"I'm terrible at organising my kids' after-school activities. We do almost nothing."

I was a latchkey kid in the ’80s and it was fabulous. I would come home from primary school on the bus, let myself in and the house was mine. I felt so wonderfully grown up. I didn’t do many things wrong, really. I climbed up to get some of the chocolate my Dad hid (badly) on top of the freezer. I watched possibly more TV than I was meant to. But mostly I was responsible.

Is it naive to think it was a simpler time? We roamed the neighbourhood with the other local kids, rode our bikes or rollerskated on our suburban streets, played with our pets and sometimes, literally climbed trees.

The amount of times I find myself barking to my kids “Stop with all the screens! Go outside and climb a tree!” and they just look at me blankly as if I’ve suggested they have a conversation with a dining room chair.

I was recently in a park with this great tree for climbing. The branch was low to the ground and went horizontal; you could almost just step up and walk along it. I noticed a woman with her kid whose arm was in a sling, accompanied by a guy in a suit. We struck up a conversation and she told me that her son had fallen out of the tree and broken his arm and now she had her lawyer who was going to try and sue the local council.

I thought this was excessive. So much for climbing trees.

What kids do after school has certainly changed. Now that us helicopter parents have hovered in to land, it’s all about after-school activities at which I am uniformly terrible at organising. While some of my kids’ friends have parents and carers ferrying them to multiple activities every week and sometimes even more than one per day, we do almost nothing. My kids take after their parents, and that means they thrive with some spare time to just hang around at home.

Now they’re getting to the age where they can almost do this unsupervised - we’re a way off that still but I’m starting to plan ahead, to think about what systems I will put in place to make sure they’re safe and I’m not freaking out.

Technology is the best like that. My two oldest kids have phones (the eldest is 19 and has had one for years so it’s not like I have to check in with him, but I always found that having a way to contact him helped ease that transition towards independence. Now I’m most likely to text him to ask him to pick up his siblings from school if he’s not at uni or working at Mamamia), and I make good use of them to keep track of where everyone is and what their needs/plans/wants might be.

Phones have definitely made things easier for us when the kids are out of the house, and now Telstra Smart Home has eased the transition to having kids at home in the arvo, whether we have a friend, relative or carer home with them or not. I can have indoor cameras in my family area to see who's doing their homework and who is on the iPad instead. I can put a sensor on the gate and/or front door and get a text message when someone arrives home. I can have cameras on the gate to see if they came home with a friend. I know one guy who puts a sensor on the fridge because he knows his kids will always go get a snack and it comforts him to get that text message that says their home.

I also know one family with teenagers who puts a sensor on the liquor cabinet and has received a text at all times of the day and night to tell him someone was in there! Sneaky.

Different strokes for different folks. Which is what appeals to me most about the Telstra Smart Home. You can customise it to suit your needs and the needs of your family. Because when it comes to kids home alone, knowledge is power.

How do you ensure your kids are safe when you're not around? 

This content was created with thanks to our brand partner Telstra Smart Home.