Family think I'm bad for leaving child at school 10mins before door opens

[pointbla]

I take my year 4 child early 10 mins before the school doors open and leave him there. I have another child to take to another school. He's 9 , I see no problem with it , other children are there too. Also, I don't regularly do that just occasionally.
My family seem to think this is very bad and I am putting my child at risk as the kids mess about. AIBU?

That's a really good post @Kokeshi123

I think OP @pointbla
posted a great question as she wanted viewpoints. She's had a range of views and enough PPs that have said that's fine, that is normal in our area.

Unfortunately like sometimes happens in aibu threads, some posters got carried away from their narrow experience & school set ups and have berated her unfairly. She was asking for a range of views on something she already assessed as a parent as safe. 10 minutes waiting outside school which wouldnt even register as an issue for a significant proportion of uk schools.

There are maybe some schools with less child amenable physical entrance designs /geography but that is not universal. I'm uk, so can't speak for other countries.

(Lol just had a hedgehog meander past my backdoor and try to come inside 😁😁 he doesn't know I have cats! )

Is he standing in the playground? Aren't there other kids milling about in the playground?

@Duck90
That must have been frustrating for you, to have thought op was talking about a four year old! No one would condone leaving a yearR four year old alone unsupervised outside school or even in playground waiting any length of time. They have to be seen safely in by amadult and most schools do this until KS2 (8+)
But @pointbla 's op was clear, she mentioned him/her being 9 years old a paragraph later, and it's not really her fault that some readers have misread.

@Lumene
Just so I am really clear my DC maths mentored mostly at lunchtime. But on occasion when waiting, if a child was waiting for parent to pick up and doing homework, which secondary school is happy for, (code of conduct school is open), if older pupils who happened to be English or Maths mentors and also around, they use that time well.

(or the school was not asking pupils to run after school groups! 😆)

I wouldn’t , but I don’t judge you for doing it .

Parents are under a lot of pressure , with work and school runs .

If the family think it’s not good , tell them to help you find a solution rather than making you feel bad about it .

I admit I would put the child in supervised breakfast club for an hour rather than leave them unsupervised for 10, but I think I’d just be a nervous parent.

I remember as a 9 year old I’d spend hours in the park unsupervised with my 11 /12 year old sister and cousins my age and a bit younger . There was a group of us but our parents certainly didn’t supervise us for sometimes three / four hours , even though some of our mums were SAHM!

No harm came to us , but I doubt very much that this would ever happen with my kids . I think society has changed so expectations of parents in many respects is higher than before

WillLokierturn

I don’t recall using the word frustrating! Thanks for making things up!

The rest of your post is quite hard to translate. But what I could make out doesn’t seem to relate to what I was talking about.

@Duck90
I was trying to be understanding that you said
So I read 4 year old...That is why I said it was confusing..
as you have struggled to read Original post nor have RTFT. I haven't made anything up. 🙄

Not sure why you are tagging me into a still-not-rtft comment from you, but please don't tag me in again. If you then have a point to make, RTFT and make it to other people. Thanks.

I am not going to restart this whole argument. I have made my views very clear but will quickly reiterate. There are some very spurious points being made about what is a very simple issue: the OP does have an obligation to look after her child, the people she is expecting to do it don’t. And yet because she is leaving him in their ultimate care without asking, they will have to nonetheless.

You haven't answered any of the repeated questions as to at what age you do think it would be appropriate to leave a child for ten minutes, hercule. You can surely see the relevance of this.

AppropriateAdult

I really, really cannot see it, because that is not what is happening. If the OP wanted to leave her child alone in the house or have him walk to school alone, she could do that. She isn’t doing that. She is placing him under the nose of the teaching and office staff at his school, knowing they have to be responsible for him. She is making a deliberate decision to put him somewhere he is under (vague) supervision, rather than not.

So why is it relevant when I would leave my child alone, without someone who is obliged to help him/her?

If the OP does that and posts about it, I will contribute a view to that discussion. But this isn’t that discussion.

I think it depends on the child. I haven't done it personally myself but my son would be fine. He's 10 and I'm gradually giving him more independence but I'm a worrier. Children in year 5 in my son's school are allowed to walk home to and from school alone anyway, so yanbu.

Because if it was a question of dumping our children alone on a desert island, probably most people would say 18 is a strict minimum! It is because we live in society and not a desert island that we are able to give our kids gradually increasing freedoms. We rely on the social contract to scoop up our kids when they encounter something they aren't yet ready for. This is a necessity not an option - you can't chuck an 18yo out into the world having never once been left unsupervised. The question we have to ask as we slowly allow those freedoms is 'are they old enough to deal with most eventualities by themselves, given the circumstances they are in'. It would clearly be cheeky fuckery to leave a 4yo in a school playground, because they need pretty much constant assistance from adults. But by 9, they don't. So 10 minutes in a school playground before school is a perfect social setting in which to exercise a small amount of independence, because they are surrounded by people who know about kids. Not one single adult who has to take responsibility, mind, just a general environment. And it is impossible to get our kids to independent adulthood without that general expectation. The other day on our way to school there was a big emergency resulting in a road block needing a massive detour. All the Ur 5/6 and young secondary kids on their way to school were completely flummoxed, didn't have a clue where to go. Did we all say 'oh cheeky fucker parents, expecting us to look after their kids?' No - we helped them out.

