7 year old left alone in house and allowed to cook supper

[FrannyandZooey]

I have been meaning to post something about this for a while but another thread this morning reminded me of it. In the Milly Molly Mandy stories (written in the 20s and 30s), MMM has an idyllic childhood, enjoying things such as fishing for tiddlers, raising an orphaned hedgehog, watching the blacksmith in the forge, etc etc. She seems to me to be between about 5 and 8 years old, although I would be interested in people's opinions of this.

Obviously a lot of the things she does were once safer, or regarded as a lot safer. I imagine children could wander about freely because there was less traffic, also I think the community as a whole would regard children's safety as a joint responsibility so if you got into difficulty a friendly adult would help you out. We have more awareness of 'stranger danger' these days although I don't know whether there is in fact more danger around. Probably.

However some of the things she is allowed to do would just be totally taboo today. She stays in by herself with Little-Friend-Susan one evening and they fry up onions and all sorts of things (although they are notably not allowed to use the bread knife, which has made a great impression on ds :))

I also find it interesting that although she is allowed more or less to get on with her life without much adult interference, she does is only given her own bedroom at this age and previously slept in her parents' room.

I am just rambling now but I wondered what other people thought about this, and whether there is any way to give our own children more of a Milly Molly Mandy type of childhood?

Thanks Zippitppitoes - had tried a while back on Amazon but drew a blank. Getting credit card out now - too many books from this thread!

Greensleeves, I'm glad somebody knows Emil of Lonneberga!
And yes, Mrs. Pepperpot is great - another Scandinavian!

Interesting, I find most modern children's books boring and crude, I much prefer old-fashioned famous five style books, thank goodness for Amazon!

Dd (5) chops and fries onion, cracks open an egg and fries it, makes little pastries and things, can bake a basic sponge or say muffins but I'm always in the room with her, monitoring and there to intervene if something goes wrong. Can't imagine her sucessfully cooking anything on her own.

Dd NEVER goes anywhere outdoors on her own. I just wouldn't feel safe, knowing that she is playing on the street or going to a shop or to the playground or round to visit a friend. I'd worry about the traffic but I'd worry more about her going off with some person and never being seen again.

Wish she had more freedom but I'm not prepared to risk it where I live.

Not all modern childrens books are bad - there are some real gems. A lot of tosh though - rather too many in the everybody-loves-everybody-and-the-whole-
world-is-safe-and-fluffy vein. Not that I advocate horror stories or anything, but there has to be a bit of action!

My dh has friends in Israel and during a recent discussion I was shocked to hear what their dd did ( then aged nearly 8). She waslk home from School by herself ( not wiht friends) - a 10 min walk across 2 bvusy roads which she negotiates fine ( according to mum and dad) and warms up her dinner left for her by mum ( after letting herself in with the key - my dd still can't work out how to use the key at age 9!) - she warms it up using saucepan on stove - no microwave. She then does homeowrk and cleans a different room each day - one day its kitchen and one day bathroom etc and finally wamrs up mum and dad's food ready for their return from work at 6.00pm - she has been in house alone since 2.00pm.

I could hardly believe that but then I am a bit of a paranoid control freka nd can't imagine letting my kids warm up their food or walk by themselves anywhere.

EmmyLou, we are big Capt. Najork fans. Have the sequel, too :o

I was left to get on with things from about 7 or 8yrs. I came home from school - 15 min village walk with my younger sister. We'd let ourselves in, have a snack, watch tv. Once I couldn't see across the road to cross safely as there was a blizzard. My mother just laughed at me for being so silly - didn't bother to come to collect me from the school. I'm a much different parent!

Sequel Franny???? Was Bundlejoycosysweet not all she was cracked up to be? Please tell!

Russel Hoban's Frances books are good too - more girly but popular with my dd1 as they shared the name.

'A Near Thing for Capt. Najork', Emmy Lou. Tom and Capt Najork meet again and all sorts of desperately exciting things which I can't quite remember at this time of night happen.

They are both out of print, now, as are many of the books on this thread. In fact that seems to be a definite theme: enjoyed by Mumsnetters, generally thought to be good, fun, enjoyable reads, destined to get children excited about boks = out of print

:(

Thanks Franny - will scour websites for 2nd hand.

lisalisa well after reading about that little girl in Israel, I'm busy thinking which household chores I can fob off onto dd! Unfortunately, I don't think I can really let a 5 year old do the ironing though.

No, but seriously she sounds very independent. I'm impressed that she can do so much on her own and her parents are relaxed about it. I do leave dd on her own at home for short periods (1/2 hour or so) if I want to pop out to the shops. In fact, I think I would be more comfortable having her alone at home, cooking for herself and so on than out and about on the street.

I was talking abut this last night with the mother of ds' schoolfriend - who is becoming a friend (we are both on the school board).

We are both determined to give our ds' the freedom that we used to enjoy - and both feel strongly that the perception of stranger danger is exaggerated well beyound the real level of risk. The danger of traffic is higher and we have both been working hard to ensure that our sons are developing road sense.

She allows her ds to play outside her door (front door tenement flat, so therefore basically on the pavement) and will also let him go to the post box on his own. He's 6.
I've started allowing my ds (5.5) to cross the road outside our house on his own to go to visit another of his friends in the house opposite. He knows it is privilege and watches and listens all the way. I recognise that he may not yet be able to judge speed (but unless he tries, how is he ever?) - but at the moment, his default position is that if there is a car anywhere on the street, he waits until it has passed.

