Should a 5 year old be allowed out alone?

[bigyellowtaxi]

Am a regular but have namechanged...

Have I been unreasonable? Something happened this morning that I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable about - and I'm not sure what to do next.
My DD was at a party this morning, and after, as we were driving away I saw one of her classmates (a boy, age 5) walking away from the party, he was probably 200 metres away from the party venue when I saw him. My first thought was that he had wondered away somehow without waiting for a parent to collect him, also he is new to the area so that increased my concern.
I stopped the car and got out to ask him if he was OK (he knows who I am), he said that he was, and that his mum had said it was OK for him to walk home alone. I asked him where he lived and he pointed to a nearby block of flats. So I watched him go in though the main front door, left and went home.

After I came home I was speaking to a friend, and she was horrified and thinks I should tell social work, if not them then the school, and if not the school then speak to the mum about it directly.

So my questions are:
Was I unreasonable to stop and speak to the boy - should I have maybe kept out of it? - I wasnt the first parent who had gone past him on the way home. Or was I unreasonable to have let him go from me? I half considered walking with him back to his front door.

Also what should I do now? My instinct is to do nothing. I think that it is unusual to let a 5 year old out in that way ( I have never seen any children that young out on there own before), but maybe not so unusual I should do anything about it. I think Social work would be a total overreaction, I'm not sure what it has to do with the school, and I cant see anything good coming out of a chat to the mother.

What would you have done? and what would you do now?

aaww thanks girls.

My poor deprived dd is off for a 100km trek soon for 8 days with school. No adults walking with them, they have to go to checkpoints twice a day tho to be signed in, cooking for themselves,reading maps, rucksack on back,no mobile and ,to dd's horror...no GHDs!!!

Will worry, but am being a very brave girl and let her go ( in fact, i was the first to sign her up ,think it's great for them!)

But yes, will have to drive her to school in the first place to start the hike

I have given MABS a hard time over one sentence form page 2 where she said:
'What does a 7 yr old need to do without a parent anyway?' Which I believe is completely wrong.
Unfortunately I can see why a 7 year old can't do things on their own but it is a sad reflection on society today and they do need to do things away from a parent IMO.
I also think that it is ridiculous that a 13 yr old girl has to be signed out of school at the end of the day when she is hardly likely to be abducted between the door and the car park with 140 parents milling around! She should be capable of going back into school if her mother hasn't turned up. However that it the school at fault-MABS just has to follow the system. I would start a petition if it was my DC, mainly because I had 2 toddlers when my DS was 13 and I would have taken a dim view of getting them out in the rain or when asleep.

God I have many more important battles to fight than petitions about signing out of school!! find that laughable really,not a priority in my busy life i assure you.

Well done with 100km trek MABS-sounds a fantastic experience! (Sorry-I may have misjudged you on the 7 yr old sentence).I think you will find a lot of parents wouldn't let them do it at 13 yrs!

Thanks Abbey, am nervous but sure she'll cope. Her biggest worry at the mo is that her walking boots are chavvy in her opinion!!! she'll learn..

My youngest DS was the same with his boots!
I hope the weather improves!

she doesn't go til 9 June, so hoping for a bit less rain then.

I think that everyone has agreed with the OP that a 5 yr old should not be allowed out alone and that she was right to be concerned which is why it has moved on.
It is very difficult these days to give freedom. Public transport is also a big issue. I live in a village and the last bus is at 5.30pm so last night when my DS wanted to go to the cinema with 2 friends we had to transport him there and back , we couldn't even share lifts as the 3 boys came from different directions. Giving them the opportunity to do adventurous things is an easy way to deal with it.
Having been one of the people giving MABS a hard time, I believe that she is giving her DD a fantastic opportunity. She is going with the school so she knows that it will be well organised, even though there are no adults directly with them. DD must have done a lot of that type of thing already because you don't expect 13 yr olds to walk that distance, find their way and look after themselves without prior experience. It is just the sort of activity young people need.
I wondered what other people would feel about letting go? Just curious as the thread has gone quiet? Would you let your 13 yr old do it with the school if she asked to go, even though you were apprehensive? (I didn't find lying in bed, listening to the rain pouring down, knowing that my teenager was in a tent on Dartmoor easy!However it was a brilliant experience for him.)

I let my children do any school/scout/organized stuff they want to and which we can afford. Dd will be starting Duke of Edinburgh soon and she goes boating with Scouts a lot - well organized but I suppose still risky.

I think my big issue is with unsupervised non-organized adventure and "risk".

I genuinely believe that it is VERY important for children of all ages to do stuff on their own - they need to learn how to manage and assess risk and look after themselves. I'm not talking about sending 6 year olds on unsupervised night hikes - and I probably wouldn't have let my 5 year old walk home from the party like in the OP. But I do let my children do a lot. We live in the country too and my 12 year old and her friend go off on their bikes with a picnic. I sometimes drive her to the school bus, but she often cycles 10 minutes across the fields to the station. She also often walks back from the station on the days I drive her in the mornings - 20 minutes or so. I am slightly nervous when she does this, and I am glad to see her when she gets home, but I know that my nerves are irrational - and I am convinced that I am doing the right thing to give her independence and freedom.

If you are too worried to let them do it seeker it is good to have something like MABS school trip where they are walking on their own with no mobile phones. They will have to assess and deal with risk. I can't cope with mine cycling because the roads are full of bends and people drive like maniacs! I would let them if we lived somewhere else.

