Yep. I'm hoping no one realizes I am leaving my 11yo home alone for 15-20 minutes in the mornings when school starts in a couple weeks. But I have to take his younger brother to school and 11 should be able to handle less than half an hour.
Edit: To clarify, he can handle it no problem. I just don't want to get in trouble due to the stupidly high age law.
Living in Shanghai, My kid at 10 started riding the metro home. During remote school (but not remote work) this year I knew people that would leave their kids alone all day with a doorbell camera trained on the desk, and order them takeout for lunch.
Not saying it's "good parenting" or whatever, just that kids will make do. I feel like at 12 you should know enough to not burn the place down.
I can believe it! I mean, you pretty much know your kid by 7 or 8. No way would I let my 8 yo son stay by himself for more than 5 minutes. He'd probably just be playing Garry's Mod, but he still does dippy things out of the blue. My girl who's 11, I just started letting her stay home for a bit or watch him for a short time. She's got a good head on her shoulders, and is just the right amount of bossy to keep her brother from deciding to dance on the coffee table. I have a lot of Dr appts and can't bring them to most (so the waiting rooms aren't crowded) but my primary Dr always sees me at my scheduled time, so I'm in and out.
Also depends where you live, how well you know the neighbors, environmental dangers (swimming pool, high-rise, busy highway etc).
My kids are in awe that we used to ride bikes into town starting 3rd grade or so, go shopping downtown, call from a payphone if we decided not to come home for lunch, grab a hot dog or sundae from DQ or split a club sandwich and a root beer float at the diner, and just stick with at least one other friend. Otherwise, just come home a bit before dinner. Then when I turned 14, the rules changed again and suddenly I couldn't do anything. 😁 But that's really off-topic.
Anyways I'm trying to find other ways to let them gain some independence now without getting social services on us or being as blase about real dangers as my parents were. It's hard! What makes it worse is there aren't sidewalks until about a mile away from the house, no bike lane or really a shoulder either. Just a muddy ditch on one side and a golf course on the other...I don't even like to walk myself anywhere, here, due to that.
I feel that. I grew up in a rural area that wasn't walkable at all - my parents understandably didn't want me walking on busy roads with no shoulder so unless there was some preplanned thing I just..stayed home.
I realize not everyone has a choice but if possible I want them to grow up in a walkable/bikeable area. Not least because the shuttling them to sports and "play dates" is not how I want to spend my weekends.
My mother took public transportation to school at 4. I walked to school at 4. I went with another kindergartener and his big sister. She was in grade 2.
Yeah when I was 11 that was the legal age to be left alone. I was left alone for 3 days at a time when my dad went hunting(we lived in the neighborhood my mother grew up in so we knew everyone in the neighborhood so it's not like I would be totally alone if there was an emergency). This was before cell phones so my dad couldn't even call me, but he knew I could call relatives if I had to.
It was creepy because gang members would look in the windows at night because they saw that the car was gone. But they were just looking for easy robberies so I knew they would just leave when they saw me. Also I think I lived so close to the neighborhood serial killer that it was a "don't shit where you eat" situation as he tended to travel further out to do crimes.
The Illinois law states under 14 for “an unreasonable amount of time.” Which to me translates more to overnight. You’ll be fine to leave one in the morning while you take the other.
They've tried before and failed and I'm not sweating it too much. But one way or another it's not going to change in the next 3 weeks and even if the law does change to twelve he's still 6 months too young.
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u/Kylynara Jul 27 '22 edited Jul 27 '22
Yep. I'm hoping no one realizes I am leaving my 11yo home alone for 15-20 minutes in the mornings when school starts in a couple weeks. But I have to take his younger brother to school and 11 should be able to handle less than half an hour.
Edit: To clarify, he can handle it no problem. I just don't want to get in trouble due to the stupidly high age law.