Latchkey kids - were you ever one?

My mum didn't work but would be out sometimes when I got home. She would leave the back door open for me. One day I was greeted by black smoke coming out of the kitchen. I ran to a neighbour and she ran into the kitchen and lifted a pot off the stove. She threw it in the garden and switched off the stove. Poor mum was horrified. It took a week to clean the black walls.

My mum was a school cleaner, so I went from school to her place of work school, and then home with her.

My mother worked full time from when I was about eight. She had arranged for me to go to the infants' school where my sister was staying on in what would now be called an after school club but I felt I was much too old for that. So, I had a key, let myself in, read or watched telly until she got home (was supposed to do my homework but I loathed it!)

From about eleven I started cooking the family dinner several nights a week too. She must have missed me when I went to boarding school three years later!

I wasn’t but my eldest two children were from the ages of 12 and 14. They were quite grown up by then and I trusted them besides it was for only half an hour before I got in from work.

No, but sometimes I wished I was. I only entered the front door and I was told to get my homework done before I got my tea.

Yes though can't remember how old I was. My sister was supposed to look after me but when she started secondary school I would get home before her. I didn't have a key round my neck but on a keyring which I sometimes lost and had to wait on the doorstep until someone came home.

Yes. My mother was out playing golf!

Lol Franbern ? we’d be so bored locked in the car - and there was nothing to do in the dark!

Obviously something I never dreamt of doing with my AC at any age.

SunshineSally re your comment about sitting the pop and crisps outside a pub...........one of my AC, now in their fifties actually told me recently that when they were younger she and her siblings used to be so envious of some of their friends who used to experience this. Never for them!!!. Hubbie and I never went to a pub unless we had babysitters at home.

No, my mum didn’t work was always there when I came home from school

Children in newer generations do NOT have it any easier - challenges are different.

When I read this I realise how easy our children have had it. Even my grandchildren don’t know how good they’ve got it hand out money in! Hardly the best way but hey ho!

I was not a latch key child as my mother worked in a school so was always home about the same time as us.My father was often out of work though so was n the house when we were.
My late DH was a latch key child from the day he started school at 5 years old.His mother got a job and he said she hung the door key round his neck every morning so he could let himself into the house and wait until his older sister got in from school about half an hour later. She would then make the tea before their mother came in.
Our own two children always had one of us at home when at school as we worked opposite shifts.We planned it like this as DH said he did not want his children to come home to a cold empty house like he had to do.

. I didn’t do any household chores.My mother said that she wasn’t able to make my elder brother do anything, and she wasn’t having me doing them just because I was a girl.

School, homework and reading were sacred, though.

I was a latch -key kid in the late forties in East London. Key to the front door to our multiple occupied house on a piece of tape around my neck.

I would get home from (primary) school about one to one and a half hours before my Mum,. I had no duties to do at home, just let myself in, go up the many flights of stairs to where we lived in the attic, and (usually - read a book. At the other end of the day I would get myself off to school after both parents had left for work.

During the school holidays, would be left by myself. Back then, so many of us LKK's that the local authority used to arrange for one school to provide school dinners for us during the holidays and I would take myself to these.

During long summer breaks, I was sent away to a holiday school in Bexhill - which absolutely loved.

Mum had to work full time, divorced with very little from my father. From age 7/8 (J1 class at school) I would let myself in with the key on a string. The next door neighbour was supposed to keep an eye on me, but with 5 of her own I just got on with what I wanted to do.
To get to and from school (on my own) I had to walk to the bus stop and cross a busy main road with a 20 min bus ride. I used to do the veg and start the evening meal too.
By the time I was 9 or 10, I was doing most of the shopping- dispatched to the co-op (10 min walk, crossing the busy main road) with 2 10 shilling notes (don’t loose the change!). Negotiating with the butcher about the weekend joint, then lugging it all back up the hill home.

Another latchkey kid here. In ‘my world’ the women and girls did everything too. Don’t remember my brother having to do any chores. It was expected and you’d get a clout if you dared to argue!

I also remember my parents going to the pub for what seemed like hours whilst we had to stay in the car and wait for them. If we were lucky we’d get a bottle of pop (usually cherryade) and a bag of crisps.

I could go on… but I won’t! Thank goodness times have changed!

My parents started work at 7am which meant from the age of 5 getting myself to school. My brother was 9years older than me but he went to “big” school in another town and had to leave very early. Our door was never locked. Everyone looked out for everyone else. I was always fiercely independent which has carried on throughout my life. Different times now - I can’t believe how many teenage kids are driven to school locally - it would be a 15 to 20min walk for them. The primary schools are mostly a 10minute walk. I spent all school holidays at home by myself when my parents were at work. The only had two weeks off a year. I survived and look back fondly at my childhood.

Yes it was a very different way of life then.

I can clearly remember going off for hours, sometimes alone, sometimes with other kids. So long as you were home for "tea" there was never any question of the parents having been neglectful. Children routinely played in the street or around the area and no one thought anything of it.

Also parents did not interfere in the friendships and fall outs as you so often hear of on mumsnet. Nor were they constantly over at the school arguing with teachers. My father would certainly not have lost a days wages to go to the school on my account and my mother would have felt intmidated by middle class educated women.

I do believe we grew up to be more informed and independent than children today. There were many unspoken rules about fairness/unfairness and basic manners that we learned from other children and the way in which we approached their parents. We also learned to manage out own social relationships without helecopter parents hovering to make sure we were not bullied or excluded.

Lol Nannee49 yes it is , but I got much better when I joined the Girl Guides lol.

Oh bikergran it's rotten you got a clout for your fire making efforts, I was on my own so luckily had the chance to clear away any evidence of burning the house down.

And so glad you had a Blower too. We were clearly ahead of the curve in technology even if lacking in attention

I wasn’t expected to light the fire, but we didn’t have any other form of heating, so I’m sure I was cold.
I wasn’t supposed to leave the house once I’d done the shopping, and was severely punished for visiting a friend and lying about it.
I was thinking I must have been in senior school, but this girl was only at junior school with me, so I’m guessing I was about ten.

Nanne49 I remember the Blower very well!!! I was a latchkey child and yes I had to light the fire when I got home.

My dad had made this heavy steel shovel and I would have to put paper up to it to cause the draught, sometimes my dad would be there and I rem him sayng one time "keep your eye on that paper" Well of course the obvious happened!! the little brown scorch mark started to apear and I wasnt quick enough to scrunch the paper up to put it out, the next thing "WHAM"! Yes a real smack acros the back of my head! Im 66 now and remember it as it was yesterday and yes ! you do actualy see stars!

Not at Junior school as my mum taught at my school so we waited until she was ready before coming home.
I did have a door key once I went to high school and was expected to have started the tea and done any other chores - putting washing away eg - by the time mum got home.

I taught across the road from my house so my children collected the front door key from me and went home by themselves aged 9 and 10. I could see the house from my classroom window and got home asap after school. They enjoyed being 'responsible'.

I wasnt a 'latchkey' kid, but my mum was. She used to tell me about walking home from school to make the tea at 8 years old ( 1930s ) i was horrified but my mum just shrugged her shoulders and said thats how it was.

I asked, horrified, what did she make ? Her reply was anything that was on the cellar steps.

CELLAR STEPS !!
NO FRIDGE !!


Her mum and dad ( my gran and grandad) were farmers.