Would you leave your 9 year old in the house alone?

[bigTillyMint]

DD would like me to leave her in the house for 15-20mins while I pick her brother up from a club. She is incredibly sensible and trustworthy, but I still don't want to leave her alone.

WHat would you do?

No I wouldnt. If a fire broke out or somebody broke in (I know its unlikely but quite possible) it would be hard enough for an adult to act sensibly - let alone a 9 year old. What if you got run over, or couldnt get home for some reason. I just think its too young - and I actually dont know anybody who does it and a lot of my friends and my two sisters have children around that age and marginally older. But then that is just me and I am probably in the minority nationally (if not locally).

If a fire broke out, an 8 year old needs to be told what to do - ie leave the house, go to a neighbouring house and call the fire brigade. Do not believe anybody would break in as they never have, but same advice, leave the house, go to a neighbour, call the police.When DS is alone, i tell him to have his phone on and near him, so that I can call him if i need to, or vice versa.

No question. If you don't want to leave her alone, then don't.

would I leave MY 9 year old for 10 minutes - HELL NO!! I wouldn't leave him alone while I took the bins out!

Would I leave a 9 yr old for 10 minutes if they weren't my 9yr old (iyswim!) - dunno, er maybe - but probably not - I'm a worrywort! I'd be too worried about fire, or if something happened to me nobody getting back to them and them being alone and scared for hours...

By the time I was halfway down the path I'd be worrying what would happen to him if I was abducted by aliens, while my husband was incapacitated in a freak monster-munch incident, leaving him home alone while the handles broke on all doors and windows and the carpet spontaneously combusted...

And the scary thing is, I'm not really exaggerating by much

(I'm a freak )

Just interested- those of you who feel you could on no account do this because of the risk of fire etc, at what age do you think you would do it?

Sooner or later presumably the age comes when they have to get used to responsibility, because letting them get to home-leaving age without ever having taken responsibility for even half an hour would seem quite a dangerous thing.

So what age do you think that would be?

That's what I'm wondering too - if not now, then when?

She's in Year 5 - another year and a half and she'll have to get herself to and from school on buses, etc....

I think early teens I will start to leave them alone. Dont get me wrong - I leave my little ones in the house with the front door locked while I garden (checking on them regularly and keeping back door open so I can hear them). I send my 7 year old to the post box while I watch (down the road) and am gradually increasing responsibility. At 9 I would allow them to walk down the road to a friends a few doors down or the like (but would make a quick phone call to check they got there!). But they will have to be early teens before I leave them alone for any period like 20 minutes. I still remember being left as a young teen when my mother went to the local shop and somebody broke in. I was with my 4 siblings (two older) and we were petrified. Maybe I am too protective but Im happy with my plan even if others dont agree with it.

As I've said on another thread - of course we worry, and our imaginations run wild. But that's our problem, and we must do our best not to let our own irrational feelings influence the way we bring up our children. They have a right to independence,and to be trusted and to grow up unhampered by our fears or alien abduction or falling down the stairs on the way back from the loo.

i would leave them for that amount of time yes.

ds1 is 10 on thursday, and he has walked to the local shops on his own (round trip of 20 mins), and would be able to walk to school on his own, except i have to take ds2 to the same place

dd1 is 12 at xmas, and is capable of walking to and from secondary school (15 mins each way), she has a mobile phone and her own set of keys to the house in case o am late back or stuck in traffic (tho in reality atm she is being dropped because of the nasty weather, and i am out doing drop offs for the others so may as well)

when she was at the same school as ds1, they often walked to or from school in the better weather earlier this year

they are both sensible kids

i guess if they werent i wouldnt feel the same

i wouldnt leave ds2 on his own at 9 because he cant walk, so would worry he couldnt get out if there was an emergency

I don't think there is a particular age. It totally depends on the child and how sensible they are. While I will leave my DD-9 on her own at this point, I didn't feel comfortable leaving DS1 home alone until he was 11 and in secondary school and would NEVER feel safe leaving DS2, now almost 12, home alone, even to this day. It is looking like DD2, now 6, will follow in her sister's sensible footsteps and probably be able to be left alone at about nine.

glad im not the only paranoid one !

Illegal.

Its not illegal.

This comes up all the time on Mn. It is not illegal. There is no set age at which you can leave a child. But if they come to harm, you can be prosecuted for putting them at risk. But as a parent you have to be the judge of what constitutes risk.

Well, it should be!

nope, it's not. If anything happens you would probably be prosecuted (negligence, abandonment, whatever they thought appropriate) but I don't think there is an age set down in law.

Maybe there ought to be - would stop all this should i/shouldn't i, would it not?

bella - why should it be? Children are all different. Legalising/Criminalising something means that all children are judged by the same yardstick, whereas some children who are eminently sensible at age 9-10 can't be left, whereas very unresponsible children of age 13-14 will be left because 'it's legal'. I think leaving it up to parents' discretion is far more useful.

My DD1 is 10 next week. I leave her alone for about 20 minutes whilst I get her sister from nursery. She is incredibly sensible and trustworthy - she knows not to answer the door, the answerphone is on, she knows how to get help in an emergency, I don't lock her in (but you can't open our front door from outside without the key so I know no-one can get in to her.)

I always tell her how long I will be, and if I'm not back within xx minutes then do such and such.

Usually when I leave her she is in front of the TV or computer, and by the time I get back she has hardly blinked, let alone moved

There comes a point when you have to trust them alone, but when that point is will totally depend on your particular child. DD2 will never be able to be left alone for example.

Just out of interest - and I am truly not judging but working out if I am too protective - if a newspaper story was discussed on here tommorrow like: '9 year old dead in house fire - a nine year old girl unfortunately died when she couldnt escape from the house while her mum was on a school run and an electrical fire started in the kitchen. The phone lines went dead (as they are likely to do in a house fire) and the girl was unable to unlock the door in the smoke and confusion and was dead when found by firefighters'. What would be the reaction on mumsnet - one of judgement at her being left, or one of well it could happen to me. Or is the risk of that happening so low that it is not worth considering. I just dont know. What I do know is that a firefighter friend of mine says that even adults often get confused in house fires and it is essential to have a well trodden plan of how you escape so you dont have to make any decisions or think at all when it happens. Is a 9 year old capable of that?

Well, I guess my reaction would be that it could happen to me. That said, I believe my job as a parent is to raise the child so that they become a confident, secure and independent adult, and I feel that you accomplish this by increasing their independence in small stepping stones right from the beginning.

If you feel comfortable leaving your 9 year old then do it - you do know your own dc and you know if they would be ok about sitting in the house for 15 minutes.

These post are always split into three, those that think it is illegal to leave any person under 16 alone, thoses that are confident there dc are sensible enough to be left - but worry incase others think they may possible be irrisponsible and those that think that children should be wrapped up in cotton wool until they are at least 21 and it is down to the fact they would worry to much and cant cope with that.

The biggest danger to a child in junior school is their own parent driving a car with them in it, it has been done before on a thread the fact that you will not be able to name more than 8 children abducted by a stranger in the last 8 years - but the fact that 3000 children were hurt or killed in a car every year for the last 8 years, a total of 24000 children.

Do you think twice about walking somewhere due to the danger of a car? Yet most of us do think twice about leaving a sensible 9 year old for 15 minutes in a safe enviroment.

I was in a house fire when I was 14 and could not have got out if my mother had not been there with me.

Even if it's legal I still wouldn't do it.

So why do older people die in house fires then? If it is a matter of a certain age that you need to be to get out of the house - how old is it then?