When you were a child , when did you first get left home alone?
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I was in third grade--8 or 9. Mom needed to take one of my sisters to the doctor and wasn't going to be home before I finished school. She tied the house key on a string around my neck so I could let myself into the house. She gave me very strict instructions: go in the house, sit on the couch, and don't answer the door. It was probably for about an hour. I followed her instructions.
She might have told the neighbors I was going to be home alone.
I know I walked home alone from the bus stop, about a block away, in kindergarten. I changed schools in first grade. School was a couple blocks away and 100's of kids were walking so I walked alone, or sometimes with a friend, from first grade. I could continue with stories about the independence I had at a very early age: walking to the store with my sister and friends, watching my younger sisters at a young age, etc. It's just a different time.
We left our 2 kids alone for a couple of hours when our oldest was in 6th grade, so 11/12 I guess. The younger one was 7/8. Of course, we had a cell phone and could be reached.
7 and 9 and we were left alone for 2 hours until someone came home from work. My father used to drop my sister and I off at the neighborhood pool in the summer, and pick us up when he got out of work.
Nine, but the thread title reminded me of a cute story episode in one of the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary.
Her mom had left her for some kind of emergency before Ramona had to leave for school that started at 8:30, and she told her to sit in a chair and just watch the clock and to leave when it was a quarter after. So Ramona, knowing that a quarter was 25 cents -- well, you guessed it - she waited to leave until 8:25, and then could not understand why there were no kids on the playground when she arrived at school.
Even now at age 63, I still get a big laugh out of books with five-year-old characters. (Junie B. Jones is hysterical.)
P.S. In today's world, of course, Mrs. Quimby would be investigated for child neglect if she did such a thing.
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