After School Programs Safe Kids Campaign Parents have few guidelines to help them determine when and whether they can trust their children to take care of themselves and to handle emergencies, experts say. The average amount of time spent unsupervised by adults ranged from 47 minutes for children ages 5 to 7 to one hour and 15 minutes for children ages 11 and 12. High-risk behavior is another concern, especially as children reach adolescence, experts say. While Parents Work . Though parents are vulnerable to criminal prosecution should a young child left home alone become seriously injured, abandonment and neglect laws generally do not set a clear age threshold for leaving a child unsupervised at home.
New Jersey has an open-ended approach to analyze abandonment or neglect claims.
The unofficial rule of thumb is that leaving a young child alone doesn't become an issue unless he or she is injured, killed or burns down the house, Fraser said. Death, injury rates higher Nearly 4.5 million children 14 and younger are injured in their homes every year. Most unintentional injury-related deaths occur when children are out of school and unsupervised, according to the National Safe Kids Campaign, an organization dedicated to the prevention of unintentional childhood injury, headquartered in Washington. The University of Michigan study, which found that the number of unsupervised children ages 5 to 12 increased from 1.8 million to 3.4 million between 1984 and 1990, did not draw conclusions on the social impact of children home alone. Parents also were more likely to let shy, withdrawn children remain unsupervised than those who were aggressive and needed supervision.