AIBU to let my Year 5 daughter walk home alone?

[lemonbalm107]

DD will be going into year 5 in September and is sensible. Her school allows Y5 and Y6 to walk to/go home from school alone with parental permission.

what are everyone’s thoughts on this? We live a 4 minute walk from the school, with 2 residential road crossings (occasional cars, not super busy). Keen to encourage her independence but as she’s my first child I’m not sure overall.

It’s a win win really isn’t it? You save on breakfast and or after school club, kids get their own breakfast and after school snack and they walk and get independence. What’s not to like?

Working the playground. Jesus Christ.

If she can be trusted to cross the roads sensibly there is no other risk. My dds were doing this before year 5 and the school had no say in it but might have changed now

We live in a three tier school system area so the lower schools encourage children to leave school and walk home alone from the summer term onwards in preparation for moving to middle school. So we have 8 and 9 year olds walking independently, and then the majority do it when they start Year 5- some Year 5s travel a huge distance to and from school independently. My dd is July born so she’d only just turned 9 when she started walking to and from school (with friends) and the only part we (parents) supervised was them crossing a busy main road. I was so anxious the first few weeks she walked to and from school but children are a lot more sensible than we give them credit for and they loved and flourished with the independence they were given.

OP, a safe 4 minute walk is a great starting point to encourage her independence.

Yup. Triple win for us at that age as he decided he didn’t like school lunches so packed his own. Hes totally independent in the mornings now and I can get to work without the stress

So I spoke to DB and SIL about letting just turned 8 nephew to shops to buy something. Emphatic no and roads far too dangerous. They’re not! So that’s that then.

Perfect! Did he make his own packed lunches too?

Of course! I’m in Scotland so it’s free school lunches through p5. He decided he didn’t like them in p4 so I told him I would buy the food if he packed his own lunch. He lets me know what to get in for him.

You misunderstand.

You are raising a fully functional member of society. Well done! Free school lunches can be dire so I can’t say I blame him.