Letting 15 year old Son travel to Europe by rail

DH, aged just 16 in 1951, went cycling in Holland and Belgium, having cycled from Yorkshire to Dover to get on the ferry. DS did a similar trip to France with a school friend at the same age. My DGS at 17, although he lives in London , seems unable to organise anything for himself. Autre temps …..

Wasting social services time which we taxpayers pay for.

I travelled to Bristol alone at 12 years old, Scotland at 14. Minimal I know, but I remember feeling quite excited about it.
It does depend on the child's nature. Some are mature, some are not.
Personally I might not have been too happy if my sons had done all the travelling that KA's son did at 15. But she knows her own child best.

So many adventurous tales from people who travelled abroad in their early teens, I'm most impressed. But my father can beat you all. He was only five years old and had to walk alone through the woods to school and back every day. They lived on one side of the woods and the village was about three miles away on the other side. This was the 1920s.

As for me, I was riding around in London buses on my own aged 8 years.

The point I'm making is that you can't compare what you did 50 or 60 years ago with today. Or in my dad's case 100 years ago. As we know 'the past is a different place and they do things differently there'.

Children are not generally raised to be as independent as they were in the previous century, even if you don't realise it. And the people of today are very different too. Some of them will stab you just for looking at them (that was in the news the other day). So much has changed. We need to ensure our children are truly able to cope when they're alone and so far from home. Waiting until they've done their A-Levels seems wise to me, to give them just that little bit more breathing space.

His friend's mobile was tracked by his mother.
Just saying.

I very much doubt that she's an irresponsible Mother (whatever your feelings are about her).

At 15, I could have trusted my daughter to do most things. My son on the other hand, I barely trusted to walk the 10 minutes to school.

Depends on the child.

Chestnut

So many adventurous tales from people who travelled abroad in their early teens, I'm most impressed. But my father can beat you all. He was only five years old and had to walk alone through the woods to school and back every day. They lived on one side of the woods and the village was about three miles away on the other side. This was the 1920s.

As for me, I was riding around in London buses on my own aged 8 years.

The point I'm making is that you can't compare what you did 50 or 60 years ago with today. Or in my dad's case 100 years ago. As we know 'the past is a different place and they do things differently there'.

Children are not generally raised to be as independent as they were in the previous century, even if you don't realise it. And the people of today are very different too. Some of them will stab you just for looking at them (that was in the news the other day). So much has changed. We need to ensure our children are truly able to cope when they're alone and so far from home. Waiting until they've done their A-Levels seems wise to me, to give them just that little bit more breathing space.

I completely agree Chestnut, it’s a different age now.
No, I wouldn’t have allowed my son or daughter to do this, not because I don’t trust them but because I would have spent the time worried sick.
At 7 I would cycle with my younger sisters and friend around the lanes to a village some five miles away, have a picnic and cycle back. We would often spend all day outside, returning home for meals, my mother had little idea of what where we were or what we were doing.
From the age of 5 I walked a mile across fields to school, alone and after a couple of years I was responsible for my two younger siblings doing the same.
At 11 I would walk a mile to catch the bus to school 15 miles away and walk back in the evening along unlit roads.
I’m 70 now and life was very different then.

Our DC are far more risk averse than we or our parents were.
I used to boast that we began sending our DC by train, from Edinburgh to Suffolk to spend 2 weeks with their DGP. The boys were 10 and 8 the first year.
They had to change trains twice. They each carried a letter to the station master in case of a difficulty.
Once they had to ask for help and were cared for at Ely station when a train was late.

The boys enjoyed the adventure. By the time they were teenagers, they were perfectly capable of looking after themselves.

I can't imagine their DGC being allowed such freedom and we would be frowned on.

We were so much more trusting then.

Whereas I agree that some 15 yr olds are streetwise enough to travel without coming to harm, there are a great many who are not, that is not only children either. Time and again you hear of attacks, injury of some kind or death because the individual is taking a risk that most would not.

I was working when I was 15 in 1958 and I know our 19 year old granddaughter knew more about life at 15 than I knew. But, if it was me, I would not have let our 15 year old sons go travelling because this is a totally different world we live in and no-one, not even an adult is safe on the streets. We live in a terrifying world at the moment.

What is different between KA letting the lad get the tube round London on his own at the weekend. Or maybe even a train to Brighton for a night. And doing the same in Paris or Madrid?

It is a different world now, I agree BigBopper
When we lost 9yr old DGD on the Meadows in Edinburgh last weekend my DD and I were sick with worry until we found her 20 minutes later.

I went to Paris aged 15 with my sister who was 17 to be au pairs for a family friend for the Summer. We felt very grown up but never truly scared. We explored Paris in our time off, walking and taking the Metro.

