Acceptable age for a walking to school and other things . . .

[Notimefortossers]

Just asking out of interest really. My oldest DC is 7. I forever obsess about how old she will be before I'll let her walk to school with her mates or go down the park with them etc. And how old should they be when they get their own mobile phone? I just read a thread where it was obviously common place for an 11 year old to have their own mobile, which got me thinking about it all again. This is in only 4 years for us . . . fills me with dread! I was 8 when I started walking to school with my friends, but that was back in the day and I lived 5 minutes away through the houses - no roads to cross. What's the norm?

Start by letting them cross the last road on the journey to school on their own...then gradually peel further back so they gradually build confidence in their own ability and you grow in confidence watching them do it. It depends on what other things they do independently already, their maturity and their confidence, and thee road traffic situation. You have to syart somewhere. Hope my suggestion helps you to take those first few steps with them.

My yr 6 DS started meeting friends in the park over the summer. He would happily walk the 10 min to school but as I work there he doesn't need to! ??
However, he has just arranged to go trick or treating with friends for the first time and I am struggling internally with that. (Will let him go though)

My dd has been walking to school by herself since yr4 and is now at secondary school. I had to write a letter giving my permission when she was at primary (which was ridiculous) even though we only lived 5 mins walk away.
I've been raising children for 21 years and watched the nanny state get progressively worse. I now have a 3yo and really worry about what hoops we'll have to jump through with her..

I would let my 9&7 year olds walk to school now if it were the closest one to us (one road to cross which has a crossing patrol anyway). However they go to one in town which would be a brisk 40 min walk for me, probably an hour each way for them. At the moment I drive them and given the location of the intermediate schools I'll have to drive them there too. When they are in year 9 and at college they'll be cycling.

In Japan children walk to school unaccompanied from the age of 6, often having to catch trains or change trains to cross the city they live in. However this expectation is based on the society structure and trust in the community as a whole - which I don't think exists outside Japan.

My dd walks on her own she is 10 and in year 6. She has no roads to cross and school is around the corner. I never let my ds because I was picking up dd anyway. But my dd will only be 11 when going to high school and I feel I need to let go a little. She doesn't go anywhere else on her own.

This is only home though as she goes to breakfast club in a morning and I am going the same way.

Wow, today I let dd 9 catch the bus home alone for the first time . Last year she did it with ds11 and she has been missing it.

She also goes to the park alone (2 min walk) and into town (20 mins)with 10 year old friends.

Our Primary School allows Year 4 upwards to walk home by themselves but prefer Year 5 and above. We live within in site of the school, so DD1 used to walk to school in Year 1 with a Year 5 neighbour - I used to watch them from the window until they went in the gate but it meant I could stay with DD2 asleep in her cot.

DD1 is now 9 and walks home from school by herself & we send her down to shops in our village on her own - not to wander / hang out but on a mission to buy say milk. We have pavements & lots of pedestrianised areas so it's not really a big risk, though a lot of her older friends haven't yet been out on their own.

She makes her way back from a club at 7pm once a week but it's a less than five minute walk and she's the sensible one. The owners of the club weren't keen to start with but have got used to it now. Her scooter has lots of lights on it & her jacket has reflectors on it.

She has a dumb payg phone but she only takes it out when we go on a trip somewhere unfamiliar / busy so she can call us if she gets separated from us - we had it with us on our last trip to London for instance.

It depends on the area you live in, the business of the roads and how sensible your child is - DD2 is a lot more wilful & mad so I wouldn't have let her walk to school in Year 1 as she doesn't listen to me so I doubt she'd have listened to our neighbour's child either.

The biggest problem we have in the UK is that the more people who drive to school, the less people are on the look out for children on their own & the more traffic there is.

