5-Year-Olds Left Home Alone

 

Have there been any incidences where kindergarten children left home alone have been injured or worse? I would like to know some stats on that subject and perhaps hear about those scenarios. In addition, it would be interesting read some interviwes of parents who’ve left kindergarden age children home alone and find out why why they did so.

- Anonymous

Posted 02/27/08 04:01 PM

 

 

If that many young children are already being left home alone with the availability of “affordable, quality after-school care”, I don’t think that one can automatically conclude that this would get significantly worse if school programs close. There are a variety of other options available. Responsible parents, who already have their kids supervised, would seek other venues such as private childcare centers, YMCA, etc. Irresponsible parents would continue to leave their kids home alone. Please don’t tell me they have no other option. After all, I’m sure that they didn’t leave the child home alone as an infant - somewhere at some point, they had childcare. Perhaps we should seek to understand why parents make these choices - I know of parents who have done that not because they could’t afford care but because they would have rather used the money for something else. Perhaps we need to look at mandating supervision for young children which is a shame since this should be a no-brainer.

- Wendy

Posted 02/28/08 11:19 AM

 

 

Ok, I’m a stay at home mome, mostly because I’m disabled. But I know of other parents, especially those that are single parents that are having a terrible time just making ends meet. Paying for what some call “affordable programs” are way out of the ball park for these parents. Plus employers just won’t listen to “I need to be home for my child at 3pm can you adjust my schedual?” If you could get more flexability from employers then maybe these parents would be able to be at home for their kids. Maybe they had somebody that was watching the child before, a grandparent or friend. Well, truth be told people die and/or move away. What is a parent to do when that support system disappears? When I was 6yrs old in the 1960’s my mother worked the night shift at a factory cause it was good money. But in the daytime she’d send me to the corner store to get groceries! I had to cross a highway to get there-four lanes a median and four more lanes. We were right off a major parkway in a cheap apt complex. I didn’t have a bedroom, just the couch. It was a one bedroom with kitchen, bath & livingroom. But it was all that good job could get us. I made peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for us for dinner. But then I was reading at 4yrs old, plus traveling all over the U.S. in a station wagon with my mom for years before we got the apt. Sometimes she’d get work as bartender for a while, just to get up enough money for a motel room for the weekend & get us food. She may not have made the best choices as a mother, having me at 20 and not married. But she kept me and did the best she could to figure out how to raise a kid alone. Me on the other hand, I’m a bit “overprotective” of my own kids. LOL

- Starr

Posted 09/30/08 02:35 PM