DS9 (will be 10 in Sept) rides the bus to my grandma's after school, and stays there for a couple of hours until DH or I get off work. Grandma lives in a very small town, maybe 500 people. We live out in the country, on a pretty busy road, so he has been having a ball going to neighbors houses (there are several kids his age in a one block radius of Grandma's house), and riding bikes and scooters up and down the street and around the block. Grandma is 85, though still gets around well, and my uncle and cousin, both bums, are there, so there's not a lot of supervision, but there's always someone around.
In this little town, there is one business, a convenience-type store, they sell hamburgers and gas, and miscellaneous stuff. It is about 50 yards or so from Grandma's. You cross a railroad track, and a fairly busy 2 lane road, to get to it.
He and I were sitting on the porch last week, and I asked him if anything exciting had happened that day. He said one thing, that he got to go to the store by himself. My cousin wanted a coke, so he gave DS money to buy them each one. I asked if he had looked both ways, he said he had, and that it was fun going alone. I told him that's great, it sounds like he did a good job, but I would really rather he not cross that street by himself until he's a little older. He said okay, and that was that.
I have this horrible fear of him getting hit by a car, so I'm not sure if I'm just feeding into my phobia, or if I'm being reasonable. Opinions?
I was going to post the same exact thing. I would have let my dd at age 10 do that, but my ds who is now 10, no way.
When I was 10, my uncle used to send me to the store by myself to buy him cigarettes
I was 9. At the same age I used to walk to the grocery store, do all the grocery shopping, called her from the store before I was ready to check out, she would drive down and pick me up. I LOVED grocery shopping...then . We lived in a town of about 10,000 people, the grocery store was downtown, about 6 blocks from our house.
I remember walking to the store to get my mom cigarettes, with a note saying it was ok for me to buy them for her and a blank check she signed and I filled out when I got to the store.
Kids in your old town still walk up to the corner store with a blank check and a permission note to buy cigarettes? I think that's what the PP was referring to...
I was going to post the same exact thing. I would have let my dd at age 10 do that, but my ds who is now 10, no way.
When I was 10, my uncle used to send me to the store by myself to buy him cigarettes
They also had the old-fashioned coke machines there, with the cokes in bottles and the metal caps. When we were pretty young, 7 or 8 maybe, my cousins and I roamed all over town picking up coke bottles off the side of the road, and taking them to the store to get the nickel deposit. That's why I feel bad about not letting DS go alone, we had some great times.
