Latchkey kids - were you ever one?

Just wondering: if your mum worked part-time, so was home after school, what happened in the holidays?

For me, it meant looking after four younger siblings from 8am - 3.30pm, five days a week from when I was about twelve.

I wasn't, but some of my friends were. My mum worked full time but my GPs lived with us and my GM collected me from Infants/Junior school each day. My GF always had a sandwich & milk ready for me when I got home. Mum got in about 6pm and cooked dinner for us all.

I remember a boy in infants school. He had his door key on a long ribbon around his neck. His mother left the house with him each morning and told him to go home after school, help himself to bread & butter, and wait for her to get home. Our teacher discovered he just sat on the doorstep every day because he couldn't reach the lock to open the door! He was only five. He told the teacher his Mum said it wasn't her fault if he was small for his age.

At Junior and Secondary school lots of kids went home to empty houses. It was just the way things were then, late 50s/early 60s. Most were expected to do something towards the evening meal or look after younger siblings.

Yes, and main winter job was making fire. Sometimes chopping sticks with small hatchet, firefighters deemed too expensive so screwed up newspaper. Pinched dads oil can if lightning a problem. Drawing fire with sheet of newspaper which very often caught fire as I was often day dreaming. I’d like to say happy days ? Seemed entirely normal for a primary school pupil!! yikes

My mum was a stay at home mum for some of the time but would quite often go off and get a part time job which would mean us letting ourselves in after school. The key was always left hidden in the shed. We weren't on our own for long & we had good neighbours we could go to if there was a problem but we were fine. I quite liked it, I used to make a cup of tea for my mum ready for her coming home from work, using a kettle on the stove, lighting it with matches!
We also occasionally sat in the car while my mum and dad went in the pub for a drink, kids just weren’t allowed inside in those days. My dad used to bring a bottle of Coca Cola or sometimes orange or lime Corona & a bag of crisps or peanuts out to us. If there was a pub garden & the weather was nice we’d all sit outside. I used to love it either way.
My mum was definitely a latch key kid, her dad was away at war and her mum worked all hours on a local farm. Elderly neighbours looked out for the kids, just how it was in those times. I think we were probably all much more independent and very capable of fending for ourselves back then. I wouldn’t have dreamt of allowing my DC or now my GC to do the same though.

Sadly I remember letting myself in with neck key age 7, alone in the house - being cold, so put up the shovel and newspaper to re-ignite the fire (as I'd seen parents do), but newspaper set alight - so did my hand trying to take it to kitchen sink. Then terrified tears alone with hand in sink in cold water, waiting to be punished when they got home. As I was. About 1969. Hand/arm was bandaged for months.

I was born in the early 50's When I was three my mother decided it was ok to go back to work

So then I was 'dumped' on various complete strangers on the days she worked.

At 5 she took me to school. After that first day I went on my own (across two main roads) and got home by getting in the unlocked kitchen door. Later I had a key on a string round my neck, that was once I could reach the keyhole.

When winter came I had to light the gas 'poker' with matches to get the coal fire started. In the summer holidays she would open a tin of baked beans for me to heat up. We always had a cat or two, and they were my company, I still regard them as my best friends.

nanna8

My mum wouldn’t give me a key so I had to wait in the garden shed in the cold until she got home - usually an hour or so. Eventually I did get one but not until I was about 14. Hard times, kids don’t know they’re born these days. I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing that to my children.

My mum wouldn't give me a key eirher Nanna8. I had to wait in the porch where there was a little fold up stool I could use to sit and wait until she arrived home.

My mother worked and I let myself into the house and was at home on my own in the holidays. I learned to cook very early and was independent and happy to be so. When I had a bike for my tenth birthday I cycled miles around on my own. My husband says he was the same with his bicycle and we agree we lived during a happy and free time.

What’s even more important was than no one stopped us reading or learning anything so we acquired the ability to think for ourselves, to evaluate information sources and to challenge accepted dogma.

We feel sorry for the poor helicoptered present generation with their heads filled with Wokey propaganda.

Seems girls did all the work and no help from their brothers .My husbands mom was like that didn’t teach her sons anything about helping in the house (should have as wives go out to work and then come home to start again )