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Blog Kindergarten: A Bossy Tutorial. Home Alone.

Did you ever ponder the age when it becomes legal appropriate to leave your child home alone?

For the answer Bossy turned to the National Child Care Information Center (NCCIC) – which is a branch of the U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services but that doesn’t stop their logo from fortuitously resembling a banana peel:

acf_logo

According to the NCCIC, the majority of states do not have any specific laws detailing the age in which a child can remain home alone. The two states that do have laws detailing the age in which a child can remain home alone are Illinois and Maryland – which is a big reason Bossy’s parents reared their children in Pennsylvania.

The Illinois law focuses on the neglected minor, which they define as:

“Any minor under the age of 14 years whose parent or other person responsible for the minor’s welfare leaves the minor without supervision for an unreasonable period of time without regard for the mental or physical health, safety or welfare of that minor.” Juvenile Court Act, 705 ILCS 405/2-3(1)(d)

Unreasonable Period of Time to leave a kid? Some would say the length of a feature movie is an unreasonable period of time. While others would argue that enrolling in a Tractor-Trailer Driving Academy five states away from your husband and kids constitutes an unreasonable period of time (Bossy’s mom: we’re looking at you.) Due to this gaping manhole of interpretation, Illinois urges its citizens to consider the following things before determining when to leave the child unattended:

  • The child should indicate a desire to stay alone.

  • The child should accept responsibility and be making decisions independently.

  • The child should be getting ready for school on time and solving problems on their own and completing homework and household chores with a minimum of supervision.

  • The child should be able to clearly communicate about events, interests, and concerns.

  • The child should know what to do when locked out, what to do in an electrical storm, what to do when inappropriately touched by a stranger, and how to fix the paddle attachment of the Kitchen Aid.

  • The child should know basic First Aid and when to call for help.

In short, the appropriate age to leave a child unattended in Illinois is
thirty-one.

The Maryland law is more to the point:

Family Law Article, § 5-801, provides:

(a) A person who is charged with the care of a child under the age of 8 years may not allow the child to be locked or confined in a dwelling, building, enclosure, or motor vehicle while the person charged is absent and the dwelling, building, enclosure, or motor vehicle is out of the sight of the person charged unless the person charged provides a reliable person at least 13 years old to remain with the child to protect the child.

(b) A person who violates this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction is subject to a fine not exceeding $500 or imprisonment not exceeding 30 days, or both.

Let’s review: 8, 13, 5-801, 30, 500, locked enclosure.

It’s confusing – sure – but upon a reread it may be worth the $500 fine because Bossy has spent at least that on a babysitter.

The 48 remaining states may not have laws, but most have guidelines and recommendations. For instance Dakota considers other factors when contemplating Child Neglect, such as if the unattended child is using a stove, or an iron, or is in fact married to the alcoholic first cousin of her new step-dad. That’s Dakota.

But in terms of finding out the guidelines and recommendations in your fine state, simply contact the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect. Which leaves Bossy pondering one final thing: There’s a National Clearinghouse for Child Abuse and Neglect? Do they give away money, magazines, or children?

This Is The NCCIC Banana Peel Site Which Has Lots Of Slippery Information About Child Neglect.

And This Is That Clearinghouse Website Whose Name They Are Now Trying To Change To Child Welfare Information Gateway As If All Of Us Wouldn’t Notice.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Some co-workers and I were talking about what age we started babysitting. Some started at age 9. I guess Pennsylvania (and VT for me) have some loose interpretations of responsible. Yeehaa! Excuse me while I go get myself a banana.

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  4. Do the websites mention anything about staying home with older teenage brothers in charge? And if that’s an ok alternative, did they take into account: throwing aerosol cans into the family room fireplace to see what happens; convincing the younger ones that there is an intruder upstairs; convincing the younger ones that said intruder just attacked you and threw you down the stairs (ketchup on the head looks astonishingly like blood to a kid); teaching young ones lots of bad language? Just wondering.

