7 year old playing out?

[PaigeRX]

Hello
Do you let your children play out and how old are they? My daughter is 7
I don’t feel comfortable at all letting my 7 year old daughter play out by herself with her friends, without me being present. We don’t live in a quiet area, I don’t trust other people and in all honesty I don’t fully trust her yet. Her friends are always out, a group of them and always ask her to play out, but I’ve said no. I do feel bad and she gets upset, but her safety is more important to me.
Yesterday, I compromised with her - I said I will park on the street and stay in my car to watch her. I was still on edge but I had full view of her. Does anyone else do this?
One child kept running across the road without looking I had to go over and tell them to be careful of the cars! I felt responsible for the whole lot.

My 6yo plays out in our street but we live in a very quiet cul de sac in a quiet town. My 10yo walks to her friends houses in the estate opposite ours, they then roam around either in the estate or at the park. There are no main roads to cross.

Unless a quiet culdesac 7 is really way too young.

I do, BUT we live in an area of 3 walks with no traffic, so there are no cars, crossing roads etc involved. They are also very close together, so I can hear her (and very often see her!) from our kitchen! I wouldn’t let her play out if she was anywhere near cars.

My oldest is going to be 10 this month and we’re only just starting to consider this, but we live on a road where cars drive far too fast as it leads up to a main road. My youngest is 7 and she’s definitely not sensible enough to play out by the road unsupervised.

I appreciate what you are saying, however I didn’t mean to come across as I was moaning - my instincts just kicked in and it felt wrong not to mention anything when a car could of been coming and he didn’t look. You are right, I shouldn’t be supervising children that I don’t even know but that wasn’t my plan - I was just sticking around for my daughter.
This is new to me, I only have one daughter so the trust is important to me and as she’s never played out I can’t say I do trust her yet. It is round the corner, out of sight, where I let her play.

Yeah that sounds reasonable

Yes that’s similar to where I am so that’s why I thought to myself would it be appropriate to compromise and park on the street so I can be nearby.. it seems to be the norm for children of that age to play out (a few are older)
This is all new to me (I only have one child) it’s hard to know what the right thing to do is!

Yeah I would be more than happy to let her play out if this was the case, more safe

Thank you
That is how I see it, I may be an anxious person but at the same time I am working on it - and like you say, when you aren’t around, if something god forbid did happen it is too late. This is all new to me

I’m really sorry to hear this :( that’s awful!

I have a 10 year old and I wouldn’t let her out go out on her own..
I think there’s a difference between playing in sight of a parent and going off somewhere where you cannot see them.
we live in a village, very quiet but it’s all very open, fields etc and not loads of houses around so I wouldn’t let my 10 yo go off on her own yet. If anything happened I would completely blame myself

There’s a park near where I live and kids are there by themselves from age 6. However my 6 year old won’t be going there by himself. I guess it depends on the child but I think this is way too young. It’s very quiet but still involves crossing the road. People can say they live in a safe area but how do they know that there isn’t a dangerous person living near by? YANBU.

It’s hard to let them grow up. You do need to trust her for it to work, mine know if there’s a sniff of trouble from either they’re both in. May be take some smaller steps towards being safe and trust, give her 10 minutes before tea. If you don’t like the road, make sure she can be safe on a road or knows how to get help, knows how to get home or come away if she doesn’t like it that’s probably the hardest thing. In fairness, we do live in a quiet area, and I can usually hear them all through the window or they’re in and out of my garden.

I live in Scotland. My seven year old can go everywhere in the village, the only rule (v strict one) is not to go in the sea at all without an adult. They have woods, a park, single track roads to cycle on, the beach.

My kids could play out in the estate from around 7 but no crossing roads. We are on a culdesac and there’s a green in the middle of the houses. We know loads of our neighbours and there’s a handful of kids who run around into and out of each other’s gardens. It’s the reason we got our son a smartwatch - so we could find him for mealtimes. It’s lovely. I wouldn’t let them go to a park with friends until 10 or so though. My daughter is 13 now so can go wherever really (during the day, I’m not excited about wandering around in the dark) and my son walks himself the mile and back to school and can walk to friends but can’t just wander around.