Today, for the first time, Ella stayed home alone.
It was only 10 minutes; I just needed to pick up Madison from Science Club about a mile and a half away. Ella wanted to do it, so we did.
We got her a list of relevant phone numbers, including 911 and my cell phone. We made sure she knew that she shouldn't open the door to anyone. She has a level head on her shoulders, and was confident about it being no problem.
While I was gone, Ella actually finished her reading and did her karate practice.
I came back to a smiling nearly-8-year-old.
Madison was impressed and amazed by turns, all the way home. She said that she's too nervous to try it, still. But I'm betting that this changes soon now that she has the proof that Ella did it and was fine.
I don't even know what the state law is about when you can leave children home alone, and for how long. Or even if there is a state law.
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We started to leave our child home alone, when he was 9 years old. We started with extremely brief spans -- like 10 minutes -- and increased it from there. By the time he was 10, we would leave him home for a maximum of 4 hours.
I've searched for objective "cut-off age" laws on the subject and come up mostly empty-handed. Also, the law varies for each state.
For our state, I've concluded the following: if the child is younger than 8, leaving them alone can get one in trouble. If the child is 12 or older, it's almost always fine. So, 8 through 11 are the years where things are fuzzy.
From what I can tell, if a case like that is brought before a judge, he will use a whole series of questions to validate whether the parent's judgement was appropriate: duration for which the child was left, whether the child had access to some help (say via phone) if he needed it, child's ability to manage on on his own, and so on.
If we weren't absolutely certain of our child's ability to manage, there's no way we would leave him. Yet, it does nag at me that until he's 12, a social-worker and a judge may think otherwise.
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