Latchkey Kids: A Study in Frustration : After-School Alternatives Called Costly, Inadequate or Rare
There are moments in the life of a child when nothing but an audience will do.
“Hey, Mom, let me tell you about this ,” an 11-year-old might say.
“Dad, you won’t believe what happened at school today.”
Dad might not believe it, but chances are he won’t hear it--nor will Mom. At least, not right away.
That’s the predicament of latchkey children--children who walk home alone from school each day, let themselves in, maybe with a key jangling around their neck, and sit there for hours, watching television or doing homework until, finally, a conversational partner materializes with a hug.
Usually, it’s the parent--who’s exhausted and maybe more in need of a hug than the child.
Why do parents choose the latchkey alternative?
Most say live-in care is too expensive, or that after-school programs are expensive, inadequate or both. Most say they would welcome private day-care but find it rare to the point of non-existent, especially for children from 7 to 12 years old who need such a service only a few hours each afternoon. Most day-care providers say such a small amount of time just isn’t cost-effective.
Nikki Wadstein has been a latchkey child for three years. (Her parents have been divorced for nine). She’s only 11, but every night, she cooks dinner for herself and her mom, cleans house, does her homework and watches TV in lieu of having someone to share the good times with. Occasionally, she swims with a friend in the apartment complex where she and her mother live, but most of the time, she stays inside, safe but unsupervised.
‘Get to Be by Myself’
“The good points, I guess, are that I get to be by myself,” Nikki said. “The bad points are, if no one’s home, I get scared. Yeah, I mean it, I get scared. And bored! Wouldn’t you if you watched nothing but television?”
Nikki’s mother, Shay Elterman, 35, doesn’t like the situation but said, “That’s how it is.”
Elterman tried to enroll Nikki in day-care programs and was told each time, “Sorry, she’s too old.” She feels that latchkey parents are anything but apathetic--they just don’t have “reasonable alternatives.”
“That’s how it is” is a main refrain of parents who try to explain the rising numbers of latchkey children, not just in San Diego County but throughout the country.
Scores of mental-health professionals seem to be saying, “Yes, but it shouldn’t be that way,” while school officials cite the apathy that they say permeates every level of society in regard to the problem that won’t go away:
Latchkey children.
Jean Brunkow is executive director of the YMCA Child Care Resource Service in San Diego. She sees an apathy even in the compilation of figures on the numbers of latchkey children. The San Diego Unified School District officially lists more than 18,000 among its 115,484 students, or 15.6%. Brunkow said the number is “much, much higher.”
Based on figures from Sacramento, Brunkow said 18% to 23% of California’s schoolchildren fit the latchkey category. The Senate Office of Research lists the current statewide estimate at somewhere between 620,000 and 815,000 children.
57,000 to 61,000 Figured
“On an average, that would translate to somewhere between 57,000 and 61,000 for San Diego, which is probably much closer to the mark,” Brunkow said.
It isn’t just the numbers that concern Brunkow but the attitude of parents--and educators--to the growing harshness of the problem.
“These are lonely children,” Brunkow said. “They don’t have adults who can give them the companionship, the guidance, the caring that children need. They have to create their own environment at a time when information and resources--love--is desperately needed.
“To have a child come home and lock themselves in the house can be a frightening experience. Watching hours of TV is not an optimum environment for the development of healthy children. The safety issue is basic. Are these children safe? Who’s helping them?”
Dr. Gerald E. Nelson is a child psychiatrist in Del Mar and no fan of the latchkey solution.
“If an organism is stressed for a long period of time, there’s a physical response,” Nelson said. “It’s like a soldier in Vietnam--sooner or later, the body prepares for fight or flight. What happens ultimately is that the body burns out--it can no longer respond to stress. One way it responds is by numbing out, burning out, losing its stamina.
Stress Turns Off Little Bodies
“Little mammals, such as latchkey kids, have far less endurance (than adults). They can’t tolerate prolonged stress and numb out much more quickly. Their bodies turn off, and they just stop feeling in response to stress.
“All latchkey kids are scared when alone, especially in the dark. When numbing-out occurs, they become insensitive to the feelings of others. They just don’t care anymore. When Mom comes home and says, ‘Pick up your room,’ the kid has lost all receptiveness. There’s difficulty at school; they have trouble listening to the teacher. Prolonged stress interferes with learning.”
Among the latchkey children he counsels, Nelson sees a disturbing lack of conscience.
“Conscience is a hierarchy of behaviors with certain feelings attached,” he said. “Say, the kid is hungry and has no money. What’s to keep him from going to 7-Eleven and stealing a candy bar? He’s prevented from stealing only through a conscience. He develops a conscience through feelings transmitted from parents. If the parents aren’t there to communicate the feelings, the development of conscience is jeopardized.”
Nelson worries that latchkey children may end up as apathetic as the way they’re treated.
Diana Mottershaw, 40, is the mother of two daughters, 17 and 15, and the founder of Gather the Children, “a grass-roots network of family day-care providers in the mid-city area of San Diego.”
