A third grader (9y) walking to school alone is reasonably normal here, and if anything went wrong in the morning before leaving she could have come in and woken me. This particular situation doesn’t seem like one with much risk of conflict with authorities.
On the other hand, at 7y she was the first in her class to be walking to school alone, and we were the first parents (in institutional memory, not ever) to tell the school our kindergartner could walk home with an older sibling (2nd grade at the time). And they’ve gone to the park by themselves at ages where that’s uncommon here.
One of the things I did before the kids started going out alone was casually talk about this with the other neighborhood parents, mostly at the park, to get a sense of how they were thinking about it. They mostly said they thought kids should be more free to go places and the reason they didn’t let their kids were either that they had really young kids or that they thought other adults would report them or otherwise cause issues. This meant that once our kids were out alone a decent fraction of the adults who might see them knew what was going on and that it was ok.
Our kids also went to school alone in first grade, and that was quite uncommon here in Germany. In fact, when our kids were five, we let them go alone to kindergarten, and that was quite unheard of, and we got some pushback—specifically the kindergarteners were not willing to send them back home afterward. The kindergarten was very close by, with no street crossings, and less than five minutes to go. We were not worried about the authorities and I’m not sure we should be.
What do you think about the absurd standards for supervision of children? Or rather: How do you deal with the headwinds you encounter—if you do?
A third grader (9y) walking to school alone is reasonably normal here, and if anything went wrong in the morning before leaving she could have come in and woken me. This particular situation doesn’t seem like one with much risk of conflict with authorities.
On the other hand, at 7y she was the first in her class to be walking to school alone, and we were the first parents (in institutional memory, not ever) to tell the school our kindergartner could walk home with an older sibling (2nd grade at the time). And they’ve gone to the park by themselves at ages where that’s uncommon here.
One of the things I did before the kids started going out alone was casually talk about this with the other neighborhood parents, mostly at the park, to get a sense of how they were thinking about it. They mostly said they thought kids should be more free to go places and the reason they didn’t let their kids were either that they had really young kids or that they thought other adults would report them or otherwise cause issues. This meant that once our kids were out alone a decent fraction of the adults who might see them knew what was going on and that it was ok.
Our kids also went to school alone in first grade, and that was quite uncommon here in Germany. In fact, when our kids were five, we let them go alone to kindergarten, and that was quite unheard of, and we got some pushback—specifically the kindergarteners were not willing to send them back home afterward. The kindergarten was very close by, with no street crossings, and less than five minutes to go. We were not worried about the authorities and I’m not sure we should be.