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I’ve had a couple of requests from LiveMom readers to put on more content geared towards moms who have older kids. Seems like, having a three year old and an eleven year old, that more of my parenting questions would be about the three year old, right? Not always! Sure, the three year old has most of the typical challenges that we face with raising preschoolers, but, unfortunately, the questions and concerns don’t end there. Each stage of parenting has had it’s obstacles and certainly has led me to seek out other more experienced moms, or at least moms who are having to face some of the same decisions that I am having to make, for guidance and sometimes (alright, many times) sympathy!

So, dear LiveMom readers who have kids who are well past that potty training stage, this post is for you. And maybe also for those moms who will soon be heading into the elementary and middle school years who will soon be facing these same decisions. Thankfully, I still have a few more years until I can write about being the mother of a high schooler (driving, dating, parties, oy!). Here are some issues that may be on your mind, as they are on mine:

• What age is it legal to leave a child at home alone?

Apparently, Texas has no legal age that a child needs to be to stay home alone. Many other states have laws, some starting as young as 10, while others have to be at least 12 years old to stay at home alone. Here’s a handy website to check out if you happen to be traveling and want to know what laws you are dealing with in other states. My son is eleven and has been staying home for very short amounts of time for the past year or so. We started with leaving him home while running out on a short errand, 15-20minutes. Now, he has stayed home by himself for as long as an hour or so with no problems. We have strict rules: no one is allowed in the house while we are gone, he is not allowed to play outside of the house while we are gone, and he must have his phone on him at all times since we have no home phone. Here are some basics that you can use to judge if your child may be ready to stay home alone.

• What age is it legal to leave a child alone in the car?

Did you know that a child has to be seven years old to legally be left alone in a car? The penalty if you do and get busted: Class C Misdemeanor, punishable with up to two years in jail and up to a $10,000 fee. I have just recently started to allow my son to stay in the car while I run in to do an errand. It still freaks me out thinking that  if I leave the keys in the car, a bad guy could steal him and the car, or,  if I take the keys with me, it has to be nice, cool weather to allow him to roll down the windows to let air in. Still struggle with this one….

• How old do kids have to be to legally babysit other younger children?

There is no legal age limit for a teen (or a child for that matter) to be able to babysit. Of course, there are recommendations on things to look out for in a teenage babysitter: their maturity level, interest in the children, and the closeness of the age of the kids that are being watched. Also, being CPR Certified and having had some babysitting classes also makes it a little easier to leave young kids in the care of teens. Many community centers offer babysitting certificates for kids as young as eleven who are interested in babysitting.

• Do you allow your kids to walk home from school?

Again, there is no legal age to allow your kids to walk home from school alone. My son started to walk home (with a group of his friends) in the third grade. He was mature enough and I always made sure that he had one or more kids to walk with. Walking to school has always been a different story and only this past year have I allowed him to walk to school by himself. When school releases, there is a large group of kids in the neighborhood who walk together. Safety in numbers. But in the morning, all of the walkers leave at different times so he doesn’t always walk with other kids. He has a phone now and that makes it a little easier for me to deal with. But I still worry. I remind myself that independence is a good thing.

I’ve talked with our local police about this last year and they recommended setting up safe houses throughout the neighborhood. Still need to do that. But unless you really know the other people in the hood, how do you really know they are actually safe houses?

• How strict are you with allowing access to the internet? Do you have some type of parental control on the computer or do you use the trust system with your kids?

Does this come down to just trusting your kids or installing some sort of software that blocks out those bad sites? I don’t know! Right now, our computer that my son surfs on is downstairs in the family area of the house so that we can see what he’s looking at. We have also recently set up his own login so that we can easily see what he’s been looking at. I’ve considered the parental blocking thing, but I think so far, he can be trusted.

Any thoughts to share? How do you handle these situations with your kids? Any questions that you have about raising older kids?

Posted by livemom on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 11:56 am | 1 Comment » You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.