Why I Leave My Kids Home Alone | Latchkey Kids | Kids Independence
Why I leave them home alone.
I Want My Sons to Be Latchkey Kids
Why I leave them home alone.
by Steph Thompson
March 29, 2010
The first time I allowed my son to let himself in, he was six. Okay, I’m probably lying, it was probably more like five. I was enjoying a bit of sun on a bench in our Brooklyn apartment building’s closed-in courtyard, and he wanted to go upstairs to play on the computer. Back then, unlike now at nearly 9, the only thing he knew how to get to was PBSkids.org. He only had to walk up two flights of stairs and past three neighbors’ apartments – neighbors we knew. I started to hand him the keys.
“Wait,” I said as I pulled the keys back. “Can I trust you to be good?”
He nodded with only a slightly sly smirk peeking out from his freckled face.
Some neighbors were shocked. One, a mom with a daughter the same age, chewed on her nails and offered up anxiously, “What if he’s up there on the stairs and he’s fallen, screaming, and can’t come down?”
I laughed at the unlikelihood of the scenario. “I think he’ll be fine. It’ll be good for him.”
I wasn’t wrong. When I eventually went back upstairs, he was playing happily. He had made himself a snack – an apple, a granola bar, and water – and felt very grown-up. And he was mellow, probably more than he would have been had I been circling around, hovering and hand-wringing.
A light-bulb went off: leaving kids alone at home is not a bad thing, not something to hide guiltily from fearful neighbors; it is a good thing, a necessary thing. Kids need to be told they are responsible enough to handle things if we expect them to ever actually be responsible. We parents today are all too worried. And to what end? About what?
Of course it hasn’t always been this way. My inlaws shook their heads, confused over the furor when Lenore Skenazy bravely admitted in April, 2008 in the New York Sun that she let her 9-year-old son ride the subway by himself. In the ’70s, when New York was filled with drug addicts and prostitutes roaming freely, they had sent my husband across Central Park on the bus to school, alone, when he was just 7. He only got mugged once – by an older kid for his allowance. Now my in-laws wonder why my nephew wasn’t allowed to be released from school without an adult to walk the half block home until he turned 10. What has happened?
Part of the shift occurred in 1983 when psychologist Lynette Long coined the term “latchkey” with her book Latchkey Child: a Complete Guide for Latchkey Kids and Their Working Parents. The book launched a small army of research and debate that has raged now for nearly three decades on the inherent threat of leaving kids alone.
Long acknowledges that the world has changed since she wrote her book (and that cell phones and GPS locators offer added security), but she still balked at my sending my young son upstairs alone. “What if he had tripped on the coffee table or run into someone in the hall, someone who was drunk?” she suggested. I laughed. Most likely the “drunk” he’d run into would be me – or my neighbors across the hall who sometimes come over to share wine with us.
Nonetheless, she was adamant that children six and nine (the ages of my boys now) are too young to be left alone: “Having interviewed hundreds and hundreds of latchkey kids, things happen innocently. A curtain blows into the toaster when they’re making toast, or someone comes to the door and easily can deceive a child.”
I’ll admit that these things can happen, but they most likely won’t, and how can we keep kids helmeted and hand-cuffed to a chair where we can watch them 24/7 and expect them to grow up anything but helpless victims? Kathy Whitham, a Brooklyn-based behavior parenting coach concurs: “When you’re overly fearful, you are teaching your child to be afraid rather than how to feel safe in the world. This compromises their ability to develop judgment and to negotiate their way safely in the outside world.”
Building independence, a necessity in life, is worth the very unlikely risk of something going horribly awry in the few moments that a child is left in charge.
