At What Age Should We Be Leaving Our Children Home Alone?

According to the NSPCC there has been a rise in children being left home alone during the school holidays. This is compared to last summer where the NSPCC has seen an increase of 21% in children being left home alone. That is quite a staggering increase. See the report here. It also has some very useful tips and advice.

There is no doubt that it is a difficult decision to determine at what age should you leave your child home alone. Amazingly there is actually no law to say what age you are allowed to leave your child home alone.

There are many factors that need to be taken into account when you are considering leaving a child at home while you pop out for the morning or possibly all day. Some children are more mature or sensible at say 12 years old than other children. They could also be far more capable of looking after themselves, making themselves some lunch and knowing when not to answer the door to a stranger and how to deal with an emergency should one occur. There are a lot of factors to think about before you leave your child home alone.

The world has changed so much since I was a child and there is a debate over whether millennial parents are wrapping up their children in cotton wool and not allowing them the independence that maybe they should have for fear that something may happen to their child. There is no doubt that there could be an element of truth in this and maybe we as parents are not giving our children the freedom they need to develop and grow into well rounded capable adults who won’t rely on mum or dad to put things right when they go wrong. Maybe they need to make mistakes so they can learn to get it right next time.

The world I grew up in was fairly predictable and yes there were dangers, my mother would say stay away from that house because he is strange and that was enough for me to stay away, but I grew up from an early age with the freedom to play outside or at the local park with my friends without the fear of any harm coming to me.

The world has changed so much nowadays and there is so much to fear when it comes to our children. I firmly believe this stems from the Internet and of course social media. Grooming our children is very prominent today and the people doing this are totally brazen and out there in the open with no fear of actually being caught. Is it any wonder that parents are wrapping up their children in cotton wool and protecting them at all costs? Of course some of you may have read my experiences of somebody stealing photos of my children online and using them in a very unpleasant way. You can read it here.

Keeping in mind all the dangers of today, this is what makes it a very difficult decision when we leave our children home alone with access to the internet without supervision from a parent. Goodness knows what sites they may be accessing and children by nature are trusting and simply don’t see dangers that as adults we see. A 13 year could easily let slip where they live to a predator and before you know it they are knocking on your front door because they know you have left them home alone. The consequences of this are very frightening.

For me personally in the past with my older children I would weigh up how responsible I thought they were and decide the age that I thought was appropriate for each child to be left home alone. Of course how much trust I had in them to behave in a responsible way and with my older children that all applied at different ages. I am also a father of seven year old twins and it will be interesting to see at what age we will trust them to be left alone at home. They may only be 2 minutes between them but already you can see how they are maturing at different speeds.

So why is there a rise in children being left home alone during the school holidays or at any other time for that matter?

There is a big pressure on parents nowadays to earn money to afford a lifestyle that quite honestly didn’t exist when I was a child. Holidays abroad or lots of luxuries that we simply didn’t have them. Nowadays with the rise of social media portraying families going abroad on holiday three times a year etc, the peer pressure is crazy and out of control. This means that for many people to achieve this type of lifestyle both parents are working full-time and that means in turn that children are being left home alone at younger ages. People are living their lives by unattainable standards set down by the unrealistic lives of influencers on social media. The large influencers need to be more responsible when they are portraying this life. Not everybody can afford it, and after all you are not paying as it’s usually gifted for you to advertise on social media, and before you say anything yes, I do that, but I do my best to never portray the image that anybody can have this or that.

The one that is suffering from all of this is the child. You may think it’s ok to leave your child at home while you go to work to earn money for another holiday and of course leave them a smart phone and if they have a problem they can just text you and that will give you a sense that they are safe. A smart phone does not make them safe and as my good friend John Adams of Dad Blog UK said to me, a smart phone is convenient not safe. He couldn’t have been more right. It’s a convenient way to make you feel better that your child will be safe because any problem they will ring or text. It’s a nonsense to think a smart phone makes your child safe. What makes your child safe is your presence in their lives and for that to happen we have to stop chasing the dollar so we can have another holiday or a bigger TV.

When you become a parent you sign up whether you like it or not to be there for your child until they reach an age when they are self sufficient and in my eyes that is not happening before the age of 16. They will value your time on a consistent basis throughout the year not your attention just for a couple of holidays. Sometimes as parents you need to go without the bigger earnings to make sure we create a relationship with our children that they will value throughout their lives.

The best feeling in the world when I was growing up was when I came home from high school and my mum was there to greet me and ask how my day was, and what do you want for tea?

What age do you think we should be leaving children home alone to fend for themselves? I would love to hear in comments below.