How Old

Years ago I was chatting with an acquaintance who was a single parent and for no particular reason I asked her at what age she would feel comfortable leaving her daughter at home alone for a quick errand. She said 14. My jaw dropped. Anyway, all kids are different, and there's certainly no one right age for any of these things, but the idea that it'd be illegal to leave a 9 year old home alone briefly is just insane to me. I wasn't one, but I grew up in the latchkey kid era, and more than that we all just prowled the neighborhood at that age looking for mischief. I'm sure my independent outdoor world was not quite as big as I remember, but we definitely had a lot of unsupervised time. You know, go out and play.