So I fight the neighbors’ looks and comments, I fight my husband’s nail-biting concerns, I fight my own internal neuroses and fear built from what I hear sidelong, and I leave my precious boys alone sometimes (and more and more often, for longer and longer stretches). I do it for the same reason that I turn my back as I let them climb high into the air on that crazy structure in San Francisco last summer: I know that my hovering will only undermine them, that my wails of worry will only serve to make them think they can’t do it, make them afraid to do it. And I want them to learn how to climb safely, I want them to learn to take care of themselves in our home cautiously. I tell them they can do it and, you know what? Then they can. They know I think that, because I put my money where my mouth is and leave them alone to try.
I have a friend who grew up in a war-torn country and, to protect himself, was given a gun when he was not yet ten. One time he was eying the privileged Park Slope kids around us, and I told him not to be so envious. “At least you were armed against a real enemy. These kids’ parents just make them afraid – afraid of everything. And, what’s worse, they don’t arm them.”
Find more:
- Home Alone: When can I leave my child by himself?
- Excerpt: Free-Range Kids
- How can I make my clingy kid more independent?
This article was written by Steph Thompson for Babble.com, the magazine and community for a new generation of parents.
But what if *gasp* the curtain blows into the toaster while you are ASLEEP or IN THE SHOWER ……
Oh wait, hopefully the smoke detector would go off… right. And from the courtyard you’d probably hear it.
My grandma lives alone, and I think statistically she’s more likely to be injured should she fall. And she might be there for a couple of days before someone missed her, whereas my kid might be there for a couple of hours.
Would I let my 6 year old upstairs…. it depends, mostly on the building. Would I let a 6 year old go in my house while we were in the yard. BTDT (and it wasn’t even MY 6 year old, I was baby sitting so I had twice the number of kids to keep an eye on)
I’ve even left my 3 and 1 year old in the house for 10 minutes while I do a bit of gardening, or pick up the dog poop
I really agree with this article. It is scarey to let your kids have independence, but they need it. The key of course is age appropriateness. My one year old needs to be watched constantly, my four year old needs to be supervised but he can play outside alone, my seven year old can go on bike rides to a friends’ house nearby or walk to school, and my nine year old can go play baseball or football with his friends at a nearby park. I do worry about them getting hurt, kidnapped, or killed, but the greater threat to them realistically is that they’ll sit at home and miss out on the great joys of childhood. For children, life is an adventure and whether we like it or not parents have to be absent for some of the greatest adventures to take place.
“These kids parents just make them afraid afraid of everything. And, whats worse, they dont arm them.
Truer words were never spoken/written
I have been telling my kids for years: “someday I am going to die and no one will be here to do this things for you. You must learn to do them yourself. If you are afraid, then it is the thing you must do. I would rather you tried and failed than to never have tried.”
Thank you, this is great. I have a 3 year old, so I am still a little concerned leaving him alone. But I do let him climb high in the jungle gym, take walks around our land alone, play outside unsupervised…. Don’t know how I’ll end up, but for now, it’s great having you and others like you cheering me to step back and let go of hovering.
This isn’t the same as being a “latchkey kid,” though. I think we’ve forgotten to whom that term referred: it was to children who came home every day to an empty house and stayed there until dinnertime. In my generation (I’m 35), it was not unusual for an eight year old to be a latchkey kid. And I do not think that was a good thing. My mom worked part-time and my dad worked from home, and scared, bored, and lonely neighborhood kids ended up at our house a lot.
Coming from a former latchkey kid, I must agree, you’re getting your terms confused. This is very different than your single mom giving you the apartment key to let yourself in afterschool while she’s at work an hour away on a daily basis. I’m sure given your husband was the one to be sent to school on his own at age 7 he has very good reason for his “nail biting concerns.”
I was more-or-less with you until the last paragraph. Did you seriously suggest to your friend that he should be grateful that the threats of his childhood were real? Not a well-considered sentiment.
There are laws against leaving your children alone without adult supervision. You can be reported for child neglect. In my state the minimum age for children to be left alone is 11. Everyone should check the laws in your area, but independence isn’t worth the risk of having someone report you to child protective services and having your life examined and your child potentially taken away.
