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If your children must come home from school by his or herself, you are among a growing trend in our society of working parents who may have to struggle for after-school child care.  In fact, 17% of kindergarteners through eighth graders spend time after school in self-care at least once a week.

Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends adult supervision for children under the age of 11 or 12, for many families this isn’t possible.  When faced with this situation, maturity should be the determining factor in whether a child should be left alone.

A very important factor in your child’s overall safety when coming home from school alone is whether he/she is coming into a SAFE home.  With the number of burglaries, home intrusions, and predatory criminals lurking, you want to ensure your home is thoroughly safe and free from an intruder potentially being in your home when your child arrives home alone.

A home security system is one way to be immediately alerted should there be any type of security issue at your home such as a burglary, fire, panic alarm or duress holdup.  Your alarm company would notify you immediately as well as dispatching the police to your home.  A security system alleviates much of the stress parents may feel about having their child come home by themselves.  I will vouch that a solid security system (and company) can relieve some of the tension a parent may start to feel around 3-4:00 p.m. when they know their child should be arriving home.  Knowing your home and children are protected can give you a tremendous amount of peace of mind.

I have had a security system for over 20 years.  My children were 9-10 years old when I let them come home from school by themselves.  However, I had a fairly flexibility schedule and would either be there prior to their arriving home or shortly thereafter.  Even at that young age, once my kids started using the security system I knew they would be fine.  In fact, over the years - they have not had problems that I can recall with tripping the alarm or making mistakes.

Here are a few reasons to have a security system protecting your children when they come home by themselves:

1.  You know they are walking into a safe house.  If there had been a burglary, you would’ve been notified right away by your alarm company and the police dispatched to your home.

2.  Once they are inside the home, have established rules that they don’t leave the house.   Have them set the alarm for HOME,  lock the doors, do homework, read, or watch TV until you get home.

3.  The security system has both a panic button feature which sets off an audible alarm to immediately call for the police and a duress holdup alarm which is used if you are forced into your home by an intruder and told to shut off the alarm.  By entering the duress code - you shut off the alarm and it sends a silent, holdup alarm to the 24-hour monitoring center to get the police to your home.

4.  A feature I offered to homeowners when I was a security consultant was a paging alert.  When the child came home from school and entered their code to turn off the alarm, it automatically sent a page to mom or dad’s pager.  Today pagers are probably obsolete, but check with your alarm company to see if they have something similar that is set up with cell phone texting.  Or maybe part of the rule is they call mom/dad once inside the home.

Before you begin to let your child come home from school alone or leave for school in the morning, have a family conference to discuss the arrangements and make sure everyone knows what the rules are.  Make sure your child knows about staying safe in and around your home, fire safety, and of course, internet safety.

Once again, if you don’t already have a security system for your home, check into what it would take to protect your home and family.  With a security system both you and child will feel safer, have less stress, and more peace of mind just knowing everyone is walking into a safe home!

To your peace of mind and safety!

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