My kids are old enough to be left home alone now for very short periods of time. It’s a game changer, and the biggest parenting level up I have experienced since the day the youngest went to Kindergarten.

Driving to the paint store without grumpy kids in tow this weekend brought back memories of my own childhood spent at home without supervision.

At some point in her long struggle to find childcare my mother decided that my sister (19 months younger than me) and I were old enough to be home alone all summer while she worked. My brother (5 years younger than me) was consigned to several more years of sad summer daycare situations.

Those summers spent home alone with my sister are some of the best summers in my memory. We were too young to get jobs, we weren’t responsible for our brother. I think we had some chores to complete, and we had to move sprinklers around for my mom all day but that was it.

Here are my main memories from those summers:
1. Doing cartwheels in the living room and listening to Jewel’s Pieces of You album over and over and over.
2. Watching The Sound of Music every day.
3. Watching My Best Friend’s Wedding every day (this was the summer after the The Sound of Music summer).
4. Accepting the religious pamphlets proffered by the Witnesses who came to the door one day, and then spending the next several hours meticulously altering the pamphlets into “The Monkey Bible.”

Other kids–perhaps the types of kids who enjoy leaving the house and doing things–probably wouldn’t retain such fond memories of a boring summer spent at home with their mother’s CD collection and no video game console in sight. But I still think back very fondly on those summers.

I hope my own kids enjoy their freedom from supervision as much as I did. I am certainly enjoying not supervising them!