honeypig.....I am with you one the fact that children are more capable of household task than many people realize. When I was 14yrs. old, I could totally clean a house, prepare a full meal and do more exacting tasks like canning, milking, making butter and caring for animals....(as I knw that many farm children are).....
I. also, began babysitting for other people, in the neighborhood,at 12yrs.. in the evening hours....(my parents were available, by phone if any problem ever came up....which, fortunately, it never did....
LOL....when it came to my own children, in their early teens...till later teens...I always had the supervision of older persons in close attendance. I had a college age person to drive them around. after school...and, that person's mother was there to lend a hand in checking in on them at any time. She lived in the house beside us, about 500ft. away......That was because I worried about teens getting into mischief, in today's world of so many temptations around.....
The irony is, that I trusted them with babysitting other people's children....with me as a back up...more than I trusted them alone and with their peers....lol.....