I understand being protective of your children. There are good reasons for not letting your kids under 11 years old stay home alone or go in public unattended. That being said, you can’t live your life in fear of something absurdly awful happening to your child. The chance of your teenager becoming the next Jacie Dugard is so rare that it’s barely worth contemplating for even a moment. You should be able to leave your older kids unattended without something going horribly wrong. If you can’t trust them to sit in the car by themselves for less than a minute, either they need a behavioral intervention, or you’ve been watching too many TikToks where moms claim they were almost trafficked in the Walmart parking lot. 

A dad recently started a stir on Twitter after he said he doesn’t put shopping carts away because he wouldn’t leave his 17-year-old, 14-year-old, 12-year-old, 2-year-old, and eight-month-old daughters in the car alone. I understand not leaving the babies unattended, but surely the older girls can watch them for the time it takes to put a shopping cart away?