How old before they can be left alone during holidays

[EllisT]

My son will be 13 soon and is keen not to have to be 'looked' after. He has a younger brother who I will be sending to holiday club, but the age limit for this is 12 and so big bro can't go!

Is it ok to leave a 13 on his own - he already lets himself in after school and I will leave him in the house on his own if I have to pop to the shops, it's just that this is usually for an hour or two? I work part-time so should be back by 3.30pm?

My DS is 13 and he had 2 days on his own at Feb half term. First day was fine as he met a friend at 12 and they spent the rest of the day together. The second day he didn't have any arrangements. He didn't want his Nan to come in but by the end of the day he was bored and in a bad mood.

I work in children's services and from a legal point there is no set age for leaving children on their own as it just depends on the child, they all mature differently.

This is such a headache isn't it? I don't like leaving my 17 and 14 year olds at home alone for a day, let alone weeks at a time. The 14 year old doesn't like being alone but it restricts his older siblings social life if I insist they stay home to keep an eye out. It sort of depends on the personality of the child really. Sorry, that's probably not much help!

There are two issues here.

13 is certainly old enough to be left at home safely - he is capable of getting himself lunch and not burning the house down and calling a parent in the event of an emergency.

However it would not be good for a 13yo to be left to their own devices in the same building for more than a week without some kind of activity plan. Depending on your local area this could involve getting out of the house every day. Or you could get him to set himself an achievable but difficult challenge to work on (eg making a model of something impressive from matchsticks).

Even then the long summer holidays would be too long to fill in these ways, and should include at least a week of something structured. There are some amazing holiday activities for older teens which are less "childcare" and more about opportunities to do brilliant stuff that you don't get to do in school (abseiling, archery, sailing, computer programming as just a few examples I've seen). These are sometimes residential and sometimes day-only.

I agree that a 13 year old shouldn't be going to a generic "holiday club" where the kids are free-playing without much structure - those are fine for primary kids but a senior school older child would find it very dull.