Calls for Help Rejected
Mottershaw has 20 providers watching a minimum of 100 children each day. She turns away almost as many calls, from families as far away as Oceanside and San Ysidro, who hope (in vain) to enroll their latchkey dependents in Gather the Children. (Because of funding and other considerations, Mottershaw said, the organization can’t expand beyond the mid-city.)
For eight years, Mottershaw’s girls were latchkey kids. Her own feelings of apprehension sparked the genesis of Gather the Children. She agreed with Nelson and others that the situation is hardly commendable and that apathy--on the part of parents and society in general--is a major threat.
Others, who asked not to be quoted by name, pointed to the inadequacy of after-school day-care programs that run until 6 p.m. and are often--critics charge--poorly staffed.
“A program that stops at 6 is worthless,” one mother said. “What if you work for a corporation that demands your blood each day, at least until 8?”
Martha Jane Phillips is director of child-care development programs for the San Diego Unified School District. Phillips oversees a battery of offerings, one of which dates to 1943. The others are after-school programs, funded under legislation passed in 1985. The district offers programs at 29 sites, serving more than 3,500 children. Most close at 6, Phillips said, because of money problems.
Phillips is irritated with parents who choose the latchkey alternative when many can afford after-school programs.
‘The Same as Child Abuse’
“I think it’s the same thing as child abuse,” she said. “Many want other things more--a car, a boat, whatever. They would rather have those things than get adequate care for a child.”
Mottershaw said she has heard of parents wishing to enroll their children in the extended-day magnet program offered by the schools solely because of the bus ride involved.
“The bus ride is long,” she said, “so some have connived a way to make the bus the baby sitter.”
Phillips is also irritated with the state, saying that Sacramento approved a 1% cost-of-living increase for after-school day care in 1986 but no increase for this year.
“That just won’t cut it,” she said. “But it shows where our priorities are. They aren’t with latchkey children. Sometimes, I wonder if people even care about latchkey kids.”
Mottershaw said only private programs run much beyond 6 p.m., and Gather the Children is pretty much a minority of one for private programs. Other public outlets are offered by the YMCA (extensively, throughout the county), but those are limited by the usual constraints--time, money and quality supervision. Phillips said that, in North County, after-school day-care programs are run almost entirely by the YMCA, that other school districts have yet to enter the fray.
The city’s park and recreation programs are deficient, critics note, saying that each is overseen by one person, usually a teen-age volunteer with dozens of kids under his or her care.
Kids Have Become the Parents
But apathy’s effect is much more pervasive and more insidiously psychological, Mottershaw said. “In today’s society, latchkey children have become the parents. These children are capable,” she said. “They take care of themselves, they prepare dinner, take phone messages, clean up and get themselves to and from home. Today’s child is no longer allowed to be the child they were 25 years ago--my children included.”
Mottershaw and Nelson worry about parents “who share too much” with children who aren’t ready to hear it--even though, as Mottershaw cautioned, “they appear to be.”
One mother of a latchkey child interviewed for this piece admitted to sharing details of finance--and what she does with her boyfriends--with a grade-school daughter.
Turning a dependent child into a peer can be an invitation to disaster, Nelson said. He warned that such treatment could warp the child’s emotional and sexual development and fuel a hostile mistrust of the parent.
Still, with all the concern, many experts see benefits to the latchkey experience. Dr. Larry Schmitt, a child psychiatrist in San Diego, said raising a healthy child still comes down to the quality of the parent.
“Certain children grow up quite well living the latchkey life,” Schmitt said. “The big variable is the quality of the parent.”
Schmitt feels that apathy manifests itself in the failure of society to generate quality day care, regardless of method.
“We just never put our money where our mouth is,” he said.
Tele-Pal Offers an Ear
Shay Elterman, the mother of 11-year-old Nikki Wadstein, is hardly thrilled about her daughter’s latchkey status or that of any child who shares the label. So, last year, Elterman founded Tele-pal, a 24-hour hot line targeted to latchkey kids.
Children at home alone--bored, lonely, or sad--can call Tele-pal and immediately connect with one of 35 senior-citizen volunteers who Elterman feels share much of the same sadness. She calls Tele-pal her “intergenerational connection.” (A similar hot line, not affiliated with Tele-pal, is available in Escondido.)
Elterman said her daughter has benefited from lessons of self-reliance and discipline that other children might tend to develop more slowly. But Elterman, too, senses apathy. Tele-pal is funded--albeit with verbal promises--for most of 1988 but remains in danger of folding.
“I no longer pay myself a salary,” Elterman said, “and don’t have a clue as to where the next penny is coming from. We have no money. People seem to pay lip service to the need for such a program. And believe me, there is a need. A crying need.”
They Want Someone to Listen
Mary Irvin, one of Elterman’s volunteers, shares the doom-and-gloom perception of apathy, and frustration over what to do about it. Irvin takes Tele-pal calls four hours a day and reports that most sound the same:
Sad and hopeless.
“Over and over, these little kids say, ‘I’m bored, I’m lonely, I’m sad and I’m scared,’ ” Irvin said. “All they want is somebody to listen, and somebody should, no matter how small it seems.
“I know parents have to work nowadays, or they’re divorced, but God, why can’t we help these kids? I get sad doing this job. We have a ton of scared kids out there, and aren’t doing anything about it.”
