When did/would you allow your kids to go around your town without you?

[AugustLia23]

This is a recent disagreement I had with my ex. When did you allow your kids to walk around your neighborhood on their own? Or if your kids are still very young, what age are you planning to allow this?

Of course I understand every child is different, but I'm interested to see if my ideas about this are very different to others. Also there are several variables, do your children have siblings or close friends to walk with? Is your neighborhood especially dangerous?

I read Lenore Skenazy's book Free Range Kids, which gave me a very different perspective than most Americans have today.

[elus0814]

We live on a very, very safe military base and we still don't allow the kids to 'roam' alone. The older two are five and six and it's only been within the past six months they're allowed to even play outside alone. That said, most families here allow kids to start roaming the neighborhood alone sometime around their fifth birthday. 

[Rani]

Our dd is 12 now and has a very wide roaming range.  She has to have her cell to check in. We started letting her roam more once she was about 10

[DahliaRW]

I think I was in 5th or 6th (so 11ish) grade when I was allowed to ride my bike around the neighborhood by myself or with my younger sister.  I did have to check in at intervals.  My kids are too young (the oldest is only 6), but it's good food for thought...

[zinemama]

My son and his best friend down the block walked to each other's houses starting at age 4. His mother and I would stand outside on the sidewalk watching them.

From 5 or 6 on, my kids began playing outside the house on the sidewalk, sticking to our block. At 7 they would bike around the block. In 3rd grade my son would stay at the park after school to play, with a watch to know when it was time to come home. The park is 3 blocks away and he had to cross a busy street with a traffic light.

At age 10 my son was walking to his guitar lesson alone after school, about 7 blocks, crossing a busy street with a light.

We live in a city neighborhood. I agree that it does depend on the child.

[LynnS6]

Within our neighborhood, (so down the street or around the corner), I started letting dd go when she was just about 5. Ds was allowed to go to a friend's house 2-3 blocks away when he was 7 1/2. When he was 9, I let him go to the park by himself with a friend (who was 11). The park is 2-3 blocks away as well, but it's a little more 'free range' because there wasn't another parent there waiting for him. When he's in 6th grade, I'd be comfortable with him walking/biking up to the middle school by himself (about a mile). I haven't thought further ahead than that, but I fully expect him to be able to take public transit wherever he wants to go when he's 13-14, as long as I know where and he checks in when he gets there.

[kathymuggle]

7 or 8 for monitorred walking (close by, specific spots, within time constraints).  

10 plus for general roaming - I still ask my 12 yr old to check in occasionally, lol.

[blessedwithboys]

I grew up in NYC and had a very wide radius.  I would walk several city blocks to the store or library or park.  Of course we had no cell phones.  Sometimes I was in a group, sometimes I was with just my little sister, and quite often, I was completely alone.  As for age, I could play in the grass in front of our co-op without my mom or another adult at about age 4.  I could go up and down the block around age 8 or so.  As long as I was home by a set time, I was golden.

It's a different world now.  I live in fear.  I have not read Free Range Kids and don't intend to.  I agree that kids belong outside and should have acres and acres of meadows in which to freely romp, but in our current situation "free-ranging" my 8yo would be roughly equivalent to gross neglect.  He's a child, not a chicken.  He doesn't leave the house without either myself or his teenage brother accompanying him.  My now-16yo was about 11 or 12 before he was allowed to ride his bike on his own.

[Llyra]

DD1 is six, and is allowed anywhere in our quad, or the two adjacent to it-- we live in a condo complex. She cannot cross a street, enter another quad, or enter somebody's house, without coming back for my explicit permission. I plan on loosening those restrictions gradually, as she gets older. I don't think I will allow her into town, though, until she's much older, because there's no sidewalk on the road at the end of our complex.

The twins are four. They can play in our little piece of front or back yard by themselves. They may not go where I cannot see them clearly from the front or back windows. I started letting them out alone at about 3 1/2, but I sit in the window where I can see them.

I am probably much more lenient than most of the parents I know IRL, though. I grew up in that kind of neighborhood-- thirty or forty kids of school-age, in a one-block radius, who all roamed the town freely from about six years old. It's what I am used to.

If I had a kid with poor impulse control, or one who I didn't feel I could trust to be truthful or to come to me for permission before going farther, I think I'd be more cautious. But my kids are all relatively cautious, conservative kids.

