Reply to Would you leave a 6-7yo home alone for 10-30 min?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When my husband used to travel a lot for work, I would often leave my four and six-year-olds at home while I went for a 40 minute run. If if they hadn’t been exceptionally well-behaved children, and there hadn’t been good neighbours in our street, I wouldn’t have done it.  If they were kids who broke rules or pushed boundaries, I wouldn’t have done it.

If your kid is going to look for matches, climb out the window, go outside into the street, etc,  
don’t do it, even if they are 8 years old. Eight years is not a magic figure. You need to use judgement based on your child’s maturity and development. [/quote]

But this is known for sure in hindsight. My kids were the same, but I couldn't 100% guarantee it at 4 and 6 yo. [/quote]

NP. I feel like I could 100% guarantee this right now for my 6 year old. She's exceedingly cautious, and especially if I left her with a movie and some snacks, I'd have 0 worries that she'd do anything dangerous.

I think the bigger issue for me would be external factors. I wouldn't leave my 6 yo at home along for 40 minutes because we live in a condo building and what if there was a fire in another unit? What if there was a police incident and they tried to evacuate the building? And so on. If we lived in a house on a quiet suburban street and I could ask my next door neighbor to keep an eye out? Sure. In our current location where there are a lot of variables DD has zero control over? No way. As it stands, I'll leave her in the apartment for 10-15 minutes to run to a neighbors apartment, go mail something at the mailbox around the corner, or run to a bodega right downstairs. I would not leave our block without having an adult watching her.

So the PP is right that this is kid dependent, but it's also situation-dependent. The thing is, I am more cautious with my 6 yo than she was with her, despite them probably having similar maturity levels, but also I can see her riding public transportation around the city on her own by the time she's 10 or 11, and most suburban kids probably won't get that level of independence that early. So everything is relative.[/quote]

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