I intend to start letting him walk to school (about 10 minutes walk away) if not next year (primary 2) then definitely the year after.

The sad thing is that under current societal "rules", in the afternoons, even when he is in Primary 7, I couldn't send him to the after school club and tell him to leave there at 5.30 and come home - he has to be picked up by someone. So dh (or I) will have to continue to make a special trip to collect him, even when he is perfectly capable of walking home himself.

As a result of this thread, I am going to start teaching ds to use a knife - he can start helping me properly to prepare the dinner!

Agree with Prettybird. Other than increased traffic, I also think that we have frightened ourselves into a corner about what "could or might" happen to our children if they are unsupervised for a second.
My two also play outside the house on the pavement of a busy London suburb. They are allowed to go to the corner shop - which doesn't involve road crosssing.
I encourage them to help me prepare meals, set the table, tidy up etc & refuse to be treated like some kind of dogsbody.

Like someone else (think it was Fillyjonk), ds has had the run of the house from an early age, never had stair gates, as we taught him to use stairs safely from the start (and as a result, never fell down then), and has for a oong time been allowed to go out and play in the garden on his own. We don't have a gate on the driveway - but he know he is not allowed out of the driveway unless we have said so.

I think it is important in order to develop his independence and self sufficiency (plus I am a naturally lazy mother )

I've only come a cropper once, (about a year ago)when his friend and he were playing upstairs in his room and he came downstairs covered in paint. They had basically been doing a Jackson Pollok with all the bottles of poster poaint upstairs and there was paint everywhere. Friend go sent home in disgrace, ds was in the doghouse and dh and I had to sepnd ages scrubbing paint of the rug, the floor, the door, the soles of ds' trainers....... . They had been trying to put it on paper, but had got a bit carried away!

I have to add I was talking to my neighbour about this topic yesterday. When we moved here 3 years ago, one of the reasons was that there's a wood literally at the end of the road. I always envisaged having kids who would build dens and play hide and seek in the wood, as I did when I was a child. However my neighbour said that when she is walking her dog and sees children playing in the wood she tells them off, to get back to the road and not mess about where their parents can't see them! I felt incredibly sad about that, but I can see where she is coming from as apparently there have been a few lone men sitting on a bench in there (but they may have been harmless?). I am still undecided about whether in a few years to let my DD roam freely... she is nearly 3 so I have a while before she makes me tea and toast in bed, unfortunately :)

OK we have received and read some of the Joe and Timothy book. Same thing. Joe and Timothy are not at school yet, but their mums take them ot the park and sit at opposite ends while J & T go off to the playground by themselves. It is not in view either, as they have to look at the clock to see what time to go back to their mums.

Ds is desperate to do things like this and go off by himself. So why can't I let him? This book is not about a 1930s village, it's about 1970s city life. What went wrong in the last 30 years that we can't let our children out of sight for a minute? :(

Do you think it's because women are more likely to work now? And there are so many "leisure" activities marketed at kids? And adults?

I don't know, zippi, I tend to blame the media but I think you may have a point there.

And i know when i was young there were strange people about, flashers, people asking you to get in cars with them etc..and lots of tramps, but it didn't really stop people doing stuff.

And there were park keepers of course

I think it s a combination of media and societal "expectations" (which came first, I wonder?)

The mendia has increased our awareness of what might happen, while not putting it in the context of the actual risk, and then we as a soceity have extrapoloated and built upon those fears.

So for example, a man is now afraid to go to the aid of crying or lost child becasue people (or even just the child) might think he is a paedophile.

Parents who want to give thier children freedon - to walk to school, to the shops, to the woods are scared to do so becasue of what other people think if something were to happen - and even if something isn't happening (as in cholocateleaf's neighbour's case).

I for one am detemined not to be coerced by public perecption in to not giving my ds the freedom that I enjoyed as a child in the 60s and which I think will help him grow up into an independent, self confident and creative young man.

Surely with all the surveilance equipment we have today, we should be feeling safer? I think programmes like Crimewatch don't help. Blurring the line between drama and reality distorts our perceptions of what the real dangers are.

But I don't know how we can not be swayed by public perception, prettybird. If I did decide to let my 3 or 4 year old go off to the playground by himself, someone would phone social services, and I think he would be taken into care if I persisted. I know my friend's son was put on the At Risk register because she let him wander around the University campus where she lived when he was about this age.

I think cameras everywhere makes it worse..it means real people bother less and there are always places where there aren't cameras and they therefore become no go zones

This is VERY interesting.

We have been listening to the Famous Five CDs from the Telegraph.

The children are 10,11 and 12.

Their parents bugger off on holiday for their summer holiday, dump them on their Aunt and Uncle, then send them off to boarding school, then at Christmas the parents are in quarantine for Scarlet Fever - they can't have seen them for a YEAR!

The children carry matches and knives, and most days go off sailing, including into storms. They get kidnapped and a man with a gun threatens to shoot their dog.

AND they wear their school uniforms every day for the whole term, including after school. They get all excited in the holidays because they are allowed to remove their school uniforms.

It's a MINEFIELD of ethical concerns for me.