[littlest birds]

It really depends on how far they are going and where they will be.  Our younger three kids have gotten a lot more independent over the past two years.  We live in a smallish city where both I and my dh work in walking distance, and there are a lot of places our 11yos can now go on their own in our town, but carefully.  Our bookstore where I work is a couple of blocks from our house with no major street crossings and even our youngest has been making that walk alone for about a year at times.  We usually call when one of the kids is headed between the store and our house.  The library is in between so even closer to home and they can go there on their own occasionally.  We live near some big fields with a cross country trail through woods with a creek and I let the kids go play together there without us.  This has only been with the 11yos with their younger sister, rarely does the 8yo go that far alone.  Our street dead ends in these fields, so that is easy access.  The property is owned by the college here and is open to public...  Similarly I let the kids spend about half an hour on the sledding hill in town without me, but not with only the 8yo yet. 

If we were in a different place we would make different choices.  Another factor is that one of our twins has Asperger's and he has a lot of trouble with appropriate behavior with strangers and in public places in terms of boundaries so that means he is trusted with a special concern for what he can handle on his own in terms of behavior.

I think that there is a gradual transition between 8-12 years old for us.  Our 8yo can visit a few people on our street without us or play at the end, or walk a couple of blocks.  Our 11yos can do a little more and can chaperone the younger to further places sometimes as well.

[sublimeliving]

Just to wander the neighborhood, I would say 11 or 12. 

[LynnS6]

Originally Posted by blessedwithboys 

It's a different world now.  I live in fear.  I have not read Free Range Kids and don't intend to.  I agree that kids belong outside and should have acres and acres of meadows in which to freely romp, but in our current situation "free-ranging" my 8yo would be roughly equivalent to gross neglect.  He's a child, not a chicken.  He doesn't leave the house without either myself or his teenage brother accompanying him.  My now-16yo was about 11 or 12 before he was allowed to ride his bike on his own.
 

I read this/hear this a lot, and I'm wondering what makes people say that. If you look at crime statistics, the likelihood is that there is less crime now than when you were growing up. Now, I'm not saying that things are the same -- there are fewer kids out, so there is not the safety in numbers. But there weren't that many kids in my neighborhood, and I was walking/biking the library 8-10 blocks away by the time I was 9 or 10.

Is your neighborhood that unsafe that your 8 year old can't leave the house without you? What's different?

[34me]

I live in a college town of about 130,000 people. My ds1 was riding his bike about a mile each way for soccer practice when he was in third grade so 8ish, my dd was taking 3 busses home from orchestra camp when she was 12. Ds2 started riding his bike back and forth to school about 2 miles away when he was 10. He is much less confident than his brother. My ds1 now at 14 has ridden his bike, alone and with friends, literally all over town. They do all have phones and are required to check in whenever changing locations.

[Callimom]

Originally Posted by blessedwithboys 

I grew up in NYC and had a very wide radius.  I would walk several city blocks to the store or library or park.  Of course we had no cell phones.  Sometimes I was in a group, sometimes I was with just my little sister, and quite often, I was completely alone.  As for age, I could play in the grass in front of our co-op without my mom or another adult at about age 4.  I could go up and down the block around age 8 or so.  As long as I was home by a set time, I was golden.

It's a different world now.  I live in fear.  I have not read Free Range Kids and don't intend to.  I agree that kids belong outside and should have acres and acres of meadows in which to freely romp, but in our current situation "free-ranging" my 8yo would be roughly equivalent to gross neglect.  He's a child, not a chicken.  He doesn't leave the house without either myself or his teenage brother accompanying him.  My now-16yo was about 11 or 12 before he was allowed to ride his bike on his own.

The book Free Range Kids might help you put that fear in perspective. I realize it is dependent on location but for most areas in North America anyway the book argues that the fear most of us as parents feel or are told we should feel is not based on facts.

OP we have just recently moved and so haven't scoped out how things will work with our new neighbourhood/town but in our last neighbourhood my kids had free run of the neighbourhood, local school and park by the time they 5 or 6.  I have 4 and they travel in a pack generally. My oldest began taking the bus to his grandmothers (one bus, direct route, no transfers,) when he was 9 and his younger brother was allowed to accompany him starting at age 7. At 12 my oldest can bus anywhere in the city now. (university town of about 125,000)  My kids all biked to the library independently by the age of 8 (about 6 or 7 blocks away).

My oldest daughter who is 9 has Type 1 Diabetes and so she often travels with a sibling and a cell phone in case she needs help. But for the rest of my kids they are pretty independent.    

