Home Alone ain't always fun

Kids who stay at home for long spells of time do not always have a ball, as the impish 8-year old, Macaulay Culkin does, in the hilarious Home Alone series.

Termed latchkey kids, they often have to battle issues like loneliness, ennui, fear, low self-esteem, and depression, amongst other things. The phrase, latchkey kids, coined in the 1940s—children returned to empty homes, aptly summed up these kids, who often reached their homes with the home-keys strung around their necks.

Now it’s only fair that parents work hard to maintain their existing standard of living and socio-economic status, vis-à-vis the Joneses. Towards this end, it is imperative for them to be outside and achieve set goals, targets, and objectives. On the other hand, the other school of thought concentrates on the psychological impact this may have on their offspring.

A child, school bag in tow, rushes back after school—only he is stopped dead in his tracks, because he remembers that it would be an empty home that awaited him, and he couldn’t fly back into the reassuring arms of his parents. Of course, if there were grandparents at home, the kid would have been only too happy to come home skipping; however, in these times of nuclear families, this scene is an almost rare one.

So the kid ambles along, taking in all that he can see(which is not much, considering the concrete jungles that abound on his way back). One minute later, he makes a spot-decision, hails a three-wheeler, and rushes back to his empty place.

What follows next is every parent’s horror story – it could be anything - the pre-teen kid experiments in smoking / inhaling pot / gulping some sips from the cabinet full of intoxicating liquids / watching some blue movies / virtual sex. He could be joined in by a couple of other friends.

While the above could be a tad too hypothetical, it is not altogether impossible. Children, the impressionable young minds that they are, often give in to peer pressure, or rebel against the parents, whom they feel are not giving them adequate time. You can’t blame them though.

While loads have been said about latchkey kids, I guess working parents have to only ensure that they extend the big “S” word to their children—SUPPORT.

So the child knows that even if the parents are not home, they are just a phone away.

And after a family dinner, at least one of the parents, if not both, does make it a point to tuck in the child to sleep.

It’s not all that bad.