Leaving your children alone overnight.

When my son was sixteen he was invited to come with me to the States for a holiday with my boyfriend and his daughter who was just a few months younger than him.
She pulled out due to pressure of exams and he asked whether he could just stay home alone instead.
As he had always proved sensible and responsible and wasn't one for alcohol and parties anyway I eventually agreed and gave him the money that the flights would have cost.
I informed his girlfriend's parents that I was going to be away for 10 days.
We kept in touch by Skype (no WhatsApp in those days!) and when I returned the house was clean, the laundry done AND IRONED and a cup of tea waiting for me on my return when I phoned him from the station bus stop to say I was on my way!
He did admit that he only washed up when he had used practically everything but in this case what the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over!
I had always tried to bring him up to be self-sufficient and independent (i.e. not to expect a female to do everything for him once he was able to do things himself!) and he often used to cook for me if I was working late.

Hi Sago,
Maybe your friend who was worried about leaving her seventeen year old alone in house for a few hours was really worrying her own, or lack of, parenting skills.
It reminds me of one of my then teenage daughter’s capers. She would have been about sixteen or seventeen when she and her best friend had a party while I was away. Probably partying myself. They didn’t actually tell me about this party until some years later. The two of them systematically took pics of every room in the house and then locked the valuables and breakables in the room we used as a junk room. Apparently they had a whale of a time and I believe the police only turned up once. Daughter had warned neighbours that they were going to party and that they were welcome to pop in for a pint or two of snakebite!! On my return I thought they looked a bit second hand but nothing was mentioned and life carried on. After some years had passed this story was retold while we were all reminiscing about what we got up to as teenagers. My headstrong goth teenager is now a very well qualified and much respected art psychotherapist and her friend is a literary agent. To this day I haven’t told them that I knew what they had got up to. How did I know? Well the house hadn’t been that clean and tidy since we moved in shortly after my husband’s sudden death a few years earlier. Everything was per the pics in their phones, most of the windows were open to get rid of the stale smell as good as any proper old fashioned public bar! The absolute final give away was the washing inexpertly blowing in the wind in our small walled garden. If I ever do let them know that I knew, I would compliment them on their forward thinking and respect for our home. That day I recognised that I had got SOMETHING right and by not saying anything I let them think they had got a “win” , as they say in America

Yep that does happen -it’s fairly common

My friend and hubby left their 17yr old son alone.
He had a huge party (he sold tickets to it .... an entrepeneur in the making !).
House was a tip, and they even found the clothes pole on the roof . Lol

My mother left me babysitting my sister (five years younger) at the age of ten. She and dad went to the pub most Fridays and Sundays.

I was told to go to bed, put the light out and sleep. I waited until they had got round the corner, went down to the kitchen to get biscuits, put the electric blanket on full and read until well after ten.

Sometimes I'd watch TV. I also remember reading the 'News of the World' from cover to cover. The Manson Murders were pretty gruesome reading for a primary school child.

I think many posters are forgetting the impact that covid had on children and teens. I know the impact of isolation for 16 months with only mum and (vulnerable) dad for company greatly affected the social and emotional development of our then 16 and 17 year old. During what ought to have been a formative time for him, he didn’t see anyone else, let alone anyone of his own age. That was bound to have negative effects and it did. At 22, he’s finally catching up but it took time.

It’s so encouraging to read all the posts and t know that we were not mollycoddling our children.

I am now trying to weigh up if there was less danger around then.

When my eldest was 15 he didn't want to come on holiday with us so we left him in charge of the 3 dogs, 2 cats and various outside animals for 2 weeks whilst we went away with the younger ones. We came home a day early as the rain had set in and we were camping. The house was tidy, the neighbours confirmed no parties and all the animals had been fed and watered. Give most kids responsibility and they come up to the mark.

Teen years (roughly 12–19): The brain is under major renovation. Emotional and reward systems mature earlier, which is why teens can feel things very intensely.

Early 20s: Big improvements in planning, impulse control, and weighing consequences.

Mid- to late-20s (around 25–30): The prefrontal cortex—the part responsible for judgment, self-control, long-term planning, and decision-making—finishes maturing for most people.

I started work at 15, most did then and very capable. A friend of mine married at 16. Still together. My parents never went out of an evening so I never had the house to myself, I would have been over the moon if they had gone away. Both my children could do basic cooking, ironing etc. You are doing them no favours not bringing them up to be independant, quite the opposite.

I got married at 16 and my husband often worked night shift which meant I was left alone with our newborn, mind you I couldn’t sleep so I was up all night doing the washing and cleaning, hubby couldn’t understand why I was so exhausted when he got home

I don’t think one can generalise age specific maturity, as all teens are different. I also think one can’t equate what previous generations permitted their teens to do. It is a very different world we live in now.
I lived in Germany until I was 15, when we returned to the UK to live. I hated it when I came back and just found it difficult to settle. As soon as I turned 16 and could leave school my parents permitted me to go back to Frankfurt as an au pair. They ensured I could come home at anytime, armed with emergency telephone numbers and airline contacts if needed ( no mobile phones in those days). It really does depend on the individual and whether they feel ready to be on their own.

