6 year old - ok to leave at home alone for 10 mins?

[thogated]

Name changed for this as worried about being flamed

We live extremely close to my kids school - basically within sight of it My 6 year old was off sick today. I had to pop out to pick up my other child.

I was going to take the 6 year old with me but he asked to stay at home because he was tired and still in his PJs..I thought about it and while I never have left him alone before, it really didn't seem like a big deal.

So I did. Told him not to open the front door - and bolted it so he couldn't (but he could open the back door in the very unlikely event of fire). He was lying in bed reading a book, no risk of him eating/choking.

The school is about 6 doors down from my house, by time time my other one had found his bag etc, it was max 10 mins, possibly less. My 6yo was absolutely fine.

I feel like this was a reasonable decision. What do others think?

I think what I take from this thread overall is that most people wouldn't do it but some people would. So I am in a minority but not totally mad.

A couple of people suggested things that I hadn't thought of like asking school for help
or Facetiming on the way which I will bear in mind if it comes up again.

This sort of thing doesn't come up for us often as we can usually both WFH to cover child illnesses and quite often both children are ill at the same time and so no school run is needed.

It has started me thinking about at what point I will be happy to do it more regularly and I think for me it's probably around 8-9. For under 10 mins type trips. I would be interested to know for those who said absolutely not, when they would start.

Children get left for short periods all the time, go to hang out the washing, water the greenhouse, pick vegetables, chatting to a neighbour over the fence. Working on a computer in another room or on the phone. You can't be with them all of the time 24/7. It sounds reasonable to me, it seems you could see the house the whole time, and were only out for 10 minutes.

So, the kids in your scenarios are all in safe, loving houses and have all had something dreadful happen to them whilst the very sober parent was approximately 100m away for 10 minutes?

Or was it perhaps a case that the children you've seen were perhaps, maybe left alone for longer periods on amore regular basis in houses that aren't safe and secure and there are other issues at play?

I've known people who happily lock their kids in their bedroom whilst they go out with their mates clubbing etc - and ask the neighbours to have the baby monitor. (I know they this, because they asked me once, and I said no - they complained that so and so always does it so why can't I? I called the police after I saw she went out anyway) - however that isn't the same as someone popping to the shop a 2 minute walk away to get milk whilst a child watches TV as a one-off.

Hmmm I don't know. You know you shouldn't of course as 6 is too young but it's so close by. I still wouldn't though.

I maybe would at 8 but not at 6 probably not at 7 either.

My daughter often asks for me to pick up youngest from nursery without her. She wants to stay home. I wld only be 10mins too but I've told her absolutely not.

I think it depends on the child and on where you live, but yes, I think that 8 or 9 is reasonable, for a child with average amounts of common sense and confidence.

I think 6 is just too young for this. However, I understand why you thought it was OK.

But I think the person who thinks it's OK to get in their car and drive a couple of miles away, leaving their 6-year-old home alone, is waaaaaaay, way beyond the realms of reasonable. I think that is proper neglect.

Is that a genuine question - how many dodgy people have knocked on my door in the last ten years?! I couldn't even begin to guess that. I can think of at least three or four so far this year.

Do you live in a very remote place?

And my daughter has smashed a glass/a jar on two separate occasions. Funnily enough, when I mentioned it as a funny story to my dad (now in his 70s), it brought back a long-lost memory for him of one of the first times he was ever left alone at home. He broke a glass but didn't know what to do with it, so (stupidly) put the pieces in the kitchen sink. His dad then got home and cut his hand quite badly on the broken glass. It was a really stupid thing to do, and he did it because he panicked. My dad is an intelligent person who had been walking to and from primary school on his own from about 5 years old. My daughter, who's also a sensible and intelligent girl, had tried to clear up the broken glass without telling me, but I found big pieces that she had missed.

My point is that actually it's not uncommon at all for these things to happen, and it's also very common for children to panic and react in a silly way if something unexpected does happen.

