Leaving 16 yr old home alone

[familyissues12345]

Hello, at what age would you consider leaving a sensible child (no chance of a party) home alone over night?

Parents will be 30 mins away, older sibling 25 mins away. No other family nearby.

Does 16 sound reasonable? Or too early? When did you leave your children alone overnight for the first time?

Before anyone points out, he has an older sibling so what did we do with him - he was this age through Covid, so was 17.5 before we really had a time we needed to leave him/was able to travel

thanks!

Can you genuinely not see that there are a whole range of reasons why a 16 year old might not be able to be left overnight???

Yes you can! And the question is still relevant. How do you expect your 16 year old who will be an adult in 2 years to learn how to be responsible for home safety etc without giving him a chance?

5 is quite different to 16 though. As I'm sure you are aware.

My point is there is always a first time for DC to complete a task independently...they are all ready for it at different times. I have never left my 16 year old alone for an entire night....I don't think he's entirely ready...that doesn't mean he will never be.

Difficult, I'd wait until they're at least 34...

FFS

As long as you trust him not to have a party or invite some unruly friends round then I can't see any problem with this. I plan on leaving my kids overnight at that age but do remember my friends not respecting my parents' house when I was left at 16 and 17!

The point is you should be building up to both these skills over the years leading up to 16 - yes, even from age 5. My 5 year old knows how to tap in on the bus and how to make it stop to get off. We're working on bus numbers and routes. I want her to be able to get the bus independently by the time she goes to high school. Similarly I'll leave her downstairs for up to an hour at a time while I'm upstairs so she gets used to entertaining and being by herself, because by age 16 I would expect to be able to leave her alone overnight...That is how they learn.

My Dd left her 16 year old Ds overnight recently.
I would normally have moved into my Dd house while they were away but she told me they thought he was old enough now, I live quite close by, so Dd asked if I could check on him….
He was fine, I made the excuse of dropping something off at their house and he was absolutely fine, cooking himself some breakfast.

Would he feel comfortable? I was doing 3-4 day stretches overnight at 13. Now I wouldn’t exactly call my mum ‘mum of the year’ 😂 but I didn’t die or burn the house down. I wouldn’t do that with my own, but 16 seems fine if he’s comfortable. My friend was living independently at 16 in her own flat (again, not exactly parents of the year either 🤣), but was fine.

We left our 16 year-old last summer for 3 nights to go to a wedding abroad. He has grandparents living about half a mile away and it was the school/college summer break so I was confident he could manage, and he did. Grandparents kept an eye on him and cooked for him one evening but he would have been fine without that.

No, but they can live alone.

I think 16 is definitely old enough to be left alone overnight.

Yes, but what if you lived somewhere with a school bus? Those kids go on the bus from 3 or 4 alone.

I’ve had many nights where I’ve been home well after DS (just 16) has gone to bed ie had to do lock up, check everything off etc.
Prob from 13 or 14
Left him alone while I was at a conference overnight in Sep (age 15).
He came with me while I was abroad for work last month - not ready to be in a diff country while he’s home alone.
He’ll stay home for 3 nights when I travel in England for work in July.

I've had relatives who joined the military aged 16. So yes, 16 should be okay to be left alone.

That's not quite the same though. While they might have the maturity to leave home, they won't be entirely responsible for ensuring the house is secure, the hob has been turned off, what to do if water starts leaking through the ceiling, power outage, unwanted person knocking on the door.

I do think a 16 yo should be perfectly capable of the above, but a 16 yo who joins the military may not have all those skills.

Absolutely this.

I am reading this page gobsmacked that people think a 16 year old cannot cope for one night alone in a house. I am gobsmacked that a 16 year old may think they cannot cope.

No wonder the mental health of young people is so bad if they are brought in an environment where their incapability and incapacity to cope is so assumed and so ingrained.

We really need to reverse this attitude.

I will be forever grateful that the nursery I sent my children too had the attitude that ' children are capable of more than we think' and allowed children to work things out for themselves and engage in play that other nurseries considered ' 'too risky'. I learnt from them and my children have much better physical and risk assessing skills than their peers because of this.

There would have to be quite extreme or specific reasons why a 16 year could not be left alone for one night at that age.

In general, a 16 year old should absolutely be able to cope with this.

Absolutely fine in the circumstances.

Sounds fine to me. But remember to run through what he should do in the very unlikely event of an emergency.

I think 16 is fine. I was left for a few nights at that age. I had a couple of friends round one night - not a party, just two friends for pizza and films etc (even as a teenager the idea of a house party in my own house filled me with dread!)

This is crazy. Unless there are extenuating circumstances 16 year olds should be able to cope at home at least for one night. The fact that they may not be confident to do it is a reflection on the parent who better up their game double quick to enable the poor kid to have the confidence to set off to uni or similar in a couple of years. You could start by leaving the child overnight.

16 is absolutely fine. I don't understand why the OP thinks there is an issue.

My 16 year old (nearly 17 by then) will be home alone this summer overnight with her 12 year old brother. I trust her but will worry of course. I think your son will be fine. Drum it in to him about locking up and turning everything off etc.

I left home and the country at 17, and that was not the 60s!!