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Latchkey Kid Research Paper

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There are times when people talk about their childhood and tell stories of elementary school and middle school. Some stories are very positive and interesting to hear about, while others are depressing and show us how life can be rough sometimes. There are countless cases in which we see a child choose the wrong path of life and go into drugs, violence, and other negative things because the absence of parental supervision and guidance in their life. Kauchak and Eggen mention a term called "latchkey children" in their book Introduction to Teaching. This term is used to describe children who return to empty homes after they attend school, resulting in the children having no adult or parental supervision until their parents or a guardians return …show more content…

My best friend was a latchkey child, he used to go home after school to an empty house with no adult supervision from the 5th grade until the 8th grade. Prior to the 5th grade, he was an honor roll student and volunteered as a tutor for children in preschool and kindergarten. He was the ideal student, everybody knew of him and his successes at such a young age. During the 5th grade his parents had gotten new jobs due to financial issues and the presence of his parents in his personal life decreased. After school, he would return to an empty home and both of his parents would come home several hours after him. As time went by, he developed a decreased amount of interest in his academics and started focusing on other things such as meeting people afterschool. By the 7th grade, he was failing all his classes and started smoking cigarettes and his life continued to get worst. I lost contact with him after the 8th grade because I attended a different high school than him, but I still hear stories today about how he dropped out of high school and started doing more drugs. This whole experience was very depressing and changed my life completely because I lost my best friend to drugs just because he did not have an adult to take care of him after he got out of

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