Would you leave a 7 year old alone in a flat while you go across the street to buy bread?

[marykat2004]

Hi, this is my first time posting in this topic. I am on my own because my DH is in hospital. I thought lone parents would be best to ask because you may have come across this situation. (He has been ill for so long I am basically on my own with DD).

This morning we needed fresh bread for DD's pack lunch. The shop is across a busy road, about 200m away.

I was going to ask "Would you leave a 7 year old alone in a flat while you go across the street to buy bread?" before setting off, but I think the answer would be no, that it is totally illegal to leave a child even for 5 minutes. So I bundled DD into her coat and took her with me to buy bread.

But what do all of you do? (Be more organised and buy bread the day before...?)

I'm always surprised to read how common it is to leave children alone at what I consider a young age. Ds was never left alone until he was about ten. We had neighbors and he had clear at instructions on what to do and what not to do.

I also let him start walking home from school about that age.

I live somewhere very rural now and we have no neighbours, so even at thirteen, I'm reluctant to leave him.

However close family members of mine have had an armed robbery and been to tied up at gunpoint, phone lines cut etc in their own home so I think this is never far from my mind.

I would say the exact opposite theredhen-it used to be very common, but not any more. However it depends on the DC and the location.
A rural one is tricky, on one hand there are no neighbours- but on the other I staying in a rural B&B a few months ago and they all go out for the day and don't even lock the doors!

I'm in a quandry over whether it's safe enough to leave my DD 8yr on Skype to her dad while I go for a run for half an hour. That way he could keep her on line for the whole time and call me if there's any trouble. Thoughts?

Depends on how far you run? Is it in circles or do you run 15 minutes one direction and back, in which case if you had to be home and something happened and you were 15 minutes away, how could you get back quickly?
And would it be day or night?