At our school Y4 are usually allowed to walk to and from school as long as the school have a permission letter from the parents; this has been temporarily suspended as they're currently sharing an exit with Y3 and the school won't risk potentially losing Y3 kids when Y4 leave unattended. I think much of it depends on your child and the journey they have to make too.
I currently let my Y2 DS run ahead if he wants but he has to wait to cross roads and I prefer him to stay in sight; he's loving the independence it gives him although talking to some of the other mums you'd think I was putting him in mortal danger from all the free roaming paedophiles we have round here
I do watch him carefully but if he doesn't start to get some independence he's going to really struggle when he needs to do stuff on his own.
I clearly remember not being allowed to walk to and from school by my over protective DM which meant when I actually needed to be independent I had massive anxiety issues. I still have a few issues surrounding travel anxieties even now a good 30 years down the line.

I would like to know the legal basis for a school not allowing children walk to and from school alone. We live very near, ds walked from Y3 with his sister, but no one questioned this or checked he actually went with his sister, they were just let out into the yard.

Yes I'd be interested in how a school can 'allow' or 'not allow ' something which is not in school time or really in school grounds too.

My dd and ds are yr6 and yr 3. I let them walk to school because it's less than a 2 minute walk. I hesitated at first (we only moved here a year ago) because it's down a road with no pavement, but it's a straight road through a little village with a 20 mph limit and any traffic at that time is parents dropping their kids at school, and they can't help but be aware of the dozens of kids walking along the road. I wouldn't let ds go on his own, but big sis is very sensible.

She'll be getting a phone for her 11th birthday in August, just before she starts secondary school, as she'll be getting the bus so I'll need to know if there's a problem.

If you read the school policies most will say that children from R-Y2 should be dismissed to an adult carer
Therefore Y3 and up should/could be able to walk to and from school alone

I don't think mine can do the trip until as least secondary age. But we live in a busy area or a busy city. Most adults grab partners/ their parents hands to cross the road half the time so they don't lose them.

Ugh, I was quite relaxed about this until yesterday. DD2 (nearly 8) was insisting on scooting to school with her elder sister. I said they could. I followed them in the car, checking they crossed every busy road safely.

Once they were on the straight 1/4 mile bit of pavement to school I drove & parked up & walked back with the dog to meet them. (I wasn't allowed to walk with them, due to DD1!) To find DD2 on the pavement with people helping her, major nosebleed, concussion, probably lost one of her adult front teeth. DD2 had braked too hard on her scooter & gone over the handles :( She is fine now, but I don't think I'll let her scoot "on her own" until she is 18!

My DD1 did brilliantly finding a suitable adult to help (wife of local police officer!) while I took 2 mins to get there.

Lesson learned. If they go to school on their own, it isn't on bloody scooters. Definitely walking.

In all the hassle I mislaid DD2's schoolbag. It was kindly returned last night by the local police (who had had it handed in) but me, DH & the girls got a very friendly reminder that kids on scooters go as fast as kids on bikes & WEAR A HELMET!! EVEN ON A SCOOTER!!

UK three-tier system here. In our small town, kids start walking to school in Y4 ready for starting middle school. So they'll be 8 or 9. For me it's all about road safety. My understanding is that kids can't judge the speed of moving vehicles before the age of 8 so I'm happy with how it works here.

Thankfully for me I've got 3 dc oldest is 8 he'll never need to walk to /from school just yet as I'll still have to go anyway with the younger 2. I think when he goes to high school he'll go to and from school by himself.

I would have let DD walk from year 3 if the school had had a lollipop person, as the second of the two roads she had to cross was so horrible. Sadly there wasn't, so she was walked to school up to year 5 - all the way by DH, just across the road by me (slacker). In year 6 there was a lollipop person, but we'd moved further away, so I used to drop her at her friend's house. After school she'd walk round the corner to meet me.

One of her classmates was stopped by the police on her way to school in year 6 - they thought she was too young to be walking by herself. She's tiny, but it's not as though she looks 5.

DD is now in year 7 and would beat me off with a stick if I attempted to walk her to school.

My 9 year old (year 5) started walking home by herself a couple of days a week this term. It's just under a mile, a few small roads to cross plus two larger ones with crossings. Large numbers of kids in her year have started walking on their own this year. A few walked/biked on their own last year but I personally wouldn't have let them if they were mine as I saw them crossing roads etc in unsafe ways.

