The Latchkey

You'll have read in the paper or heard on the news a while back about the new laws relating to leaving children at home alone. Of course the law is still quite ambiguous, in that it doesn't tell us how long is an unreasonable amount of time, but it does say that it applies to children under 12 years of age.

This is one of those tricky parenting dilemmas I think. After all, you can't just turn around the day they turn 12 and say 'Right-e-oh, you're old enough to look after yourself now, I'll be back in 9 hours when I'm finished work." There has to be some sliding scale of learned independence and responsibility. So when do you start? How long is long enough?

Having a bit of a Google on this subject there seem to be a few things that we can do to teach our children this independence and responsibility without being neglectful. They include:

• Ensure it happens in a safe place, like at home, not the Jupiter's Casino carpark. Can you believe 28 children were left in their parents car at Jupiters last year?
• Set clear ground rules, like what they can and cannot do, what they can eat, what to do if someone calls by or phones and then general family rules as well.
• Make sure they know how long you will be away, how they can contact you if they need you and where they can find other phone numbers if they can't get onto you.
• Follow through - that means being home when you said you would, making regular phone calls to check they are going ok and haven't had any problems, and talking through how they went when you do get home.

It still doesn't answer the questions "How old is old enough?" and "How long is long enough?" but since when was parenting an easy task?