Melissa H. left a comment on this post:

At what age can/do children start staying home alone?

In our situation we’re talking about one kid home alone for up to, say, 30 minutes while a parent runs to the store. She is pretty mature for her age and she is pleased with this arrangement (she doesn’t have to run the errand). When I mentioned this to a friend I could tell they were slightly horrified we left her home and they have not left their years older son home at all. Our kid is 7.5–is this too young?

At our house I’m finding a big difference in what age each child Seems Ready. My eldest (age 14) seemed ready when he was quite young, because he’s always been the responsible and cautious type; I’m STILL not entirely confident about my secondborn (age 12) (I do leave him, but I worry more).

I probably base it mostly on my confidence in the child’s ability to use the phone. Do I think they could use it to call 911, or to call my cell phone, or to call their grandparents up the street? Do I think we’ve had enough conversations on the topic that they’d know for what situations to call each number? Do I feel pretty sure they’d know NOT to use the phone if there was a fire, but instead to run next door?

I also base it on how much interest the child has shown in hypotheticals. Three of my kids think it’s fun to talk about things like would they be allowed to use the microwave, and what would they do if someone came to the door, and what would they do if the phone rang, and what would they do if they got a small cut but I was due back in 5 minutes. Two of my kids find such discussions boring, and they tune out if I try to discuss it with them. The two who tune out don’t get left on their own as much—and I prefer to leave them with one of the other three, just in case.

I also base it on how quickly and easily I could get home again. If I’m walking next door to talk to a neighbor, I’m much more likely to leave a responsible child on his or her own than I would be if I were going ten miles away, or if I were going somewhere I might not have phone service, or if I were going somewhere I wouldn’t be able to leave. I can easily abandon a grocery cart, but would reallllllly not feel comfortable leaving in the middle of a hair cut or a doctor or dentist appointment.

And finally, there’s the miscellaneous issues for an individual trip: how many other kids are home and which ones are they (is there likely to be fighting?); whether the kids are playing nicely at the moment or whether they’ve been bugging each other; how much faster/easier it would be for me not to bring them; whether I’m pretty sure my parents are home in case there’s a problem; etc.

How do you make the decision about when a child is old enough to be home on his or her own?

Edited to add: I think when we’re discussing this it would be useful to keep in mind that there’s a big difference between leaving a child at home for half an hour to run an errand, and leaving a child alone for a workday or overnight. I suspect the laws and recommendations are set up mostly to address the latter situation, not the former.

Life of a Doctor’s Wife left a comment on this post, saying:

I would be interested in more on any of the topics you briefly addressed, but perhaps specially (and… not as… potentially personal) in the topic of first sleepovers. I feel stressed out about the idea of sleepovers and I do not yet have a child. How did you get to be okay with the parents and the overnight situation? How did Elizabeth feel in preparation – anxious, excited, meh? I suppose I am so interested because sleepovers were tough for me as a kid. I did not make it through many of them. (My poor parents. Who lived waaaaaay out of town and had to fetch me at odd hours of the night.)

I was Not Particularly Okay with Elizabeth going to a sleepover, but Elizabeth was so completely Relaxed and Fine about it, it made me wonder if this was one of those “No, in fact DON’T listen to your gut” situations. I mean, my gut was clearly telling me she SHOULD NOT GO—but my gut also tells me the kids shouldn’t get on the bus the first day of first grade, shouldn’t be left at birthday parties even when all the other parents are dropping off, and shouldn’t go up to other children at the park and try to play with them. So my gut is not really calibrated for being in charge of decisions.

In this particular case, I reasoned it out. I don’t KNOW-know the parents, but I recognize the mother enough to say hi if we cross paths. Their house is in the same neighborhood as ours. Another acquaintance of mine babysat for their daughter when she was a baby. The only other sibling is a sister (not, for example, a much older brother), and one of my older kids is in her same grade and knows who she is and has been on the same bus with her for years. I found out from Elizabeth who else was invited and what the plans were, and it sounded well-organized and well-thought-out (four girls total; plans to make cupcakes and watch a Pixar movie and stay up until TEN!! O’CLOCK!!).

Fine, I also went on Facebook and snooped the family. I looked through photos and saw pictures of the family at Disney, at what looked like a big family event, and in Christmas-card photos. I looked through wall posts and saw things like “Hey, great talking you the other day! Let’s have coffee next week! Thursday?” and “Sophia left her sweater at our house—I’ll send it to school with Ella tomorrow!” It’s not like non-okay families couldn’t have these photos and wall posts, I realize. Nevertheless, it added to my decision-making process.

I’ve heard of other parents deciding to allow things like sleepovers (or even playdates and birthday parties) only when they know the other family well—but I have almost zero social life, so that’s not going to work for me: I hardly know ANY other families well. If that were the cut-off, then my social life would have an inappropriately heavy and limiting impact on my kids’ social lives. (Or else theirs would have an inappropriately heavy impact on mine, when I was forced to form a large fake social circle to accommodate their friendships.) But this would be a great tip for people who know a lot of other families: I can picture being ENORMOUSLY reassured if Elizabeth were sleeping over at my friend Melissa’s house, instead of at the house of someone I only know to say hi to.

