I remember being 9 years old as a latch-key kid. Mom was an attorney, not too far away, but working. Dad a physicist at Stanford. We lived about 5 blocks from school. I had a key around my neck on red yarn. I'd come home, get a yogurt from the fridge, and read in my room until my parents came home. I'd call them sometimes. I'd have my 3.5 years younger brother as part of the bargain sometimes. So it goes.

I started letting my then 8 year old spend upwards of an hour alone at home one and a half summers ago. The rules were laid out. No answering the door, or the phone. If you need me, here's my cell number. Yes, you may play on the computer, but within these limited websites. She was trustworthy. I was comfy. It was good.

I'm ready to let her, now to be 10 in a week and a half, run short errands, perhaps have a key to the house and let herself in if I'm not home and the neighbor carpool brings her home, and the like. Yet a month ago I got an interesting call. My daughter plays an instrument. She has for a year and a half now. I've dropped her off for lessons the entire time. I've dropped her off for ballet class for even longer, no big deal. I watch her in the door, and there she is, fine. The call said that my daughter didn't know where her lesson was supposed to be for her instrument. She'd gone to the front desk to, appropriately, ask where her teacher was to be found this time (it was a make-up lesson, it wasn't in the usual location within the school). The voice on the other end said to me "and let me take this opportunity to remind you of our drop off policy - you may not leave them here until they are 12".

My mature child is being punished (as are we) for taking the appropriate step of asking the front desk of where her teacher was.

I'm not asking the school to babysit her. I'm asking her to take care of herself, within the safe confines of a school of music and art, where she knows the teacher.

Was I too young to take care of myself? Or have we gone too far in the other direction of being overly cautious?

It is physically impossible for me to care for my other children and still hang out at the music school while she has a two hour ensemble class. Last summer, when she was nine, I though she could handle herself, along with a mature friend, in the atrium, during lunch between her two art camps. I received an e-mail telling me that I owed $40 for the lunchtime childcare of my daughter between AM and PM camps for the duration of the camp.

I find this lack of faith in our youth sad. I find this basis for litigation in our society sad - for I must assume that this is what drives the necessity for a babysitter for 9 year olds in a safe environment.

So what is it? Too lenient? Or overly cautious???