One in four U.S. children are latchkey kids. Here’s what parents can do to minimize their risk.

By Sara Solovitch

e="font-size: x-small; font-family: Verdana;">Seven years ago, when Natasha Johnson went to work at a temporary employment agency, she came to grips with the idea of her 8-year-old daughter, LaShea, being home alone after school. She grilled LaShea on the rules: Come right home after school; never answer the door; don’t peek through the curtains; don’t even answer the phone until you hear the code – one ring, a lengthy pause, then another ring.

e="font-size: x-small; font-family: Verdana;">Johnson also went one step further. She had LaShea collect missing children cards – those mass-distributed postcards that arrive courtesy of the Postal Service – the way that other kids collect Pokeman cards.

e="font-size: x-small; font-family: Verdana;">“I wanted to make her see the face of a child that didn’t make it home one day,” Johnson says, “to show her that even people who have houses with fences around them can still have missing children.”

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"Home alone, most kids spend their time watching TV – up to 1,500 hours a year (compared to spending 900 hours per year in school). They also perform poorly in school, compared to their supervised peers." – Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory report

A couple of years later, Johnson became a certified testing administrator for a computer company, and LaShea was put in charge of her 2-year-old sister – bathing, feeding and comforting her – in the hours between 3 and 6 p.m.

e="font-size: x-small; font-family: Verdana;">“I know that’s a big responsibility to put on a child, but I could trust her,” says Johnson, who now works at a childcare facility. “People would tell me they came to the door and nobody was home. And I knew for a fact that she was there.”