latchkey
Speech parts
1. latchkey - Noun
2. latchkey - Adjective
Meaning
A key used to raise, or throw back, the latch of a door, esp. a night latch.
Source: Webster's dictionarySynonyms
Antonyms
Hypernyms
Anagrams
Examples
To put me through school my morn had to work, so I was a latchkey kid.
I remember, my mom didn't have any help, so if she needed to be somewhere after school, we'd just go down to the neighbors' and she'd give us a snack and make sure we did our homework. There weren't any latchkey kids.
There are a lot of latchkey kids. I don't want to be sitting there when a guy blurts something out over the TV and have my daughters ask me what those words mean.
If we keep on ignoring and leaving children to their own devices at home, they become latchkey kids, and trust me, the consequences of that are not good.
Back in 1982, when the Longs conducted their study, they found that a third of kids in a poor, inner-city school they visited were latchkey kids (in one sixth-grade class, 24 out of 28 students were unsupervised after school).
As a child, I dipped them in milk after learning another lesson (like most latchkey children do) from television.