At What Age Can Children Start Staying Home Alone?

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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.

Sleepovers

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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.

How to Handle It When One Kid Isn’t Doing as Well in School as Another

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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?

First Post in the New Home

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I am not feeling at home here on the new blog. At our house, we refer to this particular feeling as “not knowing where the toothbrushes are.” The phrase comes from when Paul and I had just moved to a new state and town, and we discovered we’d left our toothbrushes behind at the last motel. We went to a drug store to buy some replacements, and I started crying in the store because I couldn’t find the toothbrush aisle—and not being able to find something so normal and simple seemed to symbolize all the new things we were going to have to figure out. I like things to be FAMILIAR.

The only way to make this familiar is to keep using it, though, so here I am. Let’s think of something to talk about. Rob got his braces off and is signing up for high school stuff for next year. William got several C’s on his report card and seems to have lost his trumpet (I say “seems” because he also lost his new expensive down winter coat, and then it turned up two weeks after I’d given up all hope). Elizabeth went to her first sleepover and it went great. Edward has been put in a weekly lunchtime group with the school counselor, and when I saw him at a birthday party with his peers I felt unpleasantly sure that it was a very good idea. Henry has got to be enrolled in something this summer or I’m not going to make it. I think I got my first grey hair, but maybe it was just one that got extra bleached by highlighting conditioner. I did our taxes with tax software today, but it’s saying they can’t be filed yet because the forms haven’t been updated yet, even though the website says all forms are now available. I still can’t get my profile to show up at upper right where it’s supposed to. I took down a curtain we put up in the kitchen when we moved into this house, and I laundered it and it completely fell apart.

Also, I bought myself a Webkinz. Elizabeth has one, as did Rob and William before her, and it looked like fun, and I kept being jealous that she was getting to choose decor and clothes and so forth, and so in an impulsive mood I bought one for myself. I have not regretted it. It’s fun. I got the fox, but he was $9 when I bought him, not $20 as he appears to be now. If you’re not picky about the type of animal, you can get one for way cheaper (around $5 at time of typing: golden retriever, moose, Siamese cat, lamb, pig, frog, polar bear, and about a million others)—and the animal itself isn’t really the point, the point is the games and decorating, and the novelty of buying a toy for oneself at such an advanced age. (Plus, the children were impressed.)

If You Believe It, You Can Be It (as Long as What You Believe Is Reasonable for You and Your Circumstances)

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[Here’s another one from the drafts file. After I wrote it, I thought, “I’ll bet someone else has already done this, and better.” So I was going to look around and find out. Then I lost the energy for that. Then I thought, “If I had to check everything I wrote to see if someone else had already said it, I’d never hit publish on ANYTHING, because EVERYTHING has already been said.” So here it is.]

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I am thinking of writing a new series of more realistic children’s books:

– If You Can Dream It, You Are Among Many Others Dreaming the Same Thing, and Only a Few of You Will Do It So It Would Be Sensible to Have a Backup Plan, Maybe Something Like Business or Computers

– The Little Engine Who Could, Because Luckily His Design and Physical Components Met Those Specifications

– The Little Engine Who Couldn’t, Because Despite His Constant Repetitions of “I Think I Can,” It Turned Out Those Words Were Not Some Sort Magical Spell Capable of Overriding His Design and Physical Components

– You Can Be Anything You Have Been Born and Trained and Motivated and Had the Opportunity to Be!

– SOMEONE Has to Do the Jobs That Are Less Fun, Rich, and Glamorous, and I Don’t See Any Reason It Shouldn’t Be You

– All That Talk About Everyone Being Special and Unique and Bound for Greatness Can Be Filed With the Whole Santa Claus Thing. Oh, Oops, Didn’t I Tell You About Santa Claus Yet?

– In This Economy, I’d Keep in Mind That We Always Need People Who Work With Pain and Death

– You are Not the Only One Dreaming of Being a Singer, an Author, or an Astronaut

– Believing and Dreaming Don’t Actually Do Anything, So Get Good Grades and Maybe Take Some Extracurriculars

– What, Do You Think People DREAM of Some of These Other Jobs?