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  5. Forget staying home alone, I always cringe when I see people advertisting their 12 and 13 year old daughters as babysitters…. as if they not only can fend for themselves, but had a sudden burst of development that they can now exercise adult judgement in caring for small children….and charge twice the minimum wage for doing so……maybe I should write a post about the wacky state of babysitting.

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  6. I started babysitting at eleven, but that was back in the ice age. I can’t even fathom hiring an 11-year-old babysitter myself, now.

    Someone once told me here in Texas the law was that you could leave a 7-year-old alone for up to 3 hours. I remember it because the person was looking forward to the child turning seven so they could do just that. Shudder.

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  7. This kind of overwhelming jackassery on the part of state and federal gov’t is why I’ll never have children. In case you were curious.

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  10. Ack (that’s my new favorite sound – Ack) – the first time we left Shortman alone for an overnight trip (with the next door neighbors on alert and checking up on him every couple of hours) he decided he was old enough to stay up ALL NIGHT LONG playing video games. I’m thinking 31 is about right.

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  12. My husband is 35 and still cannot be left alone. You think I’m gonna leave him with the kids? Not. A. Chance. Can you say, TORNADO??? Yeah, that’s what it will appear hit my house when I return. From a two-hour trip.
    So in PA it is 40, right?

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  13. But does anyone say what age it is for someone to be too old to be home alone? I would really like to pass that on to my boyfriend, care of his mom’s house.

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  15. Oh, I knew you were awesome! I just love it when fortuitously is used correctly! Ironically, I’m not 100 percent sure I *spelled* it correctly. Oh well. It’ll serve me right for being a language snob if it’s wrong.

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  16. Shit. I better stop leaving the baby home alone. Does it say anything about at what age you can leave them if you put them in the doggy cage?

    (JOKING! No need to call child services!)

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  20. I was 10 when I started baby-sitting other kids and 8 when I was watching my brother. I guess it should be when you’re old enough to not set fire to the house.

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  26. Hee! That DOES look like a banana peel, I though it was at least a whole banana at a glance.
    I think here it’s 10? alone, and 12 to watch younger children. I dunno. My child wanted to stay home alone at 10, so then I started going out to the bars at night.
    She took good care of me, too.
    (I was a bad mommy, I don’t drink anymore.)

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  28. My oldest (now 14) started staying home alone at age 12; now he baby sits his two younger siblings when hubs and I need some parental alone time (or the daycare is closed).

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  30. We’ve actually hit this now. I was babysitting at 10 and yet, I’m freaked out about leaving my nearly 11 year old home alone. I can’t figure out whether I’m paranoid or smart.

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  32. Sweet Jesus! My husband was a latch-key kid in Brooklyn from the time he was 5. Now it would qualify as neglect, but his parents didn’t have a choice at the time. On the plus side, he now has an encyclopedic knowledge of classic cartoons and Planet of the Apes movies. Wait, maybe that isn’t a plus.

    As for me, my Mom would let my brother and I wander for hours at a time in the acreage behind our property. We played on railroad tracks. Sometimes we crossed paths with hunters. Oh – and there were rattlesnakes. Her last words to us before we left the house were always (cue sing-song voice), Be careful!

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  33. Hey Bossy, its interesting you should bring this up, we are constantly debating what we should do about our neighbor. I understand its hard being a single parent, but I just don’t see leaving a 7-8 year old alone watching a 2-3 year old for any period of time. There’s been periods of time (up to 2 days) when we weren’t even sure if she was home! We told our landlord about it and her van’s been there more frequently since then.

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  34. Im dying. DYING.

    This is hysterical.

    I live in NJ and now I am curious as to what laws / suggestions there are in this state as to ‘appropriate’ age & length of time to leave my child alone.

    I have been waiting for THAT day since the he was born!

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  35. The city I just moved to here in TX has a new law that you can’t leave your dog tethered outside for more than an hour. I don’t think there are any laws about kids.

