"Hello? I'M Home Alone . . . "

By James Willwerth/Los Angeles

"I'm home alone, and I think someone's in the house," the nine-year-old boy was saying in a shaky, squeaky voice on the telephone. "I'm hiding under the bed right now. I've got pillows piled all around." The boy under the bed is no Macaulay Culkin ready to outwit buffoonish burglars. His fear is real, and he is addressing it in a very '90s way: dialing a telephone hot line.

In recent months, news headlines have blared tale after shocking tale of child abandonment: last December's "Home Alone" case in St. Charles, Illinois, for example, or the fire in Detroit that killed seven children ages 9 and under who were left in an apartment one afternoon last week. But with little publicity, the number of young children who routinely spend part of the day unsupervised has been mushrooming. According to studies published by the Child Welfare League of America, 42% of all American kids between the ages of five and nine are home alone often or at least occasionally. (For older children, the figure rises to 77%.) Other studies suggest that up to 10 million children are alone most afternoons -- or for longer stretches -- virtually every weekday.

This growing phenomenon, euphemistically called "self-care," has given rise to efforts by churches, schools and parent groups to extend a lifeline to kids who are -- and feel -- isolated. In the vicinity of Glendale, California, kids like the frightened boy under the bed can telephone PhoneFriend.

Counselor Joan Klaric, who took his call, suggested that she phone 911 for him, but the boy refused. "My mom would get mad at me," he said. With a little encouragement from Klaric, the boy finally climbed out of his temporary fortress and sneaked out of the house through a side door, whispering all the while on a cordless phone. Did he know a neighbor who might be willing to walk through the house and check for an intruder? Klaric asked as the boy hugged the phone outside. He thought of a retired man. "Would you like to ask him?" Klaric coaxed gently, adding, "Call back and tell me what happened." A few minutes later, the boy was on the phone again, assured that there was no danger. "He was just frightened of being alone," Klaric supposes.

Staffed by volunteers at Glendale Adventist hospital, PhoneFriend is run out of the chaplain's office on a budget of $5,000 a year, raised by donations. The service reaches out weekdays from 3 to 5 p.m. to kids streaming home from schools in nearby middle- and upper-income communities, including Burbank and Pasadena. This year PhoneFriend expects to take 15,000 calls, assuming there are no national or local emergencies (calls more than doubled during the Gulf War and Los Angeles riots). About 80% will be from bored and lonely children aiming to trade jokes with the volunteers (who keep copies of One Thousand Howlers for Kids handy), complain about teachers or announce that they've won a spelling contest. "Hi, this is Cathy," said one perky voice on a recent call. "Something weird happened. I thought my dog was talking, but it was really my brother making his mouth move."

The remaining calls range from minicrises like gum in the hair and nosebleeds (volunteers have a file of suggested fixes) to unnerving and occasionally terrifying tales of sex and violence. Sometimes the serious and hilarious are combined. Asked by an embarrassed sixth-grade girl to explain what condoms are for, an elderly volunteer answered delicately, "It's something a man wears to protect a lady." Replied the girl: "From what?" On another occasion a little girl asked volunteer Dorie Beaumont, "What if your mom meets your dad at a bar, has drinks and comes home and beats you up?" Beaumont recalls, "She seemed so calm. I was trying to stay calm. Suddenly she yelled, 'Here she comes!' I heard this awful scream, and the phone slammed down."

Though Beaumont never had a chance to get that child's full name and number, cases of suspected abuse or neglect are usually reported to county child- protection services. In other instances where a child needs help, phone counselors may simply stay on the line until a problem is resolved. Bruce Nelson, the hospital's quietly intense community services director, who often works the phones himself, remembers an eight-year-old girl racked with chills and fever who said she had been vomiting all day: "She was crying all the time we talked to her." He called a nurse to the phone and notified the hospital's child-protection unit. Social workers suggested calling 911, but the girl balked, protesting that Mom would be "upset." Attempts to reach the mother, who worked as a visiting nurse, failed. So Nelson and others remained on the phone for more than an hour until the mother, who insisted that Phone- Friend staff members were "overreacting," returned at 5 p.m.

Studies of latchkey kids conducted by family sociologist Hyman Rodman of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro suggest that they are not measurably worse off than other kids, at least in terms of self-esteem and behavior in school. But Thomas Long, a Bethesda, Maryland, child psychologist who has also studied such children, believes they are emotionally vulnerable. They tend to fall into two groups, he says: those who see themselves as independent and capable, and those who see their situation as one of rejection and abandonment. Many children, he says, find that being alone is "frightening, initially, then it's boring. They often numb out their feelings by watching TV or playing Nintendo constantly, or they go outside to look for another diversion." Children under age 10, in Long's view, simply should not be left alone.

No one has an exact count of the number of services for latchkey kids, but there are about 300 chapters of PhoneFriend, according to Helen Meahl, who helped found the first such "warm line" 10 years ago in State College, Pennsylvania. For $22, Meahl and her local chapter of the American Association of University Women distribute a guide to groups that wish to create such a service.

While a telephone service can lessen a child's loneliness and worries, parents can take other steps to make it easier for kids left at home. For instance, "it helps enormously if the parents come home at a consistent time," notes Beverly Carr, who manages Glendale Adventist's social-services office. A former latchkey child herself, Carr thinks most such children are safe as long as they have adequate food and neighbors to call in case of trouble. "But no matter how much support parents provide," she explains, "you're terrified when you hear strange noises or someone knocks on the door."

In the end, some kids simply need a sympathetic ear. "I just want to tell you that I fell down and broke my arm and it hurts very much," says a boy talking to the PhoneFriend off-hours tape recorder. "If you can do it," says Joan Klaric, "you try to give them a big hug over the phone."