How sensible are 6 year olds?

[Teenagehorrorbag]

Not really an AIBU, but interested to hear views.

On a different thread (about leaving children in hotel rooms, completely separate issue so please don't confuse the two.....) we were discussing what the risks were for leaving young children alone once asleep. My Dcs are older now and you forget, but it made me wonder what the average 6/7 year old is like in terms of common sense and safety etc?

Concerns raised included - pulling a hot kettle onto themselves (they would have had to heat it first), turning on taps and flooding the place, choking on a grape, strangling themselves on a blind cord, drinking vodka from the mini bar, leaving the room and getting lost, etc.

Obviously there are other issues related to being in a hotel room etc - but for the purposes of this thread I was just curious to know what might be general risks for a 6 year old after going to sleep at night.

Waking and illness etc is covered. Just wondering about day to day stuff......

At 6 they can’t risk assess adequately, that’s why they can do mad unpredictable things. They aren’t capable of keeping themselves safe for long (no matter how “sensible” parents insist they are). That’s why they need adult supervision.

It actually is totally dependent on the child. When my eldest was 7 I would have trusted him to be left at home briefly while I went to the corner shop and I wouldn’t have worried about him doing anything weird like pouring boiling water on himself because he just wouldn’t have done that. He definitely wouldn’t have played with blind cords (we’ve never had them tbf but I imagine this being toddler behaviour, not 7 year old!).

I wouldn’t have left my DD’s at this age because they just weren’t as mature and probably couldn’t be trusted not to hurt themselves in the same way. So yes, it does depend on the child.

My six year old if left alone would be scared and much more likely to wander off themselves to find me than boil a kettle. If left in the company of my eight year old he’d probably be less scared. But my eight year old would be scared and also would wander off to find me. So I’d be looking at two frightened children locked in a room crying than I would two children boiling kettles and setting fire to things.

Mine’s older now and always been sensible but I remember her running full speed into a balcony glass door on holiday age almost 6 and hitting her head hard and sitting on floor completely dazed. She thought it was open. We had a chat after about how running full pelt onto a balcony several floors up was never a good idea. She was not an active child - more sit and draw type running like that indoors was totally out of character.
People knocking at door or coming into room - I can remember a ‘maintenance’ man letting himself in room when we’d just checked in at Disney Paris once really unnerved me as an adult. I think he was a chancer looking to steal not attack people but very upsetting and potentially dangerous to a child.

I did say I didn't want to link this to the hotel issue, but just to remember what kids of that age were like?

Fwiw mine were twins so not alone, and one could get us if the other one was ill - I would never have left a single child. And they may have been slightly older than 6, but as I said - that is all being discussed on another thread. But never mind......

We used to “divide and conquer”, I’d share with DS2, DH with DS1

Not romantic but it worked

Both my children are very risk averse. My 6 yo is very sensible. I would trust her to tell me if her younger brother were doing something remotely risky. I think most 6yo understand basic dangers around the home. However I did go up to find she’d put sudocrem in her mouth the other day (she has a little pot under the bed that she’d been putting on a blister) so there is that.

My DD’s 8 and I still couldn’t trust her not to do something weird. As I said, I was probably the most freakishly serious and mature child ever, but I still had my moments of wtf did I do that? (Eg. randomly cut all my fringe right off the day before a family photo at 10; crawled out on a balcony and got stuck at 8; etc. etc.).

The main risks to my mind would be someone getting in, the kid/s coming out to play a game/explore and then getting injured/encountering someone random with bad intentions; a fire or fire alarm when they either couldn’t get out or you couldn’t get yo them - and so on. But I’d never rule out stuff like bouncing on the bed & falling, some kind of freak injury, drowning in an en-suite bath/falling and hitting head, that kind of thing. And to me the risk is small but the consequences profoundly devastating, so it’s not worth taking that risk.

Especially as we know from cases that do make the news: every so often freak accidents and abductions do happen. Life has lots of risks for my kids that I can’t ever control for, so I just want to make sure that I don’t take any risks I could just have avoided - just for the sake of a meal and a drink.

Mine are so different.

My eldest could have easily been left. She was a reader and wouldn't open the door etc. She was calm and easygoing.

My DS would be petrified and even if not, had such an active imagination, that I would never guess all the things that he could think up to do in my absence. He has been difficult to raise in some ways, as there have been numerous jaw dropping moments of shock at his actions. Think of a child who could get out of his cot by 10m, over the staircase by 12m, open the front door by 15m, then escalate that. Love him, but I wouldn't leave him.

My youngest DD would let anyone in, or walk out of the room.

Also, in my experience, 2 children is more dangerous than 1. One will be scared, 2 can egg each other on.

If mine woke up in the night it was always because they'd had a bad dream or were ill, and they always wanted us straight away So I wouldn't have left them as they'd have been terrified to wake and find we weren't there.

Apart from occasionally popping down to the car to fetch something(we were in a 3rd floor flat) we never left them alone until they were about 11or 12.