I also talked myself through it like this: Elizabeth is more social than I am, but at this stage she needs my help to arrange the logistics of her social life—and I have to try not to let my own social anxieties get in her way unnecessarily. I can of course say no to anything that seems genuinely dicey to me, but most situations are NOT genuinely dicey even if they make me nervous. If three other moms feel it’s appropriate to have a sleepover party at age 8, and if Elizabeth herself is fine with the idea, then I can either decide that she’s not ready and/or that I don’t want her to go—or I can let her try it, which is what I decided to do.

And it went great. I talked with her ahead of time about how to handle things if she wanted to go home early, even if it was the middle of the night. I also remembered that one of my own biggest issues as a child was not realizing that the other child’s parents were PARENTS and were therefore likely to be pretty easy to talk to if I had any situations (like if I forgot to bring something, or if I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to do something, or if I couldn’t find something), so I told a few anecdotes along those lines to Elizabeth. But she stayed the whole night and didn’t run into any issues except for forgetting to bring a comb, which she just did without.

Oh, and one more thing: I deal with stress via shopping, so I spent a lot of time looking for a good party gift, and I window-shopped for many possible purchases such as a sleeping bag, new pajamas, and so on. I think I must think things over while doing things like that, so that by the time I’m done filling an online cart with sleeping bags and pajamas I never end up buying, I’ve adjusted to the idea of a sleepover.

Here I am, back for more immersion therapy. Leeann asked a question on yesterday’s post:

So, I have a topic that I’d love you to bring up on your blog because I am curious about how other people handle it.

I have three kids. Two are total meant-for-school students- they sit and listen, have great memorization skills, work hard-ish etc. They just do really well at the whole “going to school thing.” My third child, however, is not a meant-for-school kid. He is super smart but to sit and listen, to do redundant worksheets etc is NOT his thing. He works hard-ish but his hard-ish gets him low Bs and Cs (in advanced classes) while the other two get straight A’s. I’m never quite sure what to do when report cards come around. One is clearly not like the others. I don’t want to take away from the first two by minimizing their awesome grades but I don’t want to make child 3 feel inferior for his grades when I know his effort was there, it just that school doesn’t measure his particular strengths like it does theirs. Does anyone have any help for me in this issue? We do talk about making efforts and individual strengths etc but it feels a bit forced to my ears.

I’ve run into this, too. I’m finding it especially difficult with the twins, because they’re in the same grade and getting tested on the same things, so the comparisons are pretty obvious and exact. All of last year, they had the same spelling list, and Elizabeth was getting a much higher grade every single week than Edward; I didn’t want to praise her in a way that made him feel bad, but I also didn’t want to NOT praise her.

So far I’ve been doing a mix and match of these things with all the kids:

1) Emphasizing individual strengths, as you’ve been doing, whenever it comes up. We do a lot of frank  “Well, Elizabeth might just be better at you than spelling; you both spent the same amount of time studying, so it might be that it just comes more naturally to her. Other things come more naturally to you. [Giving example or not, depending on whether one comes readily to mind and/or exists.]”

2) Praising privately. I’ll wait until Edward isn’t around and then say, “Wow, Elizabeth, you did GREAT on your spelling test!” Sometimes I’ll mention to the praised child that I’m not making a big deal about it in front of another child, and I’ll re-emphasize the “People have different strengths” along with the “We don’t brag and make other people feel bad, especially if our strengths are inborn as opposed to coming from hard work.” Then I can also praise Edward separately, saying things like, “You did really well on your spelling test this week!” (if he did, for him), without Elizabeth pointing out that it’s not good compared to HERS.

3. Praising everyone publicly at times when things are more even. “Wow, Elizabeth, look at your spelling test this week! And Edward, good job getting your orange belt! William, this is a great painting!”

4. Finding other things for the doing-less-well child to thrive at. This one’s not always an option. But if the not-as-academic child could do really well at, say, karate, it gives another way to make accomplishments feel more balanced.

5. Just not discussing it much. It does feel bad to minimize someone’s academic accomplishments just because a sibling is getting lower grades—but on the other hand, there have been a lot of mixed reports recently on how abundant praise affects children. Looking at all three report cards and then saying an enthusiastic “Nice job, you guys!” (with no sharing around of grades) might make everyone feel happy. (And this can be combined with #2, speaking privately later to each of the two who got great grades, as if just bringing it up again as you would with any of them: “I just keep thinking of that great report card you got!”)

6. Additional private discussions with the child who gets lower grades can also help: saying that you know the child tries as hard (or harder) for less result, and that his effort is as important to you than the specific letter grade might help considerably. Rob has a lot of trouble with writing, and on his most recent report card he got a non-excellent grade in language arts—but accompanied by a note from the teacher that he was trying hard. I told him that was my favorite part of his report card—and it really WAS. (I’m not sure this method would work if it weren’t true.)

7. Sometimes it’s better to get A’s and B’s in regular classes than C’s in advanced classes. I’ve felt like there’s a lot of pressure from our school system to put kids in the highest possible level their test scores indicate they can handle—but as you’ve noted, some kids are just as smart but don’t do as well with the sitting down and worksheets type of learning. My plan is to whenever possible put kids in the classes where their grades reflect their effort. If that means letting them go down a level, I’m willing to do that. The GPA can even end up being exactly the same (I don’t know if all schools divide things the same, but at our school a C+ in honors/advanced class is the same GPA as a B- in an A-level class—but the B would feel a lot better, and be more comparable to his siblings’ grades).

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How do you handle it with your kids?