@Jane – ha! I keep thinking my kids’ desire to not be smelly at school will kick in, but so far, nope. If baths and showers happen, I need to push them to happen.

In PA, I don’t think there any laws regarding leaving kids home alone. (Cue Macaulay Culkin’s scream) I’m not sure if this is good or bad, I do know that my oldest will absolutely seize the day when my husband and I finally allow her to stay home unsupervised. She was born to be a first-born.

Yes, I know a mom – not dropping names here – who’ll just let her kids rinse off at the Y shower after swim lessons and call that clean enough. She may actually make her kids take a bath or shower the next day, though, but you’ll have to ask her to confirm.

Jane – we just started doing this toward the end of Grade 5, when he was turning 11. First, it was for like 10-15 minutes at a time, if say my husband had the other kids and I wanted to run to the store and buy milk. Now, it’s up to about an hour or so alone. All told,we were out of the house on our hike for 2.5 hours. My nanny was in the house, in her room, for about an hour and 45 minutes of that. The other 45-50 minutes, my oldest was in the house on his own. We went through a lot of safety “training” and what-if scenarios with him before we started doing this, and he’s had to prove that he is responsible in other ways. He does not have his own phone, but that isn’t an issue when he’s in the house. We’ve also allowed him to go some places on his own – he must call when he arrives – and bigger differences if with a group of friends (safety in numbers). Perhaps when my own 4th child turns 11 (at which point my eldest will be almost 22 – gah!!!!), we’ll be letting him do even more.

LOL!

@SHU- excellent – here’s to great weekends!

@ARC – it is an adjustment, for sure. Though I still think 0 to 1 is the lifestyle change. Everything else is just juggling.

@Jane- this is a good question. Maybe it’s own topic for a blog post. We’re not quite there yet either, though I suspect I’d allow my 8-year-old more latitude if he were the youngest of 4, rather than the oldest of 4. I’m still in little kid mode where we need to always be around.

@Raki- this implies there is a nightly bathtime… We are not nearly that clean and organized 🙂

@Connie – my 6-year-old slept with several mini snickers bars in his pocket at night. They melted. Yuck.