At what age is it ok to leave your kids at home alone?

It depends on the child. My sister let her 11 year old stay home for a couple of hours between home time and when she got home from work. My niece is responsible and not naïve.

My 11 year old? No, never. I trust her but I’m not confident that she is mature enough.

I was left home alone (with my brother who is 3 years younger) since I was 8. My grandma was looking after us at the time but she couldn’t live with my mum anymore (I don’t blame her) so she left.

I don’t have any children myself but I am a teacher and have parents ask me this all the time. 12 is the baseline (by themselves- not also looking after younger siblings), but there’s no right or wrong answer it absolutely depends on the maturity of the child and the routines and rules you have in place at home. I know when I was little I was being left home alone from about 11 years old just for a few hours between when I got home on the bus vs when mum got home from work but I was a very responsible child raised by a single mother and my Aunty lived across the street and would check in on me to make sure I got home safe. On the other hand I know a bunch of 13-15 year olds that would not be able to look after themselves home alone for more then 5 minutes so really you need to know your child and do what works for them and your family.

Thanks everyone for your responses – I know it’s a tough topic which is why it’s so great to get a variety of insight.

I hope you don’t mind me using these answers in an article?

I think it would be useful for current mums who are wondering what to do.

Sam x

This is very tricky..it depends on the situation and the kid. 14 would be the youngest completely left alone with no supervision, when they have a good understanding of what to do in case of emergency, how to contact/who to contact if anything should happen, what not to do etc. Perhaps a little younger if they had a neighboor or someone who checked up on them to see if they are okay.

About 12 if it isjust to pop to a shop but if its alot further away and for a longer time I never left mine until they were 14.

I think it depends on the child as some mature quicker than others. y kids could be alone from when they started high school onwards as I was at FT work and I think I trained them well during their younger years about stranger danger etc.. and told them not to open the door for strangers etc..

Oh gosh that is a hard question! These days because of all the craziness I probably wouldn’t let mine until they became teenagers.

Although I trust my now 10 (nearly 11 year) old I am too scared something would go wrong and I’d be stressed out of my brain. When I was a child I stayed home around the same age as my daughter is now but the world was a much different place in the 90’s to now.

I grew up in an era when children were allowed to play outside unsupervised, walk to and from school on their own etc. Mum and Dad occasionally left me on my own and I enjoyed these rare opportunities. In retrospect, they didn’t prepare me for the possibility of an emergency, so I don’t know what I would have done if I had needed help. This was a time before mobile phones so I wouldn’t have been able to phone them.

I’ll echo others sentiments when I say it really depends on the child.

For me, I was craving independence from the age of 11 onwards, so my Mum eventually relented & let me go out on my own during the day. At around that age, she started a part-time job that required her to work until the early hours of the morning a couple of nights a week, so as a result my brother & I were left on our own at night whilst she & my Dad worked night shift. I won’t lie, it was a scary time for me and it definitely contributed to my underlying-but-unbeknownst-to-me anxiety condition (I would often leave the hallway or lounge room light on just so I felt safe), but looking back I now realise that my parents felt confident & trusting enough of both myself and my brother (who’s a couple of years younger than me) to do this. The irony of it all though is that she had a hard time letting either myself or my brother walk cross a busy-ish main road to get home from school, so go figure!