Fertility Vent

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[It turns out that if you’re taking a blog from Blogger to WordPress using the WordPress import thing, all your drafts get published. So I’m going through 250 drafts to see if anything is worth saving before I delete. Short answer: no.

But I kind of liked this one that I wrote after a former male classmate on Facebook made me angry with some comments I didn’t feel like I should respond to, right after a former female classmate activated my empathy center. At the time, I decided not to publish it because it makes such sweeping generalizations: clearly not all guys are casual about it, and clearly not all girls are being sensible about it: it was just these two individuals I was thinking of. But I feel pissy about it anyway.]

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I am feeling a bit pissy this evening about how my former MALE classmates are in no danger of running out of chances for little heirs, while my FEMALE classmates are counting years and panicking.

It is making me feel further pissy that some of the males in question seem to have a “I stuck a piece of myself into someone and look what accidentally happened!” attitude about the whole thing, whereas the females are taking folic acid just in case and carefully looking for a quality, intelligent person of good genes and good character who will be a good co-parent and good co-provider. A crappy lack-o’-plan appears to be succeeding, genetically speaking, while a good and sensible plan seems to be tanking.

WHERE FAIRNESS HERE? It is an extremely pissy situation.

Another Appetizer Report and Some Hand-Wringing About Socializing in Groups

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I tried another of the appetizer recipes for a get-together and I am ready to make a report! This time I tried Emily‘s party bread, which a friend of hers posted about here.

I was worried because the party was 15 minutes away; I could have done the second heat-up at her house, but I felt nervous about that and preferred not to, so I took the bread directly from the oven, put it into a bag, and ran from the house. It was just fine for the party: not piping hot, but still plenty warm. If I keep going to these get-togethers, I might buy some sort of insulated transportation bag.

Next time I’ll bake it longer: the cheese in the middle hadn’t melted. But the edges were great. People kept going back and picking at it more. There were about seven of us there, I think, and we ate about half the loaf—and that was with six other appetizers to choose from. It seems like it would be a nice flexible recipe that could handle a bunch of different kinds of seasonings. I’ve added the recipe to my recipe box.

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Okay, so what I really want to talk about is that these get-togethers are getting me all agitated, and I don’t know if it’s good or bad. It’s really hard to tell the difference between “Getting outside your comfort zone! good for emotional stretching and growth! relationship/community-building! change of pace! social needs! wheeeee!” and “This is not a good fit for me, and is resulting in distress and agitation instead of the good things that might be experienced by a different person.”

And sometimes in a situation there might be the additional issue of telling the difference between “Not everyone is going to get along with everyone, and one of the benefits of a group is that it’s good for us to have experience dealing with people we wouldn’t have chosen and/or people who have different views on a subject” and “Yes, and that can be true of dealing with the rest of the people in the group because they also have upsides, but this particular person is a humorless, strident, pushy, aggressive, oblivious ASS, and contact with her should be severely limited, and she ruins the entire event so maybe these alleged group benefits should be experienced with a DIFFERENT GROUP.”

…Okay, just typing that out was a big help. I think I will continue to get all RILED: it’s not only a matter of there being one person I find challenging, it’s even MORE an issue of general overstimulation (TONS OF PEOPLE! TONS OF TOPICS!), plus all the usual party issues of “Did I talk too much/little, was I boring, did I say something I shouldn’t have, did I keep killing the conversation, was I too quiet/loud?” But overall, and for now, I want to keep going anyway.

Plus there’s this issue: if she’s so awful, why is she still in the group? Maybe I’m the only one who finds her insufferable. Maybe everyone else finds her sufferable.

And even with the insuffering, the good outweighs the bad. Just for starters, these are the moms of kids in Rob’s grade. EXCELLENT INSIDER INFO AND NOTE-COMPARING. And also I do like THEM. And perhaps I will learn some tips on how to deal with the particular sort of person I mentioned, since there seems to be no world shortage.