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  36. Huh?

    Assuming you can’t leave your kid alone. Where do you send him/her ? To school. Where he’s gonna be approach by one of these teacher who have intimate relationship with their students – like we hear on TV all the time.

    There’s no solution!!!

    If you have one, email me. Or tell banana peel to email me. Cause I kinda want to have kids sometimes, and well…

    Oh, wait. That’s okay. Here in Canada we can leave them alone in our igloos. That’s fine !

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  39. So, 5 is too young? Even if he can make his own peanut butter sandwiches? And also help himself to the Halloween candy before his mother’s alarm goes off, thereby dying his lips and tongue brilliant blue?

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  40. Too funny. I am not surprised by the lack of a clear definition here. I mean maturity level should be accessed by the parent. Some kids take a lot longer to mature…I mean, my hubby for example, leaving him alone in our house is definitely a crime. You never know what you’ll come home to.

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  41. A couple of weeks ago my sweetie and I wanted to go out of town for the day. We have two 9-year-olds, and were wondering who we could find to keep them alive until we got home. Their 16 year old brother was an obvious (bad) choice. The qualifying question was “who will be able to handle a situation in which the police are involved?” because that is a very real possibility with those two.

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  42. Thank you for the GREAT POST!! I ran into this dilema when trying to establish if it was safe for my son to be home. Good ol’ California told me it depended on the child, the neighborhood, and the amount of time. THAT was helpful. 🙂

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  43. Lucky for us, we live on a military base. They are kind enough to provide a chart for us to refer to, regarding what age your child can play on the playground without you right there, with an older sibiling, and by themselves, stay home for 3 hours, 8 hours and overnight, etc. Seriously, this chart is 2 pages long. Let’s take all the guesswork out of this parenting thing for you.

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  44. “The child should indicate a desire to stay alone.”

    Does anyone else see a problem with this one?

    And as for the $500 fine and jail time, it’s simple: don’t lock the house. Nit-picky, but it should work.

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  45. My son started latch-keying when he was about nine. (I was too poor to afford day care anymore.) He wasn’t home alone for long as I got off work at 3:30, the school was close and had a pedestrian overpass over the only street he had to cross, and the next door neighbor was a home-schooling stay-at-home mom, so I felt pretty safe in doing it. There were a couple of small incidents, such as the time he decided he was cold and turned the heat all the way up and I came home to find the old Green Colonial furnace groaning and an inside temperature like the Mississippi Delta in a heat wave. Other than that, he pretty much did okay.

    I do feel the need to point out to Bossy in case Bossy does not already know this but there is no state of Dakota. There are, however, two states, one called North Dakota and one called South Dakota. I feel sure Bossy knows that and is just mocking the Dakota states, which I totally understand as it is a popular pastime here in Iowa to mock these states (and Nebraska and Missouri too!), but I am a hopeless pedant and can’t help myself.

    Stumbled on this blog via the web awards stupidity, where I went as a longtime denizen of Sadly,No! to vote against Dummy Funnies, cause they’re not funny and the guy that runs the place is a creep. Nice place you got here!

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  48. I am now a single mom and need to go back to work full-time, I live in Illinois. The problem I am having is I cannot afford before/afterschool care for my 9 and 10 year old. I haven’t been able to find a job that will pay me enough to afford it, even with a low-income discount (or help from the state). I was recently offered a position for a measly $9.00 hr working 7am-3:30pm. Now, after school is fine, they don’t get out till 3:30, but, they don’t start until 9am, meaning they would have to be alone from about 6:30am-8:30am. I have no family or friends in the area I live to help me. I just don’t know what to do. I’ve been looking for months for a higher paying position with no luck, and I HAVE to start working soon or we will be living on the streets, I feel I have to take the $9hr job.

    Sincerely,
    Kikideek

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  49. I have a five-year-old son and I am a single father. Do I have to take him with me every time I take the dog out to pee?

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