The best gift we can give our children is the feeling of pride when they learn to do things by themselves.
This is pretty navel-gazey…to the extreme. Uh, yeah sure, when your kid is old enough, let them do various things alone? What’s the drama? Oh, I get it…differentiating yourself from the supposed “helicopter” parents out there. Alright. You’re cooler.
My mom started leaving me home alone at 5. I was by myself for 15 min at most until she got home from work. I knew not to answer the door or the phone, I knew her work number and my grandparents number who lived down the street (back when people remembered phone numbers). Now I’ve got my own kid he’ll be left alone too. Not for hours, and not before he’s ready. But he’s got to learn to entertain himself and take care of himself in age appropriate ways. If I hover and do everything for him he’ll still be looking at me to fix all his problems well past the age when I should be doing that for him. I want him to grow up and take care of himself.
I believe in teaching independence in stages as is age appropriate.
But what I also try to teach is that there are risks to everything, but you can definitely lessen the risks to almost everything as well. So be smart, and make each decision as smartly as you can to lessen obvious (and unecessary) risks.
How I feel about your story is that I would/could never do such a thing. I also realize (having raised kids) that children do NOT think like adults, as much as we’d like them to sometimes. This in and of itself will eventually (in most cases) cause some sort of problem. I feel that’s why I am the parent, they are the children.
I would not be the kind that could live with the guilt I would feel if my being there could have saved a bad injury (or death). A good example was when my son found a piece of candy and accidently sucked it into his windpipe. Had no one been there (and there were no cries to be heard because he couldn’t even get his breath)…let’s just leave it at the fact that I WAS there, and my son is alive today because of it.
At least you were armed against a real enemy. These kids parents just make them afraid afraid of everything. And, whats worse, they dont arm them. Good stuff right here. When it comes to parenting you have to go with your gut. No one knows your child better than you. Each child is different and each parent is different so the ways we teach our children indepedence, self-awareness, and confidence will be different. Thumbs up for thinking for yourself. I am a single mother of one with a one (nearly two) year old and this article was definitely inspiring and will help me when making decisions for what is best for him.
I love it. I was a latchkey kid, starting at age 8 or so. I knew plenty of neighbors, one of whom would always be home including the little old lady next door who was mom’s bowling partner, and several neighborhood parents who worked part-time or graveyard shifts. A few times I forgot my key and would go to a friend’s house. I ALWAYS called mom at work when I got home, and usually she would assign me a chore. Vacuum the living room, do dishes, hang clothes on the clothes line – or just get all of my homework done. My sister, on the other hand, was perfectly happy going to the babysitter (I hated it there), so mom let her continue to go to a babysitter after school until she was 10 or 11. She became a B/C student and struggled to find a job. I graduated with honors and had multiple job offers. Hmmmm… just thinking that having the independence early on might have been helpful.
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I was a latchkey kid from the age of 5 until I graduated high school. My mom was a stay at home mom, but she would run to town or had her own doctors appointments. We lived out in the country and if I ever forgot or lost my key to the house, I knew I could walk down the road to our neighbor, she and her husband were elderly. But she would fix me a snack and we would keep each other company until I seen my mom was home. I knew not to go with anyone I didn’t know, and would usually watch TV. Or, my mother was notorious for leaving a list of chores that my sisters and I would have to complete before she returned. Each of us had our own list of things to do with our names. We are spaced about 4-5 years apart, I being the youngest would get out of school before my two older sisters. But they were only about an hour behind me getting out of school. My son is now 8, and even though I know I can trust him, I feel safer knowing he is in his school’s after school program. We live out in the country as well, and school is closer to work than the house, more convient if I am planning on being in town for a while before going home.
I understand everyone’s concerns with children learning to be independent, but safe independence is what every parent should aim for and not naive blind permission to be alone.
