What age can you leave alone in the house

[darcymum]

My children are all very little ages 4.5, 3 and 20 months. The shop in my village is just over 1 minutes walk away, what age would you leave the eldest child alone in the house while I ran to the shop?

and if you are taking the other two with you why not just take her with you?

A generation ago this would have been fine though.

There's no age limit...if you have responsibility for anyone under 16 years, you are responsible if they come to harm...that includes the example of say a 14 year old sister babysitting a younger sibling...you are responsible for both if something happens......so you really need to able to trust an older child! Anything younger would be way too risky but it depends on the child

so there is no minumum age - but if things go wrong you could be prosectuted, so as long as nothing goes wrong there is nothing wrong with leaving a little one.

Because she would like it and she would feel very grown up. We had much more freedom when we were children and would have been trusted much more.

In theory, yes.....just foolish to do so if they are very young because you could never be confident in their ability to stay safe

I left my five yr old to post a letter
was just as far as taking the bin out
no harm done

I wouldn't leave my 6 year old alone in the house just to make her feel grown up?????? She's not.

Darcymum, you would struggle to have a child aged 6 come home with other children at my DC's schools, the very earliest a child is allowed off school grounds without an adult is in Y3.

We got a letter today telling parents that all Y1 and Y2 must be accompanied by an adult onto school grounds in the morning (and specifically not dropped off outside by car) and the adult must stay until the doors open.

I let my ds stay home alone at times since he turned 10 but only when I'm popping out for less than an hour.

But what are the chances of anything happening to her?

When I look back, at 3, my sis was 6 and bro 9. We used to tear out of the house at 9am, back for lunch and then out again until 530pm! My mum could have sodded off anywhere! She didn't, but she knew we were safe. We were hardly ever in view and often my siblings just ran off and left me. No harm came to me.
Also I started walking to school on my own at 5/6ish. I don't think mum lost any sleep over it.
Although she's the one saying Oooh isn't DS sooo grown up now he walks on his own

I left my 9 year old home alone this afternoon while I dropped DP off at work, he had a belly ache and was off school. I found it pointless to get him dressed and drag him out with me for what was a 10 minutes journey.

I knew I'd only be gone 10 minutes and he is mature enough to ring for help if something serious happeneD.

Aaah the good old days!

Adding to that, we were all a healthy weight, well adapted socially and bright. In fact, when DS gets together with his mates now, the topic of conversation is nearly always TV...I don't remember even acknowledging the TV until secondary school?

Nice, your mum sounds lovely
Are you suggesting something?

I'd never leave a 4.5 yr old in the house alone.

That comes under the category of "taking unnecessary risks" in my book.