I would like to think my almost 6 year old wouldn’t do anything silly but she would be so scared to wake up alone, she would be more likely to cry really loudly or walk out to try and find us. Makes me sad to even think of it tbh.

I don't think even the most sensible six year olds would never do something silly. For example, the mini bar comment...six year old wakes up thirsty at midnight and sees a water-looking liquid so drinks it.

Definitely another here that thinks the poster who said that they are generally sensible but can suddenly do something random (paraphrasing because am so wrecked, sorry!) should get a round of applause. My youngest is 6 and is extremely sensible, helpful and grounded but every so often he'll do something that makes me and dh discuss how 'he's only 6 after all'. Dangerous stuff like suddenly trying to pull you across the road, stand on a chair or reach up for something that will obviously fall. He's also stuffed tons of food in his mouth in one go and randomly run after our cats. All things he would never normally do, he knows to just ask about getting something down, knows to hold hands and walk across the road etc.

Children are unpredictable. Just because they don't, doesn't mean they won't.

I wouldn't trust my 6 year old child in a empty room with just a spoon. He'd injure himself somehow! But that's my child.

On a serious note, he'd be very scared if he were to wake up and not find me there. We are talking complete anxious meltdown.

There was a thread here a while ago, I can't remember the thrust but on it, someone described being in joining hotel rooms and how this deranged woman knocked on their door went in and sat being extremely strange and softly threatening to her as a child, she said she instinctively kept her calm and chatting and I can't wait remember how much age got out of it but it was Terrydying...

We forgot, holiday to us is relax, exiting new and fresh, to someone else we could be walking into their Web.

It's also re child sense of perspective and how they can't understand things

@Saoirse82

YABU because you're trying to justify leaving your 6 year old asleep in a hotel room while you checked on them every half hour while having dinner downstairs. I don't think there was one other person on the thread that agreed with you. To the majority if parents that's neglectful behaviour and I'd be surprised if its even legal!

God, really, op?

You have already said your 6 year olds are happy to be left alone in a hotel room while you are in the dining room eating dinner so why do you need to ask?

My 6 year olds could be left to doze on the sofa watching tv if they were ill and I needed to get their sibling to school. (10 mins)

I wouldn't have left them in a hotel room though.

Kids have no concept of the passing of time so 30 minutes feels like hours.

I'm very confident that none of them would have climbed out of a window or boiled the kettle but I can imagine them in their sleepy state struggling with the lock on the bathroom or opening the door and getting stuck outside the room. If someone had knocked on the door or they heard shouting/banging in the corridor they'd be really freaked out.

I'm slightly confused about the scenario you are wanting to discuss. Is it about a sleeping 6yo being alone in a hotel room? If so, where would the parents be? My answer would depend on how easy it was for the child to get to the parents.

One of my kids would have been completely fine if able to find us. So if we were next door, say, that would be okay, provided the child would definitely remember where we were. We would do a bit of practice with how to unlock the door in order to come find us, plus maybe a backup plan (bang on the wall if you need us and can't get the door open). I would say that child was rather more mature and confident than most.

My other child would have been confused and upset about how to get to us, and also would have gone to pieces in any sort of emergency such as the fire alarm going off. She was very immature for her age. I would not have considered leaving her for more than a few minutes.

Back in the 80's when I was around 5/6 my mum and stepdad used to take me to Butlins, usually with friends of theirs with smaller children (a baby and a toddler) and they would all go out to the bar on some evenings and leave us alone and use the listening in service. I wasn't asleep when they left I knew they were going and I remember being absolutely terrified the whole time they were gone, I had an extremely over-active imagination so when they gave me a big stern lecture about not opening the door to anyone or talking to anyone because they might be bad men all I could think about was all the bad men out there trying to get in and how I was meant to protect the 2 smaller sleeping children. I still can't get my head around how all 4 adults thought this was ok!

My children are 7 and 9 and neither one of them even likes being alone upstairs in our own house, they'd be terrified to be left alone in a strange place and I completely understand why.

WTF?
No, it does not “depend on the child”
Leaving a 6 year old alone in a hotel room is
reprehensible.

Also for the record, despite me being 100% confident that my older child would have been fine alone in certain circumstances, I never DID leave her alone till she was eight. This was purely because our society does not consider young children to be safe alone, and I thought it quite possible someone would report it to Social Services. I really didn't want their involvement in my life.

This annoyed me no end. I wanted to be able to rely on my own judgement about this individual child and the situation in which I would leave her, rather than having to go along with what "everyone else" does.

I have a very sensible six year old who can always be counted on to make the right choice.
Yesterday, they picked up a China mug and threw it to watch it bounce on the grass. It obviously did not bounce.
Curiosity is in abundance in this age. I trust my six year old to be alone in a room. Or on a separate floor. I trust them to play independently and with siblings, happily. But as sensible as they are.., I wonder what happens when... smash