Developmentally, leaving a child at 6 can be very diferent than 8 and 11 and 15. In fact, sometimes leaving a teenager is more dangerous than a 7 yr old statistically speaking. They have developed physical abilities to do something, while their brain is short circuting on the judgement. Younger children may not be able to forsee the possible risks of an action and may not physcially have the ability to rectify it and prevent an accident. Children may seem like they are ready, but are they cognitively, emotionally, and well equipped to make quick decisions about a)strangers or b)an emergency? It is great to want to prop a child and wanting to be progressive but without actually understanding of child development stages, this is a tragedy waiting to happen. Just because children live in war torn countries, other kids don’t own shoes, and back in the day parents used to whip their children and everyone (most of us) survived, that doesn’t make any of that right. Being a parent takes work, time and commitment. Taking a sunbath isn’t as important as a)teaching the child to wait a little bit for you or b)taking the time to accompany your son upstairs and making sure you are there to react to the smoke alarm, their cut, or the stranger down the hall way who spotten your kid in the playground. The real dangers aren’t just the toaster and their ability to put out a fire all by themselves, there are other dangers such as people who seem harmless but are not, older kids, and the internet that reaches into our home. Knowledge is power, and it is your responsibility as a parent, to obtain it.
I agree with the author. My kids are not latch-key kids, as they attend after school care instead. However, my husband and I believe that they need some amount of unsupervised play in order to develop normally. We (horrors) let them play outside in the courtyard of our apartment complex and let them explore the RV park alone when we go camping.
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Awesome! Care is one thing; hovering is another. Well put.
I think you have to be very careful about this subject matter. There is no black and white. In situations where a kid feels mature enough and comfortable it can be a big boost to try out independence and feel proud that you’re so grown up.
But what about the emotional side?
My parents used to leave me alone for the evenings when i was 7. I knew my grandmother was down the street in case of emergency. However I repeatedly had panic attacks (i couldn’t have named what that was when i was a kid). I had however said to my parents that i was capable of handling the situation and too ashamed to admit that i was scared and hated it and didn’t feel safe.
A child doesn’t know their own world of feelings as well as adults might, and this needs to be taken account when you communicate with your child. Make sure it’s ok for kids to go back on their word if they want to and not to “tough it out”, to know that EMOTIONALLY they can communicate with you whenever they want. This is even easier to do now with cell phones than it was when i was a child.
So don’t make this decision rashly just because it’s convenient and also ticks the boxes of teaching your kid a lesson.
My son is 8 years old. We live in southern California, in a rural mountain town where everyone knows everyone. I only have three other people who live on my street and know them all, they are wonderful people. My son would come home from school at 3pm from the bus stop, and stay home alone, until 530 when I got home from work, only twice a week. My son just got taken away by CPS on two nights ago, because he had been unsupervised. My son knew, that our neighbor 30 ft away was there for any emergencies and was watching our home. Anyway… I go to court on the 22nd to fight to get him back. Pretty devastating.
I think that this article sums up the crux of the matter on children who are left alone, namely, how we view them. Vulnerable, needy, and dependant vs resourceful, resilient… Western children have not always been seen as the former. many had odd jobs in the afternoons and were far more indenendent than children today. And, of course, as the author points out, most children in non-Western context have very different childhoods to our own, and survive. Childhood is an idea, it’s not a reality.
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I agree, hovering over your kids and panicking over every Possible scenerio is not healthy for you or your child. I was a latchkey kid with I was 8 and my sister was about 10. Kids will definatly surprise you and when they are ready, they will let you know. I have only left my 8 year old at home for a few minutes while I ran to the gas station down the road, or when I went for a walk around the block. It’s a good test situation. She seemed apprehensize about it, so I decided to wait a little while before I started agin, like when she is 9 or 10. My daughter has ADHD and is not very mature for her age, and will probably be in daycare until she’s 12. Me on the other hand, was perfectly fine with being left alone at the age of 8 and was always very mature for my age.