Letting 15 year old Son travel to Europe by rail

But yes, once reported, children's services had to check.

Why is nobody interested in Ben Andersen and his views?
I am sure it was his decision as much as hers!

I feel sorry for all the rubbish she's endured over this to be honest.

Apart from Harvey, I thought KP's children live with their fathers and they have the lion's share of parental control. With that in mind, I think the circumstances are different.

Sorry I'd be very worried about a young person going off on a jaunt with a friend to foreign climes. UK is fine but overseas is a different story. If they have access to reporting home OK but otherwise I'd prefer they waited a bit long and practised in the UK. Perhaps I'm a fuddy duddy. I'm pleased they made it home safely and enjoyed their adventure though but I'm glad they are not my offspring!

Thank you JaneJudge and HelterSkelter

Good post nightowl. I agree that the past was very different. And how lucky we were to have lived in such a time that as children/teens we had such a freedom.

I agree that Childrens Services had to get involved and investigate as it was brought to their attention and to do otherwise would have brought them into disrepute.
Damned if they do and damned if they don't.
I am glad the young man had a great time and came to no harm which could easily have not been the case. It's outside circumstances which could have been a problem not whether he himself was mature/sensible enough to go.

You are right nightowl.

I agree with others that times are very different and we can’t judge the present against what we were allowed to do in the past. I was playing out all day with friends from a very young age. Our playground was the woods at the back of our houses and we were out from morning till night with no way of our parents knowing where we were or what we were doing. I had a wonderful childhood but there is no way that happens now, and therefore children are not able to develop skills of initiative, self-reliance and survival that we did.

On another note, Children’s Services had no choice but to investigate this once referred to them. Should they really have thought, ‘oh look it’s Kirstie Allsopp, she’s a responsible person (is she? How do you know?) so it must be all right’. But then if Katie Price does the same thing (thank you MissAdventure) then they go in full force with the backing of the right wing press. Even though KP has devotedly brought up her very disabled child whilst KA famously flew first class leaving her children in cattle class. It has always been a problem of Children’s Services, that they police the poor (not that KP is poor but she is seen as having no class) whilst letting the middle classes off the hook. I’m glad that on this occasion they treated KA fairly and even-handedly.

I support KA's decision. She seems a very good mother and I'm sure if she felt her son wasn't mature enough to do this, she wouldn't have let him go. He went and came back safely.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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".

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!

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

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

...and not just mobiles, smart phones.

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

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

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

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 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!

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?

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.