How Young is Too Young to Stay Home Alone?
I’m no stranger to the peril and personal freedom of staying home alone as a child. As a latchkey kid from about the age of 9, the first thing I’d do when I got home from school was search the kitchen for the best junk food I could find before settling in to do my homework in front of the TV for a couple of hours until my mom got home from work.
And while it was true that I was alone in my house, I was never really alone. I knew everybody on my little cul-de-sac and on a street of nine houses, someone was always home.
As responsible and careful as I was as a home aloner, a few pretty scary things happened.
There was that time I cut my fingers so bad on the edges of an open can that I had to run to the neighbor for help. Then there was the time I decided to take a shower (bad idea), and the shower valve broke off and I couldn’t shut off the water. Again, I ran to the neighbors for help.
While I undoubtedly learned some pretty valuable lessons about responsibility and personal safety, I’m not quite ready to trust my almost 10-year-old son to learn these lessons for himself. The problem is that he’s begging me to.
I was a kid left home alone out of necessity, and it’s perhaps for this reason that I’m having such a hard time justifying leaving Boy Wonder home alone out of convenience. That’s not to say I don’t often wish I could. For example, if I need to run to the grocery store for milk after school, I’d like to be able to leave Boy Wonder home to do his homework, a far better use of his time than following me into the dairy aisle.
But suppose I do leave him home alone and he takes a nasty spill down the stairs, goes on a crazy soda binge, or begins to freak out because I didn’t come home when I said I would on account of the nasty car accident that rendered me unconscious and medevac’d to the nearest trauma center? What? It could happen. What then?
I know Boy Wonder is a smart and responsible child. By all accounts he probably deserves the freedom of staying home alone for an hour, riding his bike around the neighborhood, or walking home from school alone. So why then is letting go and allowing these carefully measured smidgens of personal freedom so hard?
Have you left your kid home alone? Do you think there’s a perfect age to allow a kid to stay home alone?
I vaguely remember there being laws in different states regarding at what age children can be left alone.
Frankly, there are times that my 8 year old would be just fine while I drive 2.5 minutes to the grocery store to buy milk and bread — but I doubt myself, too.
I just found this, Questions to consider before leaving your child home alone, http://www.nncc.org/SACC/sac31_home.alone.html
Upon further research — the Florida Dept of Children and Families:
“According to the Department of Children and Families, Abuse Hotline, there is no specific age defined in Florida law regarding when a child can be left home alone. However, they have indicated that a child aged 8 or older who is mature and knows whom to contact in an emergency and is not disabled or mentally challenged may be able to be left at home alone. For further information and clarification of this rule, contact the DCF Abuse Hotline at (1-800)-962-2873. ”
So… in conclusion,
Let him stay home and do his homework while you run to get milk. If he can survive 20 minutes alone, let him have it occasionally. Do you have a phone at home that he can use, should he need it?