Underground Ethics: A Subway Series. Part III: Would You Let Your Kid Ride the Train Alone?

I think it's fine. I started taking the public bus alone to school at age 8 and by 9 I was on the subway (we're talking about a time when the city wasn't as safe as it is now, too). Albeit, it was only to and from school, but it sounds like this wasn't much more than that, and the mum knew what was going on etc. Do I think that was a little young? In retrospect maybe, but it did give me a sense of confidence and independence. I also didn't have much of a choice. Both my parents worked full time, I didn't have a nanny or a driver, and for some reason the private school buses had been ruled out, yada yada yada. I thank them now even though I think I was a bit nervous back then. A parent knows his/her child better than anyone else (at least before the wee one is a teen), so maybe we should leave this kind of thing to the discretion of each individual parents and his/her child. I would say, too, that I probably have no idea what I'm talking about (YET) since I don't have one of my own (YET).

Being that my son is only two, the very idea of letting him out of my sight even for a millisecond scares me to death. But having grown up in NYC I remember it being fairly common for kids to hop on the bus or the subway for school. As emmabliss said, there wasn't much of a choice. I agree that listening to your child's desires and respecting them are two of the key ingredients in excellent parenting but to do that you also need to know your child and have confidence in the way you raised them. I love that this mom had a plan and that it ended in 45 mins. If my son were armed with some money for a cab and a cell phone and swore to text me every ten mins for an hour I'd probably let him do it. Sadly, bad things happen to all people all of the time and we can't protect our children forever.

It's fine. I walked to school and back and never had any trouble. If I'd saved from my pocket money sometimes I'd treat myself to a bus halfway there. Paedophile attacks are vanishingly rare. The chance of anything happening to her kid is effectively zero.

Let's not raise a generation of people who get lost because they never developed the skill of finding their way, who never developed the habit of independent thought, who are scared of everyone.