the age of about 4.

OMG, you could be me. DS has a just 5 year old boy come over all the time. The mom has called me frantically 6 times not knowing where he has been. Sometimes it is hours before she calls, and I'm awfully sure she hasn't known he's been at my house many other times. I'd like to tell him to go away, but DS insists this boy is his best friend.

(I host an awful lot of playdates, just not willingly)

there was a thread on this a while back other thread

a lot of people let their lo's out at 3 and 4 but there were loads of others who still didn't and 9 or 10. it depends where you live too. obviously if you lived on a main road it is not suitable to play out at any age.

When my dss and dsd used to come and visit us when they were 7 and 8 there was a girl their age who spent weekends with her dad down the street from us. They loved to play with her, but I was always wary because the dad never seemed to supervise them very well. One time I came to get them and found them all (except the dad who was down below encouraging them) on the roof of the shed (10' high) playing games. No edge to the shed. Another time they came home covered in paint which turned out to be (non-washable adult oil paints that he let them paint with. Another time I arrived to pick them up and the were making a witches brew...fine until it turned out that the ingredients were all the cleaning fluids from under the sink including bleach and ajax. Another set of clothes ruined. I ended up trying to encourage the playdates to happen at my house because every time I developed a new rule (no paints unless they are washable) he would find a new dangerous pasttime for them. He was a lovely man too....just a lousy parent/caretaker.
In answer to your question... I think with a 4 year old, I would absolutely not let her go to a house where you weren't comfortable with the supervision level. And the reality is that you will probably want to discourage the relationship when they are older because a child that unsupervised is likely to have other problems in the household.

Blimey - have you all had bad nights ( or perhaps good nights..) Lots of replies at 3 am!

We live on a new estate but on the main access road and traffic does come flying down past us . I can't see from my house where they'd be playing & I'm just very uncomfortable about not knowing where dd is. I'm just not sure that the friend's mum would be supervising them that well ( I know that the school has had a "child protection" type conversation with her for instance re supervision ).

Perhaps can set some strict limits on where dd plays initially and get her to come back home frequently to tell me if she's going elsewhere. Looking at the other thread tho, seems lots of people do let them play out at this age.

The other thing is that the little friend is quite "streetwise" ( although I still think a 3 year old isn't safe to cross the road along no matter how savvy) whereas dd really isn't.

I think it very much depends where you live and how "mature" your child is.

I have some friends who live in a cul de sac away of any main roads, the street is so so narrow it is even uncomfortable to drive through it. So, it's full of children playing in the street and in other people's gardens. You can feel a community working together in checking where the children are and what they are up to. In that scenario, a 4 years old may be relatively safe.

I live in a street that connects a main road with other minor streets, there is a quite a bit of road and pedestrian traffic and you rarely see other people's children playing outside. I wouldn't allow DS (4) to be alone here even in the front garden.

But in both cases, I have to agree with SofiaAmes when she says "And the reality is that you will probably want to discourage the relationship when they are older because a child that unsupervised is likely to have other problems in the household.". All the children I have met whose parents allow hours of unsupervised time (either in or out of the house) tend not to have a very good idea of where the boundaries are, either in discipline, manners, respect for the things around them or other people's needs.