I cant help wondering if you only have younger kids, Hercule, because if you've got to the point (and it comes to all parents, whether at 8/9 or 11/12) when you have to allow your kids independence, you will absolutely have to cross your fingers and hope someone helps your child in a crisis, because the whole point of independence is that you won't be there to help! It is a literal impossibility to only allow your child independence once they know how to deal with every single thing the world might throw at them. That's just not how it works! You have no option but to let them fly short distances and hope someone is there to catch them!

Sorry, last sentence got lopped off

...there to catch them if they fall, which at some point in the journey to independence, they ALL will.

frogsoup

You are telling me things I know already. I am NOT criticising the OP for allowing her child independence, for leaving him without supervision, for relying on the kindness of strangers. Please stop replying to me as if I am saying something other than what I am saying, and read my posts. If you can’t, let’s not continue discussing this.

Great post, frogsoup.

Answer the question specifically about leaving your child outside the school, then, hercule. Do you walk your 15yo to the door and stand there until it opens?

Has anyone seen ‘Dangerous journeys to school’ on YouTube?

I’m not saying we should leave our children to get to school in such extreme circumstances but it does give a good insight into what children are capable of even at a very young age.

AppropriateAdult

Of course not. It is the expected norm for children at secondary to make their own way to school, and they are not left in anybody’s care because they are old enough for any risk to be considered age appropriate. The OP is specifically choosing to take her child to school and has stated that when her two children are at the same school she will wait with him. She has also expressed her guilt at leaving him, so obviously doesn’t think him old enough to make his own way to school. Hence my point, which you are refusing to address: she has thought to herself, I know, I can leave him at school because - and she has expressly stated this - in the event of anything going wrong, the staff are expected to step in.

You absolutely have said that it's not ok to rely on the kindness of strangers, you've said it repeatedly re other parents in the playground and that you are only there to supervise your child and that it's cheeky for parents to expect another parent or teacher to intervene in a dire emergency! Please don't start questioning my comprehension skills, it's pretty rude as I've been reading your posts carefully and attempting to understand your perspective.

If you have no problem with relying on the kindness of strangers, and the school in this case has not cracked down saying they are unable to take on whatever you see their legal responsibility is, then what is the issue?!

And the OP, if she wasn’t so busy being defensive and asking me questions about iPads and making odd assumptions about what I think of other parents doing what she is doing, would come back and clear this up.

And of course, as a secondary school teacher, I can tell you that we are accountable for the young people in our care as soon as they are onsite. That’s why we have staff on duty. It’s not cheeky for people to send their children to school where there is a clear expectation that we will be responsible for them. It’s cheeky when there isn’t, as is the case with many primaries.

Re your crosspost, guilt is irrelevant - we all feel guilt with granting independence. 'Are they really ready?' goes through all our minds at this stage!

And when we grant our kids independence, we have to think 'is there someone likely to help in an emergency?' It's a necessary part of the due diligence you have to undertake.

Like I say, this is definitely reading like the posting of someone who has not yet had to go through the tortuous process of starting to cut the apron strings and allow their kids independence.

frogsoup

No, Frog. You are not reading me correctly. It isn’t cheeky to hope someone will help your child. It is cheeky to expect it. Yes, it would be cheeky for someone to leave me watching their child in the playground, expecting I will step in if something goes wrong. Hoping isn’t expecting. If I am busy with my own child and can’t help theirs, what are they going to say to me? Nothing, because again, they know they have no right to expect anything of me.

As I have said several times.

You, on the other hand, are misreading my posts. I don’t know if it is deliberate, but you seem determined to pretend that the OP leaving her child at school in the full knowledge that staff have to help him, is the same as leaving him on his own. It isn’t.

And when we grant our kids independence, we have to think 'is there someone likely to help in an emergency?' It's a necessary part of the due diligence you have to undertake.

Due diligence is one way to put it. Being cheeky is another. The OP has no right at all to expect the school staff to be responsible for her child at a time when she is meant to be responsible for them.

If she gave a shit about whether or not staff were being inconvenienced by her “due diligence” and decision to leave her son, she would ask them whether it’s okay. She hasn’t. Why not?

Anyway, I can’t spend my morning on this pointless merry go round of questions I have either answered or that have no relevance. It doesn’t matter what people say or ask me: I think the OP is being cheeky. That’s it, really.