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HOME ALONE

Is Your Child Ready to Stay Home Alone?

How can you help prepare them, and what signs show they are ready?

Gill McCulloch
ILLUMINATION
Published in
5 min readAug 27, 2024

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A young boy is lying on his belly in a living room, playing with Lego and looking at a book of Lego designs. The boy has short brown hair and is wearing a grey T-shirt.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Over 25 years of providing Red Cross first aid, babysitting, and home-alone classes, parents and caregivers have asked me many questions about leaving their children at home alone. This complex and contentious issue involves many considerations.

Parents and caregivers are right to take the issue seriously. Parenting is a grey area, as we all know. There are many cases where parents have been accused of neglecting their children by leaving them home alone. Some cases are more clear-cut than others.

In April 2024 in Houston, a 29-year-old mother was arrested and charged with child abandonment when she left her six and eight-year-old alone at home while she left the country to go on a cruise.

In another case, an Iowa state supreme court ruled that a mother did not commit the crime of child endangerment when she left five children ages 5 to 12 home alone while she shopped for groceries at Walmart with her baby. The court argued,

“No parent can shield a child from all risks and no evidence shows that leaving the kids home was any riskier than driving them to Walmart.”

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ILLUMINATION
ILLUMINATION

Published in ILLUMINATION

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Gill McCulloch
Gill McCulloch

Written by Gill McCulloch

I write about first aid, subjects that move me deeply and situations that make me laugh. Founder, Safe + Sound First Aid Training Ltd. gillnmcculloch@gmail.com

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