The actual age is not important. Some people are fully capable at 6, while others couldn't find their way home as middle aged adults. You must know your own kids, and what they are, or are not, capable of.

There is an annoying tendency for us to set rules that apply equally to all people based on arbitrary things like age. This is frankly ridiculous. European kids can drink beer at the age of 16 for the most part. They do not have a more serious teenage alcohol problem than we do... kids there drink in bars with adults. Our kids get drunk in extreme drinking parties with other stupid kids. We let 18 year old boys shoot little Iraqi kids, drop bombs, fly jets, and go die in the desert... but they aren't capable of having a beer? If you can't handle a beer, you have no business driving a tank.

Perhaps I ramble... but the point is that this mother seems to have judged her child correctly. She gave him enough tools. She made sure he had a map, money, and a metrocard. What is the fricking big deal here? I took public transportation to and from school from the time I was 7. We used to stay out until after dark riding our bikes... without cell phones. Parents these days are wimps... neurotic, paranoid wimps whose insanity not only eviscerates their children's self-reliance, but foists their pathetic, incapable rug rats on our society. We all wind up suffering because little Johnny never learned how to take care of himself and was raised to sue everyone who didn't mollycoddle him. Come on.

=(