Who says a 14-year-old is too young to babysit? - As a woman is cautioned by police and suspended from her job for leaving her 14-year-old son in charge of her younger child, Lucy Cavendish asks when can you leave your children home alone.
I have four children: Raymond 14; Leonard, eight; Jeremiah, six; and Ottoline, four. For years, I have paid out a fortune on babysitters. If my husband and I want to go anywhere, we usually pay vast amounts of money on getting some long-suffering sitter to look after our children. Then, last October, Raymond turned 14 and we did a dance of joy.
Lucy Cavendish with her three sons at home near Henley
A while ago, a friend of mine, a health visitor, told me that 14 is the legal age at which a child can babysit other children. This fact had been lurking in the back of my mind for a few years and so, on Raymond’s birthday, my husband and I turned to each other. “Freedom!” we said.
We didn’t go mad. We didn’t book week-long holidays to the Caribbean. We just started going out a bit more and now, in fact, my son has proved to be so adept at babysitting (his siblings prefer him to me), that we regularly leave him to look after his younger brothers and sister. We don’t go far – a local pub or dinner at a neighbour’s – but now I realise that I could have been cautioned by the police for my actions.
Yesterday, it was revealed that a mother of three, who left her 14-year-old son in charge of his three-year-old brother while she went to the shops for 30 minutes, had been suspended from her job for 18 months. The unnamed woman, who is a health care assistant in the Thames Valley area, was cautioned after police discovered that she had left her children unsupervised at home.
There is, apparently, no legal guidance on this matter. So at what age is it fine to leave your children at home in the care of an older sibling?
Jo Shapcott, the mother of two boys aged six and four, regularly leaves her children at home with a teenage babysitter. “He is 14 and seems very responsible,” she says. “It’s total madness that a mother has been suspended from her job because she left a three-year-old at home with an older brother. What kind of snooping person reported her, anyway?”
Bridget O’Reilly feels the same. “My 14- year-old daughter looks after her two younger sisters all the time. I’ve never even thought about it. I can’t imagine why anyone would have a problem with this.
“What’s a mother supposed to do? Cart a three-year-old to the shops when that child could be happy at home for half an hour with an older sibling? I go out and walk my dogs and tend the horses for two hours or more at a time and it has never occurred to me to drag my children out in to the freezing cold when their sister in more than capable of looking after them.”
It is obviously a dilemma. I also often nip out to do a school run or walk the dogs with my eldest son left holding the fort. I have always assumed that this is fine. My eldest son is a sensible child, able to look after his siblings and grown up enough not to panic if something goes wrong.
Sarah Moss, a child expert who runs an online parenting forum, thinks that this is the key. “It depends on the maturity of the child. Some 14-year-olds are very grown up and can cope with a crisis. Others might panic. I would say that it’s up to the parent, as he or she is the person who knows the child the best.”
In other words, dare I say it, it’s a case of mother knows best. ( telegraph.co.uk )
I have four children: Raymond 14; Leonard, eight; Jeremiah, six; and Ottoline, four. For years, I have paid out a fortune on babysitters. If my husband and I want to go anywhere, we usually pay vast amounts of money on getting some long-suffering sitter to look after our children. Then, last October, Raymond turned 14 and we did a dance of joy.
Lucy Cavendish with her three sons at home near Henley
A while ago, a friend of mine, a health visitor, told me that 14 is the legal age at which a child can babysit other children. This fact had been lurking in the back of my mind for a few years and so, on Raymond’s birthday, my husband and I turned to each other. “Freedom!” we said.
We didn’t go mad. We didn’t book week-long holidays to the Caribbean. We just started going out a bit more and now, in fact, my son has proved to be so adept at babysitting (his siblings prefer him to me), that we regularly leave him to look after his younger brothers and sister. We don’t go far – a local pub or dinner at a neighbour’s – but now I realise that I could have been cautioned by the police for my actions.
Yesterday, it was revealed that a mother of three, who left her 14-year-old son in charge of his three-year-old brother while she went to the shops for 30 minutes, had been suspended from her job for 18 months. The unnamed woman, who is a health care assistant in the Thames Valley area, was cautioned after police discovered that she had left her children unsupervised at home.
There is, apparently, no legal guidance on this matter. So at what age is it fine to leave your children at home in the care of an older sibling?
Jo Shapcott, the mother of two boys aged six and four, regularly leaves her children at home with a teenage babysitter. “He is 14 and seems very responsible,” she says. “It’s total madness that a mother has been suspended from her job because she left a three-year-old at home with an older brother. What kind of snooping person reported her, anyway?”
Bridget O’Reilly feels the same. “My 14- year-old daughter looks after her two younger sisters all the time. I’ve never even thought about it. I can’t imagine why anyone would have a problem with this.
“What’s a mother supposed to do? Cart a three-year-old to the shops when that child could be happy at home for half an hour with an older sibling? I go out and walk my dogs and tend the horses for two hours or more at a time and it has never occurred to me to drag my children out in to the freezing cold when their sister in more than capable of looking after them.”
It is obviously a dilemma. I also often nip out to do a school run or walk the dogs with my eldest son left holding the fort. I have always assumed that this is fine. My eldest son is a sensible child, able to look after his siblings and grown up enough not to panic if something goes wrong.
Sarah Moss, a child expert who runs an online parenting forum, thinks that this is the key. “It depends on the maturity of the child. Some 14-year-olds are very grown up and can cope with a crisis. Others might panic. I would say that it’s up to the parent, as he or she is the person who knows the child the best.”
In other words, dare I say it, it’s a case of mother knows best. ( telegraph.co.uk )
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