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?

"I know of many children, myself includedm who didn;t play on the street until after first school (so would be 7/8y at least)."

I think that sort of age is about right to play outside though and hope I have the courage to let mine out at about that age.

I allow my just 8y to play out on her scooter on our culdesac - but only with friends, not alone. I would not leave her home alone in the house though. Yet she is very sensible, pretty mature, etc. I just see the thing of me going out of the house and leaving her as being very different to her being out front of the house where I could easily see where she was or at least hear her and her friends.

I can't really see any benefit to a 4 or 5 year old being given this level of freedom TBH. I can see why a parent may want to do it for their own benefit, but not for the child's benefit. A 5y does not, IMO, need to feel grown up - quite simply because they are not grown up.

I can see my house from the shop though.

Still not sure I could do it. For me it would just not sit comfortably.

I still think the reason for leaving a young child at this age is for the parent's benefit, not for the child's benefit. It makes the trip to the shops quickler and easier for the parents. The idea of a 5y needing to feel grown up doesn't figure for me, sorry.

Children are on a journey to independence. It starts when they are babies and toddlers and have their first separations from us. It continues until their late teens.

Every child's situation and environment is different so there is no right or wrong age.

What I can say, having done some research on this, is that undoubtedly leaving a 4.5 year old alone is not socially acceptable these days and in the unlikely event something did happen to her you would be held responsible OP and could be charged with neglect.

It's a tricky one - I have an incredibly sensible ds who is nearly 5. I think he's probably more sensible than I am (so there to whoever said girls are more sensible than boys - please stop generalising!)

I would not leave him alone yet as I'd worry something would happen to me while out e.g. getting mugged or hit by a car. Very unlikely but then what would he do. I also think the courier type scenario could freak him out and damage his confidence (although I hope he will be robust enough by 12 to cope).

My gut feel is for him is that I could nip out when he is about 7. But every child is different, every road is different, every situation is different.

Since you're going to be gone what, max five minutes? I would say probably age 5 if they can be trusted to be sensible and not go wild the the freedom, heh.

Also must ensure that they know what to do if you are not back within that time - i.e. go next door to the neighbour, phone someone else, etc. Also basic ground rules like don't answer the door or the phone, no deciding to make a cup of tea etc!

But five minutes is way shorter than the amount of time a lot of kids 3+ will be left out of sight/hearing within the same house - the only real worry is what happens if you don't get back, but then that's the same with what happens if you're at home with your kids and you pass out or something.

Just read your post inthesticks - see, that strikes me as weird. I was left alone on my own in the house for an hour every morning and two hours every afternoon from the age of ten, five days a week. A courier wanting me to sign for something would not have bothered me in the slightest. Same as for example when I came home to find the alarm going off - I was 99% sure it was just accidental as it did that occasionally but did what I knew the sensible thing was and went to ask the next door neighbour to check for me before I went in. I was confident in a lot of those situations because even if I hadn't done them myself before I'd seen what my parents did and worked off that.

I would definitely not have been hiding and sobbing, even if I really didn't like a situation or didn't know what to do. But that is NOT a dig at your DS - that's just to highlight the fact that all kids really are different. Being mature and sensible doesn't automatically mean being confident in unfamiliar situations, for example. And I think with stuff like this everyone has to make their own judgements based on what they know about their own DCs.

Well it wasn't the first time he'd been left alone. Over the last few months we'd done it several times.
There were two problems, the guy wouldn't allow DS to sign for the parcel and kept questioning him about where his parents were. 6pm is an odd time to deliver a parcel and it was dark.
DS was afraid to tell a lie to the man but couldn't get rid of him. (I saw him next day and he was an odd character. I suspect the courier thing was a franchise and he had probably come a long way to make the delivery so didn't want to leave and come back).
So actually not that weird. I made the point to illustrate that someone could come to the door of this 4 year old who wouldn't be old enough to phone her mother.

I leave at the DDs at home while I pop to the postbox which takes about 3 mins and from which I can see the house the whole time. They are now 7 and 3, but I have been doing this for a while - certainly more than a year.

Bramshott, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks they need to be 14 before you can leave them alone to pop out like that.

When I started school in Scotland 25 years or so ago aged five, I walked to school and back twice a day (came home for lunch) with another friend also aged five. It was about half a mile each way and there was a lollipop lady to cross us across the road and we were fine and that was a completely normal thing to do. There were lots of things that could have happened to me on the way and back from school that I couldn't have dealt with but none of them did.

I don't see how a generation ago walking to school aged 5 was acceptable and now people would be unhappy to leave even older children for just a few minutes. I know 4/5 year olds don't need to be independent but it is a gradual process of gaining in confidence and if you don't start it at some point you end up like my friend who couldn't manage to get herself on a train across the country aged 20. Small incidents that push your boundaries a bit as you grow up help you in the end.

I have a 4 year who I haven't left alone but I can imagine he would be completely fine for 5 mins or so if I did.

At what age do you hope to let him walk to school without you Bibmother?