I also noticed two other things that lead me to wonder if a Difficult Person can actually enhance a group:

1. You know that thing about friendships being based on shared dislikes? Another guest and I made a huge leap in friendship over one single “o.O” facial expression.

2. I noticed that the one strident person’s strident views seemed to make everyone else more open to the concept of assorted views. Like, a conversation might be getting a little intense and divided—but then Stridentella lets loose with her views, and suddenly everyone else is saying things like “Well, different choices make sense for different families.” It’s like she shows us a caricature of how our own views were shaping up, and that makes us all want to back away from that.

Down

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You know what’s incredibly frustrating to launder? Anything filled with down. It floats like a duck. Water rolls off it like….water…off a duck’s…. I think I see the problem. But how to get our down jackets clean, then? Mine is aqua and it might as well be white for how clean it stays, and Henry’s is dark blue but he has nevertheless managed with effort and ingenuity to make the dirt really represent.

I looked around online for awhile, but got frustrated by all the non-answer answers all written in the same format (paragraph about the benefits of down! paragraph asking the question about washing! paragraph failing to resolve the issue! paragraph congratulating ourselves on resolving the issue!) and gave up. How would a person go about washing a DUCK, is perhaps the question we should be asking.

Right now I have the coats floating on top of the water in the washing machine (“soaking”), and periodically I go shove them under the water in frustration, and that is going to have to be good enough.

Sharing/Splitting a Tab

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It was only very, very recently (this school year) that I figured out what to do if I was in a group of people standing around (like, at preschool pick-up), and I was talking with one person in the group, and another person came and stood nearby and seemed to want to join the conversation but seemed tentative about it, like they were afraid they’d be butting in. (Answer: Turn to the new person, say, “We were just talking about [how different the bus system was when we were in school / the big storm expected Friday / the stupid parking situation],” and then start looking back and forth between the two faces while talking.)

When I figured that out, I felt like it was something a lot of people would have already known in an “I just knew; I had no idea it was something anyone needed to be taught” level. But I also didn’t learn until high school that if someone says, “How are you?” you’re supposed to say, “Fine! How are you?” A date taught me, after his dad asked me how I was and I stood there grinning in a friendly but mute way. My date said laughingly, “…You can TELL him!” I was mortified for years, but now look at it as an illustration of how socially comfortable my date was: that he not only didn’t stand there sharing in the awkwardness but also he took swift, friendly, laid-back action to fix it. And I’m sure the date’s dad didn’t care, any more than I would if it were one of my kids’ friends, so I’ve stopped feeling that sink-into-the-floor feeling over it. (It’s nice to know that feeling can fade after…a couple of decades.)

Where was I? Oh, yes. So, there are a lot of social things I encounter where I wonder if this is another of those things where most people know already how to deal with it and I need to find out what it is, or if it’s something most other people struggle with too. Like, I know from reading blogs that MOST people struggle with how to “ask out” a new friend candidate, so I wouldn’t feel strange about struggling with that too. Today’s issue is one I’ve seen mentioned enough to know I’m not one of a tiny minority or anything—but I also think that getting a lot of different responses would be very helpful to show me the range of what society considers normal behavior.

So here it is: If I’m going for coffee for the first time with a new friend candidate, and it’s at the kind of place where a waiter comes to the table, what do we do about the bill? Does one person say “separate checks, please,” or no? Do people share a single check, then glance at the bill after, round up their own share to the nearest dollar, and leave the change on top of the tip? Do people just split it down the middle, even if they ordered different things (surely not, and yet I’ve heard it complained about)? What about leaving the tip: do people discuss how much it should be and each put down half, or does each person just put down their own little stack without consulting the other? If one person puts down a lot more tip than the second person was planning to, doesn’t that make the second person feel pressured?

This is for the FIRST TIME, at a waitered-table restaurant, with someone new, where you don’t yet know how they’d prefer to handle it: how do YOU handle the situation?