A child who is already too ill to get out of bed is quite likely to be sick and this could easily lead to panicking, choking, or at the very least massive distress. No 6-year-old should be alone while there's a realistic chance of them vomiting. Safety aside, it's just not fair on the child.

The adult patting themselves on the back here for the 'great life lessons' their 6-year-old learned by being left alone is just lucky that none of these things happened. It's not maturity, it's luck. And it's a gamble.

I've had zero dodgy people knock on my door in ten years...

Do you live in Fort Knox?

It's really area dependent. My parents live on a very quiet cul-de-sac in an affluent area. I don't think they have had anyone dodgy knock on their door in the 30 years they have lived there. One Jehovah's witness.

We are in a much more urban area, it's happened to us once in the last 3 years.

But I bolted the front door anyway so that he couldn't open it. Except for the 2-3 mins where I was briefly out of the sight line, I could see my front door anyway.

Yes, of course it is area-dependent, but I was answering the poster who said it was 'catastrophising' and incredibly unlikely to suggest that someone dodgy might knock on the door. It's a very regular occurrence here.

But aside from that, the other risks, like your son being sick while on his own and panicking/choking, are also very real. 6 is just too little to deal sensibly with unexpected events, especially when unwell. And 10/15 mins feels a lot longer to a 6-year-old than it does to an adult.

I think, though, that you've taken that on board from this thread, and that you will look for other solutions in future?

If something happened to you in another room or in the garden no one would know anything had happened at all. They wouldn't even know you were unconscious and unable to look after your child, does this mean you always need two adults in the house just in case one of you is incapacitated? There's being careful and being paranoid, not daring to leave a normal six year old alone in a safe place for 10 minutes, not even out of sight of the house is bordering on paranoid. I bet many parents are out in the garden for longer than that sometimes.

Risk assessment is really complex.

I have seen lots of threads where posters are fine with under 5s going downstairs in the morning, having breakfast and watching TV for multiple hours while they sleep upstairs. I honestly think that is much riskier.

Anyway, I think it was a reasonable call in these circumstances but I don't plan to do it again anytime soon - I think some of the alternative suggestions have been helpful

Your bias is just showing. An accident takes 30 seconds, ofc that can happen when someone takes a 2 minute walk to the shop.

Or two minutes elsewhere on the property

Could also happen whilst you're in the loft putting something away and the kid is in downstairs where you left then watching TV. What's your point?

I've seen kids hurt themselves right when the parent was next to them.... broken their legs,burned themselves, cut themselves etc....

DS has never seriously hurt himself, just split lip that needed gluing kind of thing, but he has never hurt himself when alone. It has always been when I was there. I think many kids are more responsible when they know they are responsible for themselves, when adults are around they hand over that responsibility.

Yep and also v common in the Far East. I'd have done it for 10 min or so so find the majority of answers strange

Exactly what you just said. Read what I’m replying to before you ask me questions and you’d save us both some time.

Do your children follow you around the house and garden at school age?

There's a reason why you didn't say to the teacher X is home alone must dash right?

Are you bizarrely comparing living them in the home for 10 minutes whilst I walk up the street to being in the next room?

I havent read the full thread, but I think it's fine. I've got a very sensible just turned 7 year old and he would be fine for 10 minutes. He wouldn't want me to leave him though so I wouldn't and I've never needed to. You know your own child, you've clearly thought it through, and you know he would be fine. People go bananas on Mumsnet about this kind of thing, but actually the risk of something happening to your son in that 10 minutes is vanishingly small, miniscule, far less risky than many other things that we do as adults every day with our kids.
I agree that it's less risky than the parents who stay in bed while their young kids get up and play/get breakfast out of sight often for quite a long time.

I didn't say next room, you could hear things easily from the next room. Parents often go elsewhere on their property for 10 minutes which isn't dramatically different to six doors in the street for 10 minutes. Children can theoretically hurt themselves in a 10 minute absence regardless of who owns the property the parent is on.

If a parent was in the loft, mowing the lawn, seeing to animals or a vegetable garden on their property, a child could hurt themselves the same as if the parent was on a neighbouring property.