Children Catching the Bus

jellyhead

property.advert wrote: »

How come decades ago, long before the invention of mobile phones, email or other such communication assistance, I could traverse a 2 to 3 mile bus journey from where I lived into town where I went to school and not once ended up murdered or devoured by the bogeyman. This was by age 6 or 7.

I also knew how to get back to my house from the park, from woods miles away and didn't drown in streams or rivers or get hit by trains on the line.

Were we just not as stupid back then ?

I remember somebody being hit by a train when I was a kid, and a 6 year old drowned in a canal last week. My brother was lured into a car and we had to get a shopkeeper to pull him our through the window. These things stick in the minds of parents

valk_scot

I've got a DD of 11 and a DS of 16. Both of them started walking to school at 7 (it's a walk of less than ten minutes, no main road crossings) and have gradually been let further and further off the leash since then. My lad regