Children travelling alone on public transport

All my children started using buses at 12 years old as they went to secondary school out of catchment. These were not school buses, normal public transport. I used buses form 3rd year juniors, I would have been 9.

I did drive my daughter to all of her Uni visits, she had to be interviewed for her course so we combined viewing and interview on same day. Lots of other parents were there, we were interested.

Two months after my 11th birthday to get to my senior school, and also to meet parents in Selfridges, Oxford St. after school, probably every other Wednesday.

We drove our teenagers to visit their preferred Universities.

I think it's quite normal for parents to accompany their children for Uni Open days.. I certainly did with mine.. then they go off and do a tour with another student..

Having said that my own parents didn't accompany me when I went for Uni interviews.. many moons ago.

Hmmm, let me think.I remember getting buses from about the age of 8, just local ones that is.
It may be that parents who take their teenagers to Open Days at Uni are interested to see it, or it’s not all that accessible when you don’t know a city.If they decide to go/ are accepted then they’ll live there and soon get to know the way around.

pascal30

I think it's quite normal for parents to accompany their children for Uni Open days.. I certainly did with mine.. then they go off and do a tour with another student..

Having said that my own parents didn't accompany me when I went for Uni interviews.. many moons ago.

sorry wrong link

Some campus universities are out of town, and whilst accessible by public transport, it would add time to a train journey and may not be viable for a day visit. Parents like to see where their offspring might be going. I don’t think that correlates to how capable their children are of using public transport, though it might do.
I went to school on a school special bus, but if I stayed late for a rehearsal it was two buses to get home. From age 11 I caught the bus to go swimming too. My grandchildren started using buses at the same age.

I was only about 6 or 7 when I travelled home from school on the bus alone. It was a very easy journey of about 2 miles and the bus stop was just over the road from the school( lollipop lady). Lots of people from my school caught it and my mother met me at the other end about 3 stops away.

I went to school by bus (public transport) by myself from about the age of eight or nine. Also used bus and train, or sometimes ferry, to go into Liverpool with friends from about 11. We did have a car but it was never used for short journeys. My father cycled into work.

My sons used buses and so on from an early age. They were very competent. I was really shocked when a friend of mine said that she was going to start teaching her 17-year-old son about buses!

In the school holidays, at about age 7 or 8, I used to get a bus to a swimming pool about 3 miles away. I also took my sister, a year younger, with me. Anything nearby involved walking. We lived in a rural area and gangs of us kids tended to play unsupervised together. We'd go to the nearby river, or parks in Summer or the "Rolly, Polly field to sledge in Winter." No bullying and only minor accidents.

By age 11 I would travel 10 miles to a nearby city, to school, by either bus or train. Sometimes I would get a bus into the local town to the library.
By age 12 I could navigate the Paris Metro with my penfriend. (I do remember the gropers though and I presume some still have the scars).

By age 16 I could book myself a ferry or flight and get myself to my holiday job.

I really cannot believe how young people are treated like small children these days.

My youngest sister was going to let my niece have a few friends over for her birthday when she was twelve (about a decade ago). The idea was that the girls would go to the local cinema and then walk across town to a restaurant that my niece liked, where they would have a meal. My niece would pay and then they would walk back to my sister's house, about half a mile. In the end, as some of the invitees mothers were worried about their "babies", my sister agreed to shadow them (at a respectable distance).

When I was 7 I used to get the bus to Brownies with a friend. At 8 I got the bus to school alone but soon started to cycle.

Yes, I used public transport from a young age, so did my children but when they went to Uni I took them in the car because they had so much stuff to take. In the holidays they also had to vacate their rooms in halls and so the stuff had to be brought back too.

I don't think Op has much awareness of the reality of student life...

I went home by bus after my weekly music lesson when I was 7 or 8. The buses which stopped at the end of our road were part of my uncle's company. Though that gave me no privileges, the conductresses (sic) knew who I was and kept an eye on me. Although my Dad had a car, we were never transported to school - walked or cycled there and back (about 1 km) and came home for lunch. If I wanted to go to shops in a nearby town, I went by bus.

My first school was a good 3 miles away so from around 6 I went with my elder sister on the bus, but her hours were longer so I returned on my own.

On one occasion I missed the usual bus home (dawdling) and didn’t realise that there’d be another if I waited. So I walked home, dawdling again - and stopping to look in e.g. a pet shop I’d seen so often from the bus.

My poor mother was frantic! IIRC she’d even alerted the police!

We didn’t have a car so I went on buses and trains alone from about 8 years old. I do think it was safer then, though. Not so many violent armed thugs around for a start. We had the odd ‘incident’ but mostly just dirty old men flashing.

At age ten I was getting on the bus from my house, a twenty minute ride all the way into Belfast city centre followed by a walk around the City Hall to catch another bus out to my school, another 10 minute ride. I could not imagine my 11 year old grandaughter being ever allowed to travel alone like this nowadays.

I was 11 and used to take "the wee 30" bus to the stables for a 20 minute journey. Usually my dad picked me up after he finished work. I felt very grown up being allowed to do so!

When we flew to Australia to visit my husband’s family, in the 1970s, there was a little girl of about ten who was travelling alone from London to Sydney.. Her father was some sort of diplomat. She liked to play with my year old son, and took him up to first class from time to time. (We were not travelling first class, but she was.) I was so glad of the break!

We lived out in the sticks in rural East Anglia.. There may have been buses but they would have left from a stop in the village - almost as far to walk as going the other way into town. Cycling or walking into town would have been very risky as there were no pavements and the roads were very bendy. My Dad was away most of the week and Mum finally learnt to drive and got a little jalopy. She would pick us up from school if she was shopping, usually on a Tuesday, and sometimes we had a dentist appointment, so couldn't take the school bus.

A school bus did the round of the villages and picked up the Grammar and Secondary school kids. I am still a little apprehensive about using public buses even today as I'm not sure they'll really go where and when the timetable says..

I have no idea when I first started using trains but I don't remember it being an issue. Some of us from school would sometimes take the train in to Cambridge or Bury St Edmunds on a Saturday, probably aged about 15.

Nowadays I use public transport a lot, but the service here in Germany is deteriorating rapidly what with strikes, technical failures and staff shortages.

I definitely wanted to go on the university open day with my son. It's a day for parents just as much as students.

No idea. I remember travelling by bus and train to London (about 40 miles) for gigs when I was about 14 (and having my younger brother in tow and ditching him somewhere at the first opportunity). At 15 I was commuting to the City of London (so bus, train, walk) and mainly socialised in London, so would have been using the tube & buses.

I went alone to university open days and interviews: I was 32 at the time.

We took our children to see potential Universities when they were 18, we were as interested as they were!

We took our GS as his Mum was unable to go, we enjoyed it as much as we did and he appreciated us being there with him.

As to various remarks about travelling on buses, try getting on a late night bus in Brixton or Hackney, you will soon change your minds about young adults getting a bus on their own.

pascal30

I think it's quite normal for parents to accompany their children for Uni Open days.. I certainly did with mine.. then they go off and do a tour with another student..

Having said that my own parents didn't accompany me when I went for Uni interviews.. many moons ago.

I'm afraid that I don't think that it is normal, young adults need to be left alone to get on with things.

Some people of that age have never travelled alone on public transport so how are they going to manage getting to university, work and so on? How are they going to develop independence and self reliance?

Despite being ferried around since they were born most University students have enough upstairs to work out how to use a bus or a train.

We lived in a smallish Welsh village when I was early teens. If we wanted to visit the nearby towns the only option was bus or train. Our train station was a grassy verge at the side of the tracks. If you wanted the train to stop you had to flag it down by waving at the driver. The first time I used it I didn't really think the train would stop but it did.