Thesis: All life's activities presuppose that a household has a stay-at-home mom.
Cala speaks truth to power. Having recently moved house I must have spent the best part of a working week in the last month hanging around the house waiting for various tradesfolk to come and quote. So far the boss hasn't noticed.
At least they didn't ask you, "Do you want us to come and pick up your child between 8am and 1pm, or between 1pm and 6pm?"
Isn't one of the kids six already? How old are kids supposed to be before you can let the run around on their own? (Serious question, I don't know.)
How old are kids supposed to be before you can let the run around on their own?
This question has come up before. I believe both LB and I answered: 11.
Serious answer: I'm not sure either. If I were operating based on my own safety judgment alone, without worrying about what people would think, I'd be sending Sally (6, almost 7) on solo errands to the corner store already (no streets to cross, the guys who work there know her.)
But I don't because it seems absolutely socially unacceptable.
I'm pretty sure you said 11 before. Please don't contradict yourself.
11 is for the subways. I was thinking about out of direct adult supervision at all.
Ah, that's ok then. Just as long as my memory is not shot.
Hope they bring your kids home to the right address then!
We have a shop on our corner, about 60 yards away, again no roads. We moved in here when my eldest was 3 3/4 and one of her first questions was "when can I go to the shop on my own?" I said 6 (guessing), and managed to hold out until she was 5 1/2. I don't feel that's socially unacceptable here, though when she was about 3 1/2 and used to insist on going down escalators in shops and send me in the lift with the buggy, I did wonder if the parent police would appear.
Where I live, I am told that it is actually *illegal* to leave kids home alone before the age of 12. Which I think is fucking ridiculous.
Oddly, while I permitted my son to build a clubhouse on the flat roof of our garage, once he had found a way to get up there, which involved him and his friends doing all kinds of roof-edge gymnastics to get materials up, I haven't felt he could travel by himelf until the last several years. i.e. ~11. He must have been about nine when he started building.
It occurs to me I never decided "ok, now you can do this;" he just started doing it and I realized it was ok. My daughter was 13 when she started going downtown for a class at the Art Institute. She had no problems, and probably could have done it a couple of years earlier.
I think in this country, it's not illegal at any age, but if anything happens to a young child (under 14?) you can be prosecuted for being stupid. Or something like that. I reasonably regularly leave my 8 and 9 year olds alone for up to an hour if I'm fairly near, contactable and can get home easily. Those two occasionally go out to the park or the pool, about 4 and 3 minute walks away respectively, without me, but that's as far as they've got so far.
I used to go to school on the train (10 minute journey), alone or with my younger brother from about 8. But for some reason that never seemed like a big deal, although being allowed to go out to the shopping centre halfway between school and home when I was 11 was a massive thrill.