I worked full time at 16, paid my mother board and budgeted and paid for all my clothes, makeup , fares and lunches to college and my placement for nursery nursing college.

Also at 16 I went to Pontins with my friend for a weeks holiday . My dad did give us a lift there but when I was working I did public transport confidently and had been working in a shop since I was 15.

Much younger than that me and my cousin would be out all day and nobody knew where we were we were just told to be home by 5 o’clock for tea. I walked 20 minutes to school on my own from the age of 7.

It was a different world I didn’t let my children do half of it .

At age 14 I was looking after my sister's 3 children in the school holidays while she went to work. At 16 I flew to France to stay with a French family for a month in Nantes and then flew on to Paris to meet up with 3 school friends of the same age. We stayed in one room in a cheap hotel for a week and had a wonderful time. The following year aged 17 I hitch hiked from Cheshire to Paris with a friend. We had a few close calls with men but nothing too serious. I would never have allowed my daughters to do this but in the 60's young people did have much more independence and my mother thought we were taking the train. I wonder how it is that things have changed so much.

When I was 14 and my brother was 9 we used to be left for 1 night as my Dad was a lecturer and used to travel around the UK. On odd nights mum used to go with him for a break. We were perfectly safe and sensible and had good neighbours who we could call on if there was a problem. Mum had been teaching us to cook from an early age and we were quite capable of looking after ourselves.

I am an idiot. I would not leave my daughter home alone until she was in her 20s, and worried about her moving out at 30, but she went on holiday to Rome with her equally tiny girlfriend to celebrate her A levels; and I was alone at 18 and married at 19.
Possibly because my DS was a nightmare - at 17 we went away for a weekend (with DD) and came back to find 2 strangers passed out in our home with the doors wide open and DS in custody because neighbours had called the police about the noise.

PinkCosmos

My parents went on holiday and left me alone for a week when I was 16. I was an only child but we had a dog.

At that time (1973) was into watching horror films and usually watched them with my dad. They were always on at 10.30 on a Friday night. Usually Hammer Horror or something similar

Anyway, whilst they were away, I watched a horror film on my own and frightened myself half to death. I was more scared of ghosts than a burglar or intruder. I went to bed with the light on all week and the dog in my room. I was fine during the day. Looking back it seems ridiculous now but I still get spooked by some horror films.

I still cannot watch horror films but my mum loved them and she and my, then, 8 year old sat with a box of sweets and watched a series of them in a row, while I was in bed with a book. My DD scornfully told me I was a wimp as it was not real

We spent several days in Italy leaving our daughter aged 16 and her 13 year old brother alone. It was the summer holidays, so no worries about getting to school, and our neighbour in the adjoining cottage was keeping an ear out for them. On the Saturday evening I rang home to see how things were. Our son assured me everything was fine. His sister had been to a beach barbecue and had just gone to bed, would I like him to get her up to speak to me? I said not to bother. It was some years before they admitted that she had been brought home paralytic, thrown up all the way up the garden, and he had put her to bed to sleep it off!

I think it's perfectly reasonable to leave a 17 yr old alone for a night. My 16 yr old GD is left on her own occasionally overnight and she loves it, feels so grown up.. She's responsible, has a phone so she can always ring me or others for help or a chat and is not the least bit nervous about being alone. It's part of growing up and learning to be independent which is surely how we want our youngsters to be?

I was 15 and my brother 16 when our parents left us at home for two weeks while they took our little brother on holiday to Scotland. We were fine . Maybe we were both just very sensible.

How times have changed.
We had both started work at 15 and were living in our own house with a baby at 17 & 18, we had also had a mortgage.
I'm sure a 17 year old could cope, their parents would know if they were capable of being left overnight.

When I was 13 a friend and I went to a music festival in Buxton for two nights. We hitch hiked there and back with our tent. We survived but I wouldn't have let my daughter do it

I left my DD home alone when she was 16 for one night. I was due to be away at a conference with work and my ex was taking my son away for a long weekend. One of her friends offered to have her stay over but she didn't live live on the route for the school bus so she said she'd rather stay at home than get up extra early to walk further to the bus. I went outside from the evening activities at the conference as there was no signal in the hotel and I wanted to phone to check she was ok. If there had been a problem she would have had difficulty calling me but everything was fine.
I couldn't have left her at home with her brother as they would fight but she was fine alone! It was the same with me and my brother - as a teenager I regularly babysat for a neighbour's children so the parents could play bridge with my parents as my brother and I couldn't be left together even when both of us were old enough to be left alone!

Left home at 17 to go to University. Was perfectly responsible and capable. Always worries me that parents can wrap their offspring too tightly at times and they are not fully preparing them for adult independence.

I was married age 17 and 3m I think people back in the 60s had to mature earlier. I had 2 children by the time I was 18. Went back to uni age 27. My daughters child is 28 and my son had 4 children and is a grandpa of 1 with 2 expected this summer. 17 is not a child