How old is old enough to be home alone?

I think it's also something I should be ok with but am not.

Don't worry too much about not being ok with it. Without a lot of experience, it's hard to realize how capable those small humans are. While in Japan, I routinely saw tweens traveling the buses and local subway, but I'd have to work up to having my children do it. When I was 10, I was riding my bike several miles to play basketball, at thirteen I was all over suburban New Orleans, something I think would cause heart attacks in a lot of people. Part of my encouraging my children to branch out is my memory of what I did when I was their ages. How much freedom did you have at 10 or 12? That might shape how much you think these children are capable of.

Some 10 years are fine taking care of themselves for hours.

Some 18 year olds can't manage it

shrugs.

agree with soz.. including 'absent other issues'.

I was at my most shy and vulnerable at twelve, really unaware of trouble possibly at my door (even though I watched various stuff on tv and stayed up late, it didn't have to do with me, I was just learning). But even I was taking two buses from school, the second one alone, before I turned thirteen.

My bro in law taught my niece how to make it across LA by bus early (Mar Vista to Burbank), maybe when she was thirteen and maybe earlier, twelve or eleven, I now forget. I remember being shocked, but it was a part of a pattern, and also necessary some of the time, as the mother had shared custody, and dad was at work. (Niece told me later her mother sent her to friends' to take care of her, and not just for a day, spent the child care money on...) He taught her how to bicycle everywhere, how to camp out despite her distaste, and so on. She has grown up into a woman who can make her way in a lot of places with confidence and still be psychologically sensitive to others. I had something to do with that, but not anything to do with making her so self sufficient.

But looking back, buses across LA at eleven? Still, far as we have talked about, and we've long talked straight when we get to talk, the trauma was at the other end.

Back when many of us were 10 and 12 years old, it was a different world. A different time. Unfortunately we, as adults and parents, have to be concerned where our parents did not.

They are much more prone, nowadays, to be prey for sexual predators

Perhaps if you hadn't left your children alone at such an early age, you would not be posting in the threads about their molestation.

Quote:

Back when many of us were 10 and 12 years old, it was a different world. A different time. Unfortunately we, as adults and parents, have to be concerned where our parents did not.

If you look at the american crime stats people are more safe now than they have been for a generation. I suspect but dont know that the same holds true for Canada. This fear you have is not based upon facts, but is a perception error.