[urbangoddess2]

I grew up in a town of 500,000 people, although we lived in a residential neighbourhood away from the city (16 blocks by 16 blocks).  I walked to school alone starting in Kindergarten (5 blocks, crossing busy street with crossing guard).  My siblings and I were allowed to roam within our neighbourhood from the time we were 8, without supervision.  By the time we were 13, we were allowed to roam into the city (about 5km away).  We had strict time schedules at first, but at 14, we just had to say where we were going and the rough time we were coming back.  It wasn't safer back then (the year I was born, they caught a serial child killer who had been plaguing our city for 20 years), but my parents taught us how to take care of ourselves alone.

I now live in a town of 150,000 people and we live in a residential neighbourhood away from the centre of town.  My kids (8 and 11) were allowed to play unattended on our street (cul-de-sac) from 5 years old, go to other streets at 7 years old, and bike to school alone at 10 years old (the older one accompanies the younger one and the bike paths follow busy streets).  Both of them have been allowed to roam our neighbourhood, but unless they're going in a big group, they have strict time limits.  My 11 year old is allowed to bike to other neighbourhoods to visit friends, but neither of them may bike to town without me (it's much much too busy with too much traffic, and too many roundabouts).  It depends on the situation, but I think I"ll allow them to do that when they're 16.

I think it depends on the child, but I also think that children should be allowed to roam and do their own thing.  We as parents should teach them how to go about this safely.  I personally believe that the world isn't any more dangerous than before and we can't put our kids in a bubble just because we're afraid (especially if the fears are unfounded).

[BathrobeGoddess]

I really think so much of it depends on the kid. My oldest was riding her bike alone at age 7 on our road...my son who will be 7 the end of March...no way! He doesn't have the impulse control to hold his line in the road. I do let him roam the pasture alone and he climbs trees like crazy. However, we also don't live in a neighborhood...we live in a rural area and that has its own challenges (mainly people lost driving to fast on our driveway/road and animal dangers like mountain lions.)

Sometimes I think my 16 year old has less of a clue than my 4 year old about personal safety Though my 16 year old has pretty much absolute freedom driving and having a car and all that. Heck she will be on her own in two years as it is in college!


I love the book Free-Range Kids....

[HollyBearsMom]

We live in a rural area and my son has been free to play outside alone since 4ish and has been allowed to walk across the street for pond hockey since 6/7.

Our town has no "real" downtown but when we go to next closest town my son often gets an ice cream and hangs out across the street on some stone step while I shop in the stores.  He has been doing that alone since 7ish and with friends since 6ish. I would have let him do it earlier alone but he didn't want to. This same town has huge 4th of July parade and he has been free range at that for as long as I can remember, he is always with a pack of kids and the older ones keep an eye on the younger. 

[AugustLia23]

Thanks for all the responses. I am 25 years old and can still remember walking the 3 miles from my bus stop to school when I was 8 years old and missed the bus. At 9 I was taking public transportation to school on my own.

My kids are 6, 5, and 3 and I want them to have the same independence as I had. The older two go around my block on their own(not crossing the street) and the last time they took the 3 year old with them! This did make me nervous, but I know that the older two kept a close eye on him. There is another family in my neighborhood that gives their young child a fairly large area to roam. We live in a middle class neighborhood in a moderate size city of about 500,000.

Like a PP said, the book Free Range Kids was extremely helpful at putting the fear in perspective. There is one quote in her book that sticks with me. She says something to the effect that if you DID actually want your child to be abducted by a stranger, you would have to leave them outside for something like 700 years, it's just that rare! Most people know that the majority of abductions are by somebody that the child knows at least peripherally.

Bullsh!t's episode about stranger danger was also great at addressing this issue.

I strongly disagree that leaving an 8 year old to range is neglect, FWIW. But that's the great thing about parenting, you get to make your choices and I get to make mine.

[betmina]

We live in London, the kids are 9 (almost 10), 7 and 4. DSS (9) is not allowed out of the borough we live in. But considering that it's big enough I think its perfectly fine. DSS 7 is not allowed to leave the area and DD is allowed to roam 3 blocks.

[MJB]

In our old neighborhood, I allowed my boys to roam freely at 5 and 2. It was a very very safe place where we knew all of our neighbors and there were no cars allowed. 

In our current neighborhood, I allow my 8 yr. old a lot of freedom, as long as I know where he's going (ie, to the library, to the skateboard ramp in the alley, etc), and I allow my 5 yr. old to play in our yard or the neighbors' yard or to ride his bike up and down our sidewalk. I don't let him go off our block or in the alley. I will probably let him skate in the alley at 6. There are very few cars that use the alley and I can see it if I go into the back yard. 

My 8yo was walking half a mile to school alone at 6.5. Now that we have moved to a bigger city he only walks a block to his bus stop, but that's still more "free range" than most people around here.