You should check your local laws (your point #4). Some counties seem to have very strict laws on unsupervised children and construct a child protection case very fast, which might be a reason against that.
I generally never taught my children (same age as yours) to distrust people. They know not to get into cars of people they don't know, but that's about it. The rationale is that it's a lot more realistic of a child getting lost or hurting themselves and needing help - and people wanting to help them - than all potentially bad things that could happen to them. At least here in germany, the statistics are way in favor of being optimistic than being pessimistic - most kidnappings are from divorced parents here. Last time a child got lost in my part of town - not kidnapped, just lost for an evening - was over 25 years ago, according to our local police.
My kids are free to roam the streets around the house and locations that they know for sure - after telling me where they'll go and when they'll be back -, but I made sure that they know my phone number by heart first. The radius is around 3km for the farthest friend, which they take their scooter for. They are not allowed to take the bike any further than just around the house for safety reasons, because they are not yet behaving safe enough in terms of traffic safety.
My oldest has started using the bus to one of his hobbies now as well. I printed a bus map for him, drove with him both ways once and taught him how to read the map in case he gets lost - which happened right on his first solo tour due to a technical problem and the bus had to take a detour. He also got a cheap mobile phone for those tours, which made him feel a lot safer and came in handy then.
And that's also about as far as I go for technical supervision. In case of a real emergency, I could track the phone from my cell phone provider, but in the end, I trust him to make the right choice for problems and talk to people he feels ok to ask for help.
TLDR: make sure your child is okay with the level of independence and that you feel safe enough that they can handle it. If not, work on how to build that trust in you and your children.
Over the last hundred years here, there's been a clear trend down in how far kids can wander at a given age. I think a lot of this comes from the demographic transition: with fewer kids and lower child mortality, previously acceptable risks become less so. On the other hand, I think it's really good for kids to learn how to be independent, and going where you want is an important component.
Let's say we started allowing our two older kids (7y and 5y) to wander farther from the house: what are the risks?
I think the biggest risk is cars. When my kids were learning to walk I taught them to stay out of the street, and more recently we've been practicing crossing. They're now to the point where I can tell them "cross when you think it's safe", and almost all the time they do it correctly. Unfortunately, "almost" isn't good enough here: they need to have the skill completely solid before I'm happy for them to do it unsupervised.
In cases where they don't have to cross any streets alone, like walking to school or walking around the block, as long as I know they're going it's fine. But let's say that in a few months, perhaps around when they're 8y and 6y, they're ready to cross our neighborhood streets together. They could potentially walk to the playground, linear park, and various friends houses, all within a few blocks. What are the risks then?
Potentially they could:
- Get lost.
- Get hurt to where they need help.
- Get kidnapped.
- Get stopped by the police or others, who might think they're too
young to be out on their own.
I don't think any of these are very likely: they're generally cautious and have good judgement, and if something did go wrong they'd only be about 1/8mi from the house.I do wonder whether technology might mean we could give them more freedom for a given level of safety, however, with a cell phone or GPS watch? Something where they could contact us if they needed help, and we could see where they were. Has anyone tried anything like this?