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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The laws are the laws, yes, but you need to have common sense too. In MD, the legal age is 8.

So technically, it’s “illegal” to leave a child home alone for 5 minutes the day before they turn eight. The next day, is “legal” to leave them for 8 hours.

There’s laws, and then there’s common sense. If you aren’t breaking a law, and your 6-7 yo (1) has the maturity; (2) knows how to reach you or an adult; and (3) can sit still for 20 minutes watching an iPad or reading a book… yes, I’d be comfortable leaving them. [/quote]

A 6-7 yr old is not mature enough, period.  OP wants to leave for 10-30 min by car.  If there is an emergency and they call 991 ( if they even have phone access) and says they are h9me alone, you will be arrested.  If go to a neighbors, for an emergency or really anything, you will be relying on the goodness of your neighbor not to report you to CPS (if they are even home, and if they even bother coming to the door). What about if you are in a car accident and can’t get home at all or severely delayed and you can’t reach someone to go help your child?  What about if the internet goes out and they no longer able to be planted on the couch with iPad? What about if they want something they can’t reach and climb onto a chair and fall? I really cannot believe people would leave a 6 yr old home alone for 30 min while they drove to go run errands [/quote]

The OP says drive her other kids to 'sports close by'. I live in a small town with a 'town center' that is about a 5 minute drive but is 1.8 miles from my house. This is where I would be driving to drop my kids off for 'sports' and have it be 10-20 minutes depending on whether I needed to get out of the car with them.

I would 100% NOT drive the 20 minutes to Target to go shopping nor would I drive even the 10 minutes down to the big grocery store to go shopping. But my god, if I hand my son a Nintendo Switch a literal bomb could go off down the street and he wouldn't investigate it.

I think people are having reactions that are tied to where they physically are, there are some places where this would be a terrible idea, and some places where the claim that this is like, DEADLY NEGLIGENCE is comically off base. [/quote]

No. It’s a stupid idea, period. I don’t understand how some of you are so ignorant to child development that you think a 6 year old is an appropriate age to be left home alone. You’re talking about them as though they are 8 or 10 year olds. That is 2-4 years of brain development and learning about the world. I can’t believe this has to be explained. People talking about how this is preparing their SIX year old to be more independent sound like idiots. [/quote]

My kids are teens now. If one was sick and I had to take the other two to school, I would leave the sick child at home to do the school run, which took 10 minutes. I did this beginning at age 6. It was really no big deal.[/quote]

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