The minimum age to ride a ferry without an adult?

What age should kids be allowed in public w/o parents?

• I have widened my sons radius since he first started becoming interested in playing outside. Around 3-5 it was strictly with me or dad and usually in the front yard. Around 6 he made two friends, an 8 year old and a 7 year old. So he got a 3 house radius and was required to check in. At 9, him and his friend Adam now 11 will ride bikes to school. It's actually 3 of them, (they pick up this 10 year old named Justin on the way) the ride is less than a mile all side walks until you get to the school, but that cross walk has a guard. But sometimes my son will ask me if he can ride to the liquor store with Justin. Or yesterday he asked if he could ride to the basketball gym with Justin. I tell him he's too young and if he needs something I will take him, but it seems like he's searching for independence. What age did you start to allow your kids to go out in public without an adult? Like to a nearby store, shopping center, park, beach, etc? What kind of rules did you implement? Thanks.

• Answer:

  In today's world, there is an irrational fear of child abductions by strangers, which are actually quite rare. You sound like a free range parent (http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/), one who actually allows her child to have some independence and learn how to be on their own. I think what you have been doing is great, loosening the reigns a little bit at a time. For me, it would depend on how far those places are from home. My oldest child is nine. He rides his bike around the neighborhood with some other kids all the time. As long as they check in periodically and let me know if they're going into one of their houses, he's good. I allow him to ride his bike to and from cub scouts, which is about five blocks from our house and across one busy road. He does okay with that. But I don't think I would allow him yet, at only nine, to go to a store. Not yet. However, he is my oldest and is the oldest one in his group. I think that you might want to try letting him go and see how he does. Give him a curfew, like he has to be home in one hour, and hold him to it. If he's with older boys, that could be a good thing, but it could also be a bad thing (one of my brothers was always the scapegoat of his friends and they could always convince him to do things he shouldn't be doing and then he'd get into trouble). Good luck. It's hard to know how much freedom to give them.