Politics
Mum savaged for asking if her four-year-old son can go to the shops ALONE… to give him ‘independence’
A MUM has been brutally savaged after she asked fellow parents if it was okay for her four-year-old kid to go to the shops on his own.
Ahead of his first day at Reception in September, one mum revealed she considered letting her four-year-old son walk to the nearby shop alone – and it’s safe to say no one supported this.
Getty – ContributorSafe to say, the post left many readers furious[/caption]
”We live 200 yards from our local shop, where they know DS [Dear Son],” the mum wrote in a post on the popular parenting forum, Mumsnet.
”Today, I thought about letting him go to the shop on his own.”
According to the parent, although the family lives on a busy road, there is a wide pavement and during the trip, the young child wouldn’t have to cross the road at any point.
”He’s quite sensible,” she also added.
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Whilst the kid, in her opinion, did seem ”very young”, she also described him as ”quite capable of going in to a shop and buying things on his own”.
This is something she has observed over the last year in the occasions where she sits in the car and sends the four-year-old to do the shopping with no adults around.
But as reasonable as idea might have seemed to her, fellow parents disagreed, with many believing the child was not old enough for such an activity.
”Too young not to get distracted/forget what he’s meant to be doing/not fall over on the way,” wrote one critical member.
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”Plus you would get looks and be judged.”
Someone else agreed, pointing out: ”Also he would not know how to react/respond if something even slightly untoward happened (e.g. if a well meaning stranger approached him, if someone was unkind in the shop etc).”
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After the harsh critique, the mum explained that she would watch him whilst stood at the end of their drive.
”He’s be out of sight for 50 yards, past a row of shops where people know him.
”We walk past them several times a day, and they wave to him.
”I was thinking about giving him some independence, that is all. Not sending him for gin & fags!” she responded.
This, however, left many confused, as one member put it: ”I think you are being a tiny bit pushy.
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”Why the rush to push him into doing these “independent” things.
”Fair enough if he is 7 say, but he is only 4 and not even at school.”