The age of innocence gone forever!

David49

Whereas I agree that some 15 yr olds are streetwise enough to travel without coming to harm, there are a great many who are not, that is not only children either. Time and again you hear of attacks, injury of some kind or death because the individual is taking a risk that most would not.

But there are 20 year olds who are not streetwise enough to travel alone.

I think one must assume that if parents are letting a 15 year old, (and KA's son was within weeks of his 16th birthday) make a journey like this, then that child is likely have been being making shorter journeys and travelling around on his own for some years in the build up to the interrail holiday. The kind of paarent who wraps their child in cottonwool doesn't let that child interrail at 15.

One must also assume that someone like KA knows their son and is confident they can manage in an emergency. With my own children, one from a very early age showed themselves to be calm and quick thinking in any emergency, where the other tended to panic in those same situations, and that governed my own response to letting them do things on their own.

It is true that you can’t compare our experiences of long ago. My DH travelled from London to Kings Lynn on his own aged 8. We all worry away when a DGD attends the Reading Festival aged 17.
I think for his own safety he should have been a bit older, what if one of them had become ill, not easy to deal with over a phone

Our DC are far more risk averse than we or our parents were.

This may be true Grammaretto - yet most of them have mobiles...

...and not just mobiles, smart phones.

Good on Kirsty. Her son will have the time of his life and picking up life skills along the way.

He has an 18 Yr old brother.
Who s to say he didn't do the same thing a few years back?

My best school friend and I did the same thing after we'd finished our O'Levels (remember those)! We were just 16 and obviously both girls. It was the summer of 1973. Her parents were teachers and they helped us with the practical stuff like buying the rail cards and booking hostels in advance.

We were only naughty a couple of times, such as staying out drinking with boys and getting locked out of the hostel. On another occasion we decided to hitch hike to our next destination (I don't remember why) and we got a lift from a farmer with a flat bed truck. There was something very large in the back under a tarpaulin. Once we alighted and asked him what we'd been sharing our lift with, he told us it was a dead horse.

Of course, Kirsty Allsop's son and his friend have the luxury of mobile phones and there's no shortage of money which can be transferred in an instant should the need arise. We didn't have any of that but it was a wonderful adventure and that summer will forever be etched on my memory. Oh, and it improved our school girl French no end!

I'm totally with Monica on this. My daughter has travelled extensively from a very early age, initially with a friend and later on solo. In her early 30's now, she's still travelling whenever she gets the time off, usually on her own but sometimes as the expedition doctor on demanding travel challenges. I have always worried when she's been away although I absolutely know how capable, calm and knowledgeable she is but I have never let "my worries" be "her concern".

KA’s son was 15 years 11 months and 10 days old when he went on his adventure.

It is far safer to travel today, communications are 100% better, transport is better and hostels are aware of safeguarding.

It's the expensive phones and trainers that make kids more likely to get robbed!

My anecdotal evidence is of a lad (early 20s) having his bank card cloned (and stopped) when abroad on his own - absolute nightmare parent getting money to him, it took several days. And another lad of a similar age being beaten up because of what he was wearing - he'd bought a T shirt in one town, wore it somewhere else and other lads took exception. I've only just realised that both these lads looked quite young for their age, both skinny and not very tall.

This story is about 2 kids travelling alone!

Admittedly there was an awful lot of angst and considerably more doubts from me and the other mother, but at 13 our dds announced that they wanted to go on a day trip to Calais. On their own, from SW London - via trains to central London across London and to Dover, and the ferry.
They wanted ‘an adventure’ and to practise their French.

We were having kittens the whole time until they were safely back late the same night. And I might add that both my name, and that of the other mum were mud with the other school mums!

And this was long before mobile phones - dd is mid 40s now. But Calais was a different city then, considerably safer - I’d never allow such a thing now.

Load of fuss over nothing. Parents know their own children and their capabilities without any arbitrary age being applied.

It was a rite of passage after GCSEs for teenagers to descend on Newquay in Cornwall and set up camp, which is what ours did, that gave me an enormous amount of worry. In retrospect I don't think it was a good idea for either the masses that descend on that area, or the community who had to put up with them. A year later, one of mine lost his phone in the mosh pit at some festival in Portugal, more worries again until he was able, via a friend to get in touch. It's all part and parcel of letting go. On the contrary this trip around several countries in Europe sounds far more structured and presumably KA had faith in her son and his mates to navigate their way to youth hostels en route.

Somebody in the paper today said that she might trust her 15 year old to interrail round Europe but wouldn’t trust her 22-year old to catch a bus into town!
Kids’ maturity can vary so much - to involve Social Services though was ridiculous- there must be far needier or worthier cases for them.