leaving an 8 year old home alone............

[extremepicnics]

what are your thoughts on this. 8 year old single child happy to be left for a short time whilst mum goes to excercise classes early evening, 6-730. knows about answering the door and what to do if there is a fire,,,,,,

I would pull out, because I couldn't relax or enjoy the run knowing that the child was left alone. Just go with your instincts, and put this woman off. You just don't want to be a party to this.

Is this serious?? I have an 8 year old son who i wouldnt dream of leaving home alone for that amount of time. And my son is very mature but how could you even think this is appropraite behaviour. There are just some sacrifices that need to be made when we chose to have these children. I do wii at home in evenings, or go swim on saturdays while my son can play in the pool i get to used the gym. Hes not going to be 8 forever. If you are really that desperate for a gym class then get a sitter, i know it can be expensive but your son's life is priceless.

ps i make no apologies for coming across like this- and IT IS ILLEGAL!

"My mum was leaving my little 11 yo old sister along for an hour or so after school untill she got back from work.
Social services set up a child protection thing saying she absolutely cannot be left alone, she's a child, etc"

That's weird, for an 11yo. Our social worker specifically asked dd why she was still going to a childminders aged 12; they thought it was a worrying sign of overprotectiveness on my part (actually dd just liked the socialising). Being alone after school from age 11 is definitely the norm around here.

But agree that I wouldn't leave an 8yo for a regular evening activity of that length.

There's a helpful leaflet available from the NSPCC website re leaving children unattended at home which may help with decision making, do have a look, it lays out the the legal context.

There's a helpful leaflet available from the NSPCC website re leaving children unattended at home which may help with decision making, do have a look, it lays out the the legal context.

It isn't illegal in UK.

But I wouldn't do it with mine - the longest I left them at 8 was the 10 minutes it took me to pop to the corner shop (and then only when they were well occupied with something and unlikely to budge from the sofa).

I've left the older ones for up to an hour when 10+, and might stretch to 1.5hours as a one-off (not needed to yet, though - over an hour seems more suitable for secondary aged children, not primary ones).