Mom's Talk Q&A: Staying Home Alone

The National SAFEKIDS Campaign recommends that no child under the age of 12 be left at home alone.  Their website also lists state age restrictions.  The youngest age listed to stay home alone is 8- years-old in Georgia, Maryland, and North and South Carolina, while the oldest age listed is 14 years old in Illinois. RI law is undefined.

Should RI specify an age to which children should be left home alone, and if so what age should it be?

Personally, I do not believe that RI lawmakers have the right to make such decisions.  I firmly believe that every child is different.  There are some 15 and 16-year-olds I know that shouldn’t be left unsupervised, yet when my oldest was 10-years-old showed me that he was very capable of handling himself alone for a little while.  Granted, I am never too far.  I remember starting with a quick trip to CVS and I timed the trip.  I was gone for seven minutes. 

Open lines of communication are most important.  I bring my cell phone with me and we have a working house phone.  I know some households these days don’t have home landlines and rely strictly on their cell phones.  But if you are to leave your child home alone, I think they should have a phone accessible to them.  I also think it is imperative to have evacuation plans established, and contact people available.

My four oldest, ages 13, 8, 7, and 5 know the evacuation plan in our house.  We talk about fire safety and even other emergencies including intruders.  I also reiterate which neighbors to go to for help minutes before walking out the door.  I double-check their memories for my cell phone number on a regular basis.  Keeping these conversations relatively routine keeps me confident that they will know how to respond to most situations.

Rules also need to be established about answering the phone and the door, and whether or not they can be in the backyard, or remain in the house, etc.

Here’s what Cindy Osmanski, mom of two, has to say:

I am not quite sure at what age you should leave your child alone.  I have only left my nine-year-old alone for literally five minutes when I had to leave and his father was on his way home up the street.  But I did not like it at all.

It depends on the child, I guess.  Some kids are different and some parents are different.  But to say that I would feel comfortable leaving my older child at home alone would be too much for me.  I would worry the whole time.  Even though he would probably watch TV the whole time or play on his DS, and be fine, I know I would not be!

I think by the age of 12, depending on the child and not for a long time, would be okay. It is a tough call.  You, as a parent, would know at what age your child would be okay. It is different today than it was when I was growing up, we went everywhere by ourselves, but there are too many crazies out there now.