9yos at home vs 2 hours of childminder

[Anycrispsleft]

I just wanted to get a read on what people think of this. I'm from the UK, I live in Germany, and they tend to give the kids a lot more freedom at an early age than we do in the UK (and to be fair, they seem fine on it) and I just want to see what other UK people think of this setup.

My kids are 9 year old twins, one of them quite sensible, the other a bit forgetful but basically OK. They're in typical rural German short hours school plus after school club until 3.30pm Mon-Thu and 1.30pm Friday. I'm going back to work in a few weeks and I won't be back till about 5. DH will be WFH on a Friday so no worries for that day. I've asked the local council's education and childcare department about finding something to cover that 3.30 till 5pm time and they've basically come back and been like "from age 9 we would expect that they would be able to be left alone at home for 2 hours, is there any reason to believe your kids won't be able to cope with that?" And I guess in principle there is no reason, I just imagined the time for that would be more about age 12 or so, and in fact when they move schools next year (primary school ends at 10 here) it'll be to a school that offers afterschool club until 5pm, so obviously someone here still thinks the under 12s need childcare... I don't know, what do you think? I'll be about 15 mins away by bike, they really, really don't want to go to a childminder... might it be OK?

I'd pay someone to come to your home and be there when they come home; presuming it will be a woman, she can do them something to eat and a few jobs for you until you get home. She doesn't have to supervise their every move but just be present and help as needed. I suppose a sort of nanny/housekeeper but no 'big' jobs.

I'd imagine the clubs at the senior school are to allow time for extra curricular activities rather than for child care. It would be unusual for most dc in Germany to have childcare for short times over age 10. My neighbours are German and are definitely much more relaxed than most here and go out for meals etc in the early evening leaving their primary age dc home.

@Plumtree391

I'd pay someone to come to your home and be there when they come home; presuming it will be a woman, she can do them something to eat and a few jobs for you until you get home. She doesn't have to supervise their every move but just be present and help as needed. I suppose a sort of nanny/housekeeper but no 'big' jobs.

Hopefully I've misread that but are you saying if it's a man he can just sit there and play on his phone?

I'd love a housekeeper type setup but I'll struggle to get someone here - there's a real labour shortage generally in this part of the world, and there's maximum pricing on childcare so not many people choose to go into it. It's a daft situation.

I think what’s most important here is how comfortable your children would be with it?

The fact that there’s 2 of them is either comforting (safety in numbers) or potential for trouble - you know what sort of kids they are!

Do you have friendly neighbours around in case they needed an adult immediately? 15 mins away is not far really anyway.

The NDNs (older, and at home most of the time) are lovely and would be very happy to help if there was an emergency so that would be fine. They have a few school friends up here whose mums are SAH as well, there's generally tons of people around. And I think they would be reasonably happy with it, or at least happier than getting a childminder. They play pretty well together... they have disagreements, but they usually resolve them between themselves TBH.

Two 9yos should be fine, plenty did it in the 80s when afterschool just wasn't a thing.

One thing you need to watch for is if you go down the childminder route they might feel they are being babied if friends have
Keys and go home alone.

I don't know. My eldest is 8 YO and I'm not sure is anywhere near ready to be left alone for a few hours.

We don't use after school care, I WFH so can be present when the kids get home. But I wouldn't be comfortable leaving them totally alone until nearer 10 or 11.

15 mins away is not far really anyway

It's hard to express how completely jammy I am to be in this position. I've gone back into my old industry in a really specialised job that you can do maybe in 2 or 3 places in the country, and jobs don't come up often. DH and I have had 2 hour commutes and even lived in different countries, so difficult it usually is to find two jobs at the same time in the same place. And now I've managed to score a job literally so close to my house that I can see my office from my front room. I mean, maybe once the job stress hits, I'll wish it wasn't quite that close...

I would go with the local standard. It's interesting isn't it, and shifts my views a bit.

But I would do some Eagle eyed childproofing and go through a few 'what would you do' scenarios with the children. I was never one to stop children opening doors and talking to strangers myself as I felt children are usually safer involved in a community. But you might feel differently.

^One thing you need to watch for is if you go down the childminder route they might feel they are being babied if friends have
Keys and go home alone.^

They're mostly put out that they will be expected to stay in the house and not go out to their friends' houses! God, I hope they don't all end up getting their own keys and then just going round each other's houses making trouble. Although it's barely more than an hour I'll be away.

I don't know. My eldest is 8 YO and I'm not sure is anywhere near ready to be left alone for a few hours

Mine'll be 9y 8m by the time we start this, so not far off 10. I wouldn't have trusted them at 8, and they wouldn't have wanted it, one of them anyway. During the first lockdown (last April) I went to the supermarket alone a few times, as I figured that the risk of them staying home alone was less than the additional risk of one of us getting seriously ill from covid. DD1 was as cool as a cucumber. DD2... 45 minutes was her limit before she started to freak out a wee bit. But she's happier now. And we even went out to the supermarket without them and as instructed they didn't answer the door, not even when the postman came, which was a nice test bc I did say don't open the door to anyone, and they obviously really listened.

I think it sounds absolutely fine, then. And congratulations on the job!

I’d go over some expectations with them - giving them a task to complete (empty dishwasher, light chores, complete homework, whatever) can be quite useful too as well as the general ‘don’t cook, don’t answer the door’ etc. And have a chat with the NDNs just to make sure they would keep an eye if anything needed an adult before you could get back. I assume they’ve got phones to contact you?

It’s interesting how quickly they change - my youngest DC was as you describe at 9, a bit panicky at the idea of being alone in the house for more than 30 mins. But 18 months later totally over that phase and very keen for independence.

Good luck at new job!

Thank you so much! I am SO happy about the job. I had to give up my job after DH got made redundant - he being the bigger earner and so on, we relocated here bc of his job and I've really felt like a fish out of water. I'd actually considered coming back to the UK, in fact I would say that when I started applying for jobs here it was more with a view to ruling it out, as I assumed that in my area (really competitive these days) the fact of my long career break would rule me out. And then I actually got the first job I applied to! To be fair, the job description was reeeeally close to my experience - I probably know most of the other people who would be up for this job, it's a really niche area - just good luck that I saw it when I did. But it's like, lottery-winning levels of luck. You know the best thing? My DH used to work there, but he moved jobs recently, and the kids were gutted that they can't go to the work's Christmas party. And now they can again! But with me this time I'm really, really happy about it... and in real life, I can't really bore the ears off tell anyone about it because most of my friends are also SAHMs who are mightily sick of the crap childcare situation here and all of that stuff. So thank you for the congrats!

Sounds fine to me. With the nice elderly neighbours on hand in case of emergencies, I would hardly give it a second thought.