I Got Called Out For Leaving My Kids Home Alone For Two Nights. I Stand By My Decision
kate_sept2004 | Canva “11 and 14 for 2 nights. I think not.”
Honestly, I was surprised that it took so long. A note I posted to Substack, in which I mentioned that I recently piloted leaving my kids alone for two nights, had racked up over 5,000 impressions before someone took it upon themselves to condemn me.
I’m no stranger to harsh judgment online. Most of it is slung my way by uncurious, defensive men, but every now and then a woman will pipe up to tell me what I’m doing wrong. Welcome to the Internet!
What always strikes me about these comments is the absolute confidence with which the critic asserts their opinion, paired with the total lack of context from which the critic is operating.
In this particular case — and in most cases, really — context is everything.
Antonio Guillem | Shutterstock
When it comes to leaving kids home alone, context is everything
Leaving my kids home alone for multiple nights is not a flip decision I made. They had been begging me for months to let them try a few nights alone, insisting they were ready. I sought the advice of other parents who have experience with teenagers, and I talked with my kids at length about my expectations and their responsibilities.
Do I think all 14- and 11-year-olds are ready to spend multiple nights by themselves? No, I do not. One could argue there were years leading up to this decision. So much depends on said children’s learned skills, emotional maturity, and nearby social networks.
I’ve allowed my kids to travel independently in the world since they were five years old. It started just on our block — a few houses in each direction, only on our side of the street. Now, at 11, my son enjoys a roughly 15-block radius in all directions, which means he can travel independently to the grocery store, skatepark, game store, ice cream shop, bike shop, community swimming pool, and more.
My daughter, who just started high school and will be turning 15 next month, now takes public transit to school and walks or bikes to hang out with friends. Today, on one of the many random days our public school system has decided not to offer school, she plans to bus downtown with her besties. Apparently, Raising Cane’s chicken fingers are worth the 1.5 hours round trip.
I said they travel independently, but perhaps it’s more accurate to say they mostly travel interdependently.
They are very often in the company of friends, and within a certain radius, we know enough neighbors that there are multiple houses on multiple blocks whose doors they can knock on if they need help.
When my daughter was five, she defied my instructions, as she was prone to do, and wandered down to the corner of our block, the one that sits on a busy street. She was two houses beyond her radius, and she had been very explicitly warned not to travel that far, especially in that direction. Our neighbor across the busy street saw her twirling gleefully around a bus stop pole and texted me to let me know. As I hurried down our front steps, my daughter materialized in our front yard, a hint of mischief in her eyes. She thought she had gotten away with something.
“Why were you down at the bus stop?” I demanded. Her smug look vanished.
“How did you even know that?” she asked. (This is why I miss five-year-olds. Even when they try to be sneaky, they can’t help but give themselves away.) I told my daughter I had a secret eye that could see up and down the street even when I was in the house. (This is another reason why I miss five-year-olds. One can convince a five-year-old of such things.) She kept within her radius after that.
In the aforementioned Substack note, I described how my 11-year-old son sought the assistance of our next-door neighbor when a hinge on our front door ripped from the frame, leaving the door hanging at a precarious angle. This, of course, happened while I was gone, traveling for work, and they were on their own. But I didn’t even hear about it until I returned home. Our neighbor fixed the hinge, and that was that.
Teaching our children independence is important, yes. I’ve been intentional about this, perhaps even more so since becoming a single mom. They say necessity is the mother of invention; I say necessity is also the mother of teaching kids to do things for themselves. Both my children can cook a limited repertoire of meals (quesadillas, scrambled eggs, cheese toast, pasta), get themselves to and from school, pack their own lunches, and do their own laundry.
Interdependence vs independence
Photodrive Studio | Shutterstock
But, as I’ve said before, in teaching independence, I never want to lose sight of interdependence.
The thing is, when I left town, I didn’t really feel like I was leaving my kids alone. We know over a dozen neighbors on our street. I organize an annual block party to maintain these connections and last year hosted a neighborhood holiday potluck. My kids have all these neighbors’ phone numbers and have been inside at least six of their homes. I alerted my neighbors that my kids would be home alone and asked if they could be on standby “just in case.”
In case of what? Who knows? Only a week before I left for my work conference, I heard a terrifying story from an acquaintance that involved a man with a hammer and pitchfork breaking into their home.
She was there with her kids, whom she sent out the back door to their neighbors’. The man was clearly in the throes of a mental health crisis, and she managed to talk him down enough to gently coax the hammer and pitchfork from his grasp. They were in the kitchen, and as he got riled up again, he swiped a large butcher knife from the counter. At that point, she fled to join her kids next door. The man somehow ended up on her roof, waving around the butcher knife; the police eventually managed to coax him down.
So yeah. I guess that could happen. But by my rough calculations, there’s a 99.99% chance that it won’t.
The woman who condemned me online proceeded to assert: “It’s all good until it’s not.” It’s hard to disagree with that statement. Also, doesn’t it kind of apply to life in general?
Weighing the risks
What drives me the most nuts about people with rigid notions of what kids should or shouldn’t be doing is the distorted perception of risk.
These days, parents spend more time shuttling their kids in cars to school and extracurricular activities than parents of any previous generation; meanwhile, it’s fairly common knowledge that car accidents are a leading cause of death. Driving our kids around is, quite literally, one of the riskiest things we can do.
Given that there was less than a 0.01% chance that my kids would encounter a hammer- and pitchfork-wielding intruder while I was out of town, I wasn’t sure if I should share this story with them. I didn’t want to unnecessarily freak them out. But I was also curious to hear their thoughts on how they would react in such a highly unlikely scenario. My kids were glib about it. They said they’d just escape out the back door or through their bedroom windows, then run through the hole in the hedge to our neighbor’s house.
Then I asked what they would do if they found a spider in the house. They said they would run away screaming until I came home.
So yes, we all carry irrational fears. Yes, anything can potentially happen. It’s always all good until it’s not. But whenever possible, I choose trust — trust in my instincts, trust in my children, and trust in my community.
Eleven and 14 for two nights? If we’re talking about emotionally mature kids embedded in a neighborhood who have been taught to navigate the world independently and interdependently, I think so.
Kerala Goodkin is an award-winning writer and co-owner of a worker-owned marketing agency. Her weekly stories are dedicated to interrupting notions of what it means to be a mother, woman, worker, and wife. She writes on Medium and has recently launched a Substack publication Life Beyond Marriage.
