Would you allow an 11yo to pick up 8yo from school?

[cadburyegg]

My 11yo starts secondary in September and is excited about the prospect of being able to pick up his 8yo brother (who will be in y4) from school once a week when he would normally go to after school club.

I had agreed to this in theory but I am suddenly unsure. My 11yo is responsible but 8yo is quite young for his age and can be silly.

Primary school is about 20 min walk from our house / 10 minute cycle ride. We live in a quiet village but drivers can drive too fast on the road to our estate.

thoughts? When did you allow siblings to pick up from school?

Exactly.

Because an 8 year old shouldn’t really be left at home alone for long! I wouldn’t leave an 11 year old home alone for more than an hour max let alone also in charge of an unreliable younger sibling. Older sibling should only be left in charge of the younger ones can be 100% relied upon to do what that older one says. It’s a massive responsibility. Would you allow anyone under the age of 16 to babysit??

Our primary allows Y6 to walk home with parental permission. But collect turns of younger children need to be 14 I think. However my train was delayed and they did allow my Y7 to collect his Y5 brother from after school club.
Big one was worried that little one would play up.

If allowed I'd give it till the first half term as they grow up so much in terms of travelling to school sense in that time

Yes mine did it and it was very bonding for them. Still do it now in yr 8/yr5.

I do agree that it's not fair on any child at any age to put them in a situation where their sibling might wind them up. That's a real issue here. But it's part of a healthy gaining of independence to let an 8 year old be home alone.

If you can't leave your 11 year old home alone for longer than an hour, you probably need to consider working with them a bit more so that they can catch up with their peers.

And yes, of course I use babysitters under the age of 16 - I don't know anyone who wouldn't? Except if you have a child with extra needs, in which case the issue isn't the age of the babysitter.

DD babysat her little brother when she was 13, she did a great job. 7 year age gap though so he listens to her.

No. I would say 12 & 9 is ok. School allow them to walk home themselves from year 5 so that's my benchmark.

That makes no sense, either it should be the parents decision or not.

I think it's ridiculous that schools don't let 8 years olds out unaccompanied & the collecting person has to be over 18. Nuts.

My kids primary allowed the older kids to leave unaccompanied, or with a high school age sibling, if they had written permission from parents. I would be fine with it but if the 8 year old is a bit reckless, maybe not.

I am definitely of the opinion that an 11 year old and an 8 year old are perfectly capable of walking through a village home from school.

But I do not know of any primary schools that would allow an under 18 to collect.
The only way is to say that the 8 year old can walk home alone and they chose to wait for their sibling and walk together.

But again, most primaries only allow kids to walk home alone in year 5 or 6.

No. I think I'm pretty relaxed, but I think that giving an 11 year old responsibility for an 8 year old next to a road is unreasonable.

I think for most things there is a few years between being responsible for yourself, and responsible for someone else. When do you think your 8 year old will be old enough to walk home from school by themselves? Age 10 seems pretty standard here. But they aren't ready to be responsible for a younger child a year later. My children are only 18m apart, and I never let the older be responsible for the younger as they were too close. I always waited until the younger could be responsible for themselves.

Yes, my 11yo has picked up her 4yo brother from school a couple of times (with me at home waiting for them) - I checked it with the Head first and she was fine with it. It depends how sensible they are.

By exception yes, not as the normal thing each day.

Similar for our city based primary school. Under 16s aren't allowed to collect. During a family emergency I needed my then 15 YO to collect the younger sibling. I had to call the school first to have it authorised, my son had to collect sibling from the office rather than the normal handover spot and there had to be an email trail with my explaining the reason (not in detail, literally just saying there was an emergency) and the school responding that it was okay for that day, given the situation. I get it, there's a whole safeguarding protocol in place and they're just making sure they don't take any risks.

This.
The school won’t allow it.

I’m surprised at the amount of schools that won’t allow this. My Dd walks home from school with classmates, ie nobody picks them up. They’re 10, not 8 but do all these primaries apply the same rules to all ages?

In this scenario, no. Would I personally allow it if we were a 3 minute walk away in the village? Yes. Mine walked around the village together at that age. Not a 20 minute walk/10 minute cycle on busy roads though, no way.

Our primary doesn’t allow siblings under 16 to collect anyway.

Some do try and say they don’t allow children to leave alone or only allow in Y6 or the last term of Y6.

they don’t actually have the authority to blanket rule (and it’s actually stupid to do so - my twin daughters were ready to walk home alone at totally different ages!) but many parents don’t realise that.

that is not the same.

Older primary kids can be given permission to walk home alone. That is not the same as an older child taking responsibility for the younger one.

So in the OPs case, if the 8 year old is OK to walk home alone, then there is no problem with the 2 of them walking together.

Utter madness that a school wouldn't let say a 16 year old collect a younger sibling from school.

My 9 year old walks home by himself from primary school, let alone with an older sibling to look out for them.

8 is not old enough to leave home alone.
My 11 year old was just fine at that age but I wouldn’t have left her in charge of an 8 year old, it’s not fair. The consequences are potentially far too serious.

Yes, and we will be doing.

But, only because I'd actually trust the 8yo to walk home alone (has more road sense and a better sense of direction than DC1) but school won't allow it. They will allow a secondary age sibling to collect though.

But most 8 year olds are old enough.

I don't see how you can be so dogmatic about it. It varies by child, of course, and by situation. But it's just silly to make absolute statements when 8 is well within the normal range of ages when you do trust your child at home alone.

The old chestnut on threads like these is: would any official body be concerned by the idea of a child left alone? If someone rang social services to say a 16-year-old was home alone for an hour, they would probably be ticked off for timewasting. If someone rang to say that there was an unattended two-year-old, everyone would be horrified. But 8 is the sort of age where you're most likely to get 'erm, and?' because many 8 year olds would be absolutely fine.

Of course if there are complicating circumstances, that is different.

DS school allow then to walk home from Year 5 so I would say its ok from then. Otherwise someone over 16 has to collect. We recently had a reminder about it from school highlighting it is a safeguarding risk so is a blanket rule across the school.

I teach 8 year olds. I wouldn’t trust any of them alone for an extended period of time. The nspcc guidelines agree with me.
How long would you say it was ok for??
And I’m entitled to my opinion - 8 is too young to leave at home unsupervised.