How old were you when your parents allowed you to travel to school by yourself?

I was about 8/9 I think , it was only a 5 minute walk

11 or 12, I think.
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Probably 8 or 9, a 1 mile walk then 3 mile bus ride.

11

My elementary want far away so they let me alone from very early age... Idk for real, maybe from ~7 or 8...

My school wasn't close by to where I lived and most probably would've taken well over 2 hours to ride my bike there so I always took the bus as a kid. I'd say I was allowed to travel independently and locally when I was around 8 though.

My school was like more than 5 minutes away so walking would've taken awhile and I was too lazy to exercise before 12th grade. My third oldest sister drove me and my other sister to school in HS when I was in 9th grade since we all went to HS then. Once I got to 11th grade I drove to school. I never walked to school. I did my exercise on a treadmill. I would've been burned out mentally though with walking to school and back cause studying took up like 4 hours of my time after going to school for 8 hours a day. So a treadmill was a better option for me. I felt pressured to study cause if I didnt I would've gotten bad grades and in big trouble with my dad. So I guess when I was old enough to drive was when I was allowed to go by myself.

I was riding the school bus in kindergarten.

Probably about 9 or 10.
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17

maybe 8?

Never. Even if I lived close enough to walk I'm not sure my mom would have let me.

When I was 7 and 8 (2nd & 3rd grade) we lived pretty far from any school, so there was a school bus that came and picked up me and the neighbor's kids. Not a rural area but definitely not urban. Even if I they had let me go by myself it would have been impossible. I did walk to my friend's house by myself though during that time. She lived very close and I would do a shortcut through the neighbor's huge backyard (horses and all that) to get to her house.

When we moved to LA, we lived like a 10 minute walk from the local elementary school (5 minute walk from the junior high). So I walked there by myself. 9 years old and in the 4th grade.

I vaguely recall occasionally going places with my older buddies when I was around 6. We were living in student housing for students with families. Our parents were grad students. We stayed on campus but sometimes we'd go to the student housing (uphill) for the regular students that have no families (dorms?). One time one crazy young student ran after me and my friend down some hill. She froze in fear and I just kept running and running.

Kindergarten. When I was 5. Was only 4 blocks.

Lived 4 miles from school so rode bus stating when I was in Kindergarten.

I think it was around 4th grade, when I was about 9 or 10. Looking out on gmaps, my typical walking route was about 1.2 miles through the main streets. Most of the times I walked home with my 2 friends at the time. And then later on, we ended up experimenting walking on an off path along the town's lagoon, which we found to be a much more enjoying walk. It's filled with ducks and geese along the path, so we will usually mess around scaring ducks and throwing rocks into the lagoon along the way. Also backyards with opened fencing will face the path, so lots of the neighbor dogs will come along to the fence to greet us, where we will pet and rub some of them. Good times and memories. But it was windy so it was about 2 miles instead. I remember end up going home later because of it and my mom getting really upset and suspicious about it after I've been doing it for almost half of the school year, so I stopped and I ended up resuming the usual route on the main streets. While my two other friends kept at the lagoon path.

Ironically now, since I've moved back into the same neighborhood, that very path is part of my usual running and dog walking route.

Can't remember, probably 8 or 9. But I do remember I didn't get eyeglasses until I was about 10, even though I've been near-sighted / legally blind my whole life. I also remember punching the crossing guard lady in the stomach when I was around 7, and then trying to make a run for it, I didn't get far (icy sidewalks ) .


We were all free-range back then. Fathers and mothers worked hard in factories and kids had to take care of themselves. There wasn't as much traffic in those days and needless to say, drivers were not distracted by cellphones.


When I was about 12 I rode my Schwinn Sting-ray 5-speed bicycle, by myself, from Franklin Park to the Brookfield Zoo (all near Chicago) using some forest paths along the Des Plaines River.


When we moved to Miami soon after, my brother, sister and I were left on our own because our mother was disabled by an accident and our father stayed in Chicago to keep working in the International Harvester factory until he retired. My sister and our mother lived with our grandma and me and my brother lived in a apartment of my grandfather's house. But our grandpa didn't really take care of us, we were pretty much on our own and we walked to Winn-Dixie and did our own groceries.


School in Miami soon bored me so a school counselor suggested I take some college courses. So I started college when I was 14, dropped out of high school at 15, took a GED test at 16 and graduated from college at 18 with a degree in computer programming. Back then we used punched cards to program the mainframe, an IBM System/370, however I did get to use the DEC PDP/11 terminals to program interactively in BASIC class.


Before I was 19 I scored a programming job with the grandson of the founder of the college I just graduated from. At first we only had an Apple II Plus but IBM PC's soon emerged and I programmed those in BASIC for capital budgets and programmed Lotus 123 spreadsheets including pie charts and bar graphs.

I was never really alone, as a young kid while going to school. I lived in a low-income apartment complex with a lot of other kids. We would travel about a quarter of a mile to a bus stop, and all wait for the bus to come. I lived too far from the school to actually take myself there. I think my best guess would probably be around 1st grade, so I would have been around 5 or 6, I think I went with my older brothers at the time. I only have a few scattered memories of that bus stop, one of them involved one of the kids lighting a firecracker in a jelly donut, which sprayed its contents all over some poor girl in a dress. Also being amazed at a handheld pacman game. We're talking early 80s here, possibly even '79. Like 40 years ago, damn... I also remember when we got a new shelter for the bus stop, all of the kids rolled the old one down the hill, it was pretty crazy to witness, and thankfully no one got hurt severely.

The first time I actually drove myself to school, was 17 when I had my driver's license. At 17 though, I was basically driving all-around Maine exploring everything.

My parents never gave a **** about me. I think I already went alone at school aged only 8 years. I can't remember my father ever picking me up at school. Non ever showed up at school for "teacher-parents" meetings. Not even when I graduated from high school.

When I got my master degree, I didn't show up for the handing of the degree to avoid the shame of being the only one without any relative showing up. To be honest, I didn't even pick up my degree up to this day. I just got a "certificate" that gives me the right to the master degree and which I can use to practice my job.

I rode the bus in kindergarten like most kids. I was 5 in 1980.