She doesn't have a phone or a house key. If she is walking home then somebody is there waiting for her, so if she didn't turn up within half an hour of school finish time we would be out looking for her.

I think it does depend how sensible they are and how road-aware they are. If they have always been driven everywhere they are much less aware than if they bike or walk to school with you regularly. My daughter's always biked/walked about half the week so is used to crossing roads etc. As far as getting used to crossing roads is concerned, apart from just reminding her about things like not crossing by parked cars etc, I got her to tell me when it was safe to cross when we were walking together in order to gauge if she knew what she was doing. If anything she was overly cautious, which I took as a good sign.

Also the whole of year 4 and the end of year 3 she walked/biked of the last part of the journey in and our of school (not crossing a road, but going along a sort of driveway/pathway with garages on it). Now, her 7 year old sister has started at juniors they walk that bit together in the morning, and afternoon if I'm collecting them both.

I do think it is good to let them have some freedom, as long as you think they are sensible, and I do tell her if she abuses the trust put in her by doing anything stupid (eg not going straight to school/home) then she will lose that privilege and be accompanied everywhere again.

I suppose school can't actually say what parents and children can do outside of school but they can say children are not allowed to leave the school grounds unaccompanied without permission as they are in loco parentis during school time. Our infant school make it very clear you are supposed to bring children to the classroom, I'm sure they would not be impressed if children came on their own. And they are not allowed to leave without the relevant adult.

I have three, ages 7, 8 and 10 from this September they started walking to school without me. The school is only about one minute away though with no roads to cross. As for mobile phones, I think it's actually a very sensible thing for them to have. I will give mine a cheap 'pay and go' as soon as they start playing outside out of my sight.

Mine walk from y4 on their own. There is a road to cross but they do it at the pelican crossing.

DS (10) and DD (9) walk 20+ minutes through town centre to school. We started this six months ago and they have busy roads to contend with. It's a pre-agreed route they must take, so they are familiar with the crossings, traffic lights and so on. They don't have a phone between them, but I am actually considering it for safety.

I'm trying to encourage ds to check and tell me when he thinks it's safe to cross, but the last road near school is actually the scariest (T-junction and vans and cars reversing all over - it's mayhem!) Will try getting him to go along the road to opposite the entrance where the head teacher stands - there used to be a lollipop person there and on the nearby main road zebra crossing, but the council cut them two years ago. Once dd starts, we may go the slightly longer route where all the crossings are only one road not complex junctions of 4 minor roads with idiot drivers, so ds can practice that route - also there are lots of other people all along, whereas the short cut would have no-one else crossing at the same time mostly.

I do know two kids who got the bus for half an hour in YR and Y2, because London policy is they pay for the child's transport not the parents, and kids go on buses for free, so just chuck them on a bus. Mother had had to move and worked early morning shifts. Seemed to work OK as the driver and various regulars looked out for them. I doubt any local school would care how a child arrived, but they are good at only letting kids leave with adults on a named list and will ask for ID if the staff don't recognise you and the child isn't calling you Mummy etc. I once had a friend pick up dc1 from nursery and got called to say they were being very nice and gave him a cup of tea and dc1 was playing happily, but not being allowed to leave without a password - the text I sent with it then finally arrived and they could go! Nursery were apologetic but I told them that was exactly what they should be doing!

DD is Y4. I walk her up to the point where there are no more roads to cross and then she walks the rest of the way alone - it's only about 50m and I can see her all the way. She would love to walk alone but unfortunately her journey involves crossing a busy main road (red route so really fast and not easy even with the Pelican crossing) and also negotiating a couple of tricky junctions, including one where the road the school is on joins the main road and there is also a garage entrance and two exits so cars going in all directions. Her school says no children should walk alone until Y5 and I think I agree with this given the busy roads and difficult junctions.

Since moving house/school my year 4 son (aged 8) has started walking 25 minutes each way to and from school on his own or with friends. I went with him a couple of times before being banned (by him)! As he sometimes gets home before me by 10 minutes he has grandad's old phone. I had checked his road sense and use of crossings before he went. At the times he is walking their are tonnes of other kids plus parents from 3 primary schools and 1 secondary all milling around.