How old to be allowed to walk to school on their own.

[Radley]

DD1 (7.11) is asking when she can start walking to school on her own.

She wouldn't have to cross a road until she got to school, I'm not happy with her doing this and, I won't even let her play on our street. Also, I'm not 100% sure she has got enough road sense at present.

What age is about right to walk on their own. I suppose I could let her walk in front at a distance as I have to take dd2 (5) anyway.

Dumbledores, we'd better not hijack the thread (bad form and all that), but it's nice to know. I was one of the youngest in my year ... most of my friends had birthdays around your time. Happy days, in some respects. Perhaps we ought to start a new thread about a childhood in the 70s.

i dont EALLy see hwo the school can enact any power over HOW kdis come to shcool

Xenia if you don't mind me asking how do your twins know it's the right time to leave the house to go to school? Just curious as my 8-year old Ds is still so clueless about getting shoes, coat on etc. that I can't imagine him ever getting himself to school on time!

I was considering letting Dd1 start walking on her own in yr 6, she is in yr 4 now, but then as I will still be taking Dd2 and Ds there isn't much point as id be 2 steps behind her, so it will probably be when she starts secondary.

It depends very much on your area. We started dropping them off at the end of the road, and letting them walk in on their own from about age 6, and gradually built up from there.

Unfortunately there is a road to cross which is bad at 8.40 so we have to see them across that still (nearly 8 and 10), but they have been walking home occasionally alone (together iyswim) for the past year or so.

We've always walked loads and loads though since they were tiny, so they do have very good road sense.

ts, good question. I wouldn't do it if it weren't for one very very sensible twin. Every morning even when I'm here at exactly 8am he goes upstairs and gets his school uniform and his twins and brings it down and nags him to put it on usually calling me in to make him so we aren't late. He has to wear his watch all the time. His twin would probably never get to school at all if left to his own devices.In fact they say they're slightly earlier on the rare days I don't take them which is good. Sometimes there is also a sleeping student sibling of theirs upstairs and the original plan was their 18 year old brother would wake up 4 hours before his normal time to walk them up there but that seemed a bit pointless to wake him up to walk the 3 minutes. If they're in the house alone (and all this is very rare by the way, just when I'm out early for work) my main worry has been will they remember to shut the front door.

True on individual child thing. I'm amazed my 18 year old manages to get to university lectures alone without prompting.

My partner did a driving awareness course a few months back in order to regain 4 points on his driving licence and one of the things he learnt was that children are generally not safe to cross roads until they are 10.

I read somewhere recently that the UK has one of the highest rates of child pedestrian road deaths in Europe, even though it has one of the lowest rates of death by car accident. This was attributed to the lack of training of children in schools in road safety and hence a general lack of awareness of those issues.

cat64 - according to the driving school, children's perception of speed is not mature until they are about 10 - obviously this varies according to the individual child - and this was not known until quite recently. Plus, of course, there are far more cars on the road than 20 or 30 years ago so the statistical risk of an accident is greater than in our childhood, making parents warier of letting children cross on their own, hence less practice.