Letting kids walk to school alone

[sbehr]

I read Robin's and Alena's recent posts about leaving kids at home alone and it made me think of this question. At what age do you all think is OK for kids to walk/ride bicycles to school rather than being dropped off at school? For this example the school is less than a mile away from the children's home, they only cross one neighborhood street

Comments

[clarkger]

For me, it depends on the actual walk itself. We live 1.5 miles from school and never, no-how, will P walk it. It's on a windy, twisty, mountain-type road with lots of blond spots. Totally unsuitable for walking.

Also "unsuitable" IMO are quiet, suburban-type streets where there is little/no foot or car traffic. It's too easy for some sicko to snatch a kid off the street there because no one is looking.

I walked home from school alone in the latter half of 1st and all of 2nd grade. It was about half a mile, on busy suburban streets -- lots of people milling about and lots of kids walking to/from school. I would be okay with P walking under those conditions now. I do see kids in our town walking to the "in-town" school, which is on Main Street. The kids zoned for that school live in town, which means on streets with foot traffic and sidewalks and where there are always people around. For me, safety has as much to do with having people around as it does with have car-safe places to walk.

[anonymous]

The boys are definitely walking with a lot of other children. Most of the kids in our neighborhood walk or ride their bikes to school. They are on residential roads with sidewalks the whole way. We also know most of our neighbors and three of them don't work so the boys could always go there if they needed something. Dave is going back to work next week and I will go back to taking them to my sister's house before school so it won't be an issue then. I just wanted to get your opinions.

Thank you for all your comments.

[sbehr]

This was me writing obviously.