We left our 7- and 9-year-old kids alone while we went out to dinner in a foreign country. It was one of the best decisions we've made.
It was the summer of 2022 when my family of four descended, via bus and train, from the relatively temperate and isolated peaks of Switzerland into a hot, crowded, Italian summer. My Pacific Northwest children, then 7 and 9, were not built to handle heat. When I pulled out my camera on a crowded ferry my daughter let her head loll back and moaned, "Document my misery!"