NO - sorry - I expressed myself badly. I agree that the school/organized stuff is brilliant but I think that the non-organized stuff is equally important in different ways.

I realize that I am incredibly lucky that we have lots of paths and tracks round us where you cancycle safely - and one leads to the station. I wouldn't be happy with dd being out on her bike on the roads. Ironically, I think town children can get much more use out of their bikes than a lot of country children!

I agree that non-organised stuff is important but there are often good reasons for not being able to, I wouldn't cycle around our home myself.
I am just interested to hear people's responses on organised adventure. There have been lots of threads where the DC wants to go but the parent has fears that, unfairly in my view, holds them back.

I'm lookin forward to the time when ds gets the chance to on adventures - orgnaised or not.

At his schools, every alternate year the P7s (ie 12 year olds) get to go away fro a week to an Outward Bound Centre. By my calulcuations, he will be in the P7 year that gets to go, which I am really pleased about.

what do the alternate years do, PB?

i think 'organised adventures' are a no-brainer. they are organised specifically with children in mind.

My 14 yr old does all sorts of outward bound stuff at school (including 10 Tors just the other day). Both the 13 and 14 yr old walk the 2.5 miles back from the village where the bus stop is on a fairly regular basis (having walked from school to the bus stop). They fairly often catch the bus into town to do their weekend classes and activities (although son's independence in this respect recently took a step back when orchestra rehearsals moved from a place accessible by bus by 10am to a place he could never get to by bus by that time )
Both nip into town to buy essentials, and daughter 1 meets up with friends, goes to the cinema, and gets herself back out again by herself.

I can perfectly well see why you to drop your daughter off at school Mabs with your SN 7 yr old to consider- there is no point making two separate arrangements for both children, but I must say that I detected a touch of paranoia and fear in your posts at times about the huge dangers encountered by your children in rural Sussex. I understand that this is the county where there have been several high profile random child murders, but these are still infinitisemally rare events (and we have our our own still unsolved child disappearance here in East Devon, so presumably a child abductor is still at large somewhere).

I can tell you that my heart was in my mouth the other day when I had to let my 10 yr old walk the last mile to her school past a road resurfacing crew blocking a country road. The alternative was a ridiculous 3-4 mile detour, for us to reach a village we could see from the road block. So I let her walk. I did ring the school about 20 mn later to check she'd got there.

Next academic year, when youngest is just 11, she will be taking the bus into Exeter with her siblings, but going to a different school about a mile away from theirs. I am going to have to be brave about it though. I don't want her to grow up but she is. Our London friends seem to think nothing of their 11 yr olds taking triple or quadruple combinations of public transport alone to get to school ever morning, and several of them seem to go between 5 and 10 miles to school.

Unfortunately nothing Nailpolish.

The problem is that there is not sufficient space at Blairvaddoch, which is the only place that has had the appropriate Health & Safety/Rsk analysis. And to go to another Outward Bound centre means the school going and doing its own risk assessment - which may or may not be accepted by Glasgow City Council. And apparently schools can't "share" their risk assessments.

omg PB that is SHOCKING!

if i was a parent of a child who didnt get to go id be furious

cant they even go on a day trip somewhere?

imagine if there were siblings - one got to go and when the younger reached p7 they didnt - how awful

I'm sure they do go on dayy trips somewhere. it's an issue I can remember discussing when I was on the school board: the school is accutely aware of the unfairness of it and was trying to think of potential solutions - which is why we got onto the topic of alternaitves. They do alwys try to get a booking to Blairvaddoch the "other" years - but can only rely on the alternate years one. It's simply an issue of capacity - there are not sufficient Outward Bound places for all school kids to go, so some have to miss out

Maybe the latest proposped Governemnt strategy of having everyone go on Outward Bound will help generate the investment for extra places

No Duchesse - no paranoia and fear in me i assure you.

NP and PB, Totally agree how awful it is if your child if not in right year to go, ie alternate. Til 4 yrs ago I worked for one of leading outdoor activity providers in UK as quality manager. You have no idea how common this was at schools, one year can,one year can't.

The risk assessment think is a total minefield,you are correct tho, they can't share risk assessments.

I agree with whoever said that these courses are highly organised though, but they have to be or schools wouldn't be allowed to travel.

You have no idea how many hours the customer service team, and sometimes I , spent on the phone offering reassurance to people - usually Headteachers and parents.

it doenst happen at dd's school, thank goodness

I hate to harp on, MABS, but why then did you say that my 7 year old shouldn't walk to the letter box (God, I hate that letterbox - I'm going to fire bomb it later!) unless I could see him?

how on earth can a walk to a letterbox relate to me working for activity camp organiser where kids were always adequately supervised?! am very confused now.

id hate to tell you want sort of things we got up to on activity holidays where we were 'adequately supervised'

MABS - you said "As i said, a 7 yr old going to the postbox is fine if you can watch them and there are no busy roads" and "
I would never allow a 7 yr old boy out alone i assure you. If the post box were near and i could see him totally all the way then maybe,"

and I've been wondering ever since why you think they should be watched all the way. Assuming, as we have all said all along that traffic is not a problem.

I wouldn't have been one of those looking for reassurance MABS! I know that the rsik assessments are thorough - so I will be happy to see ds go off!

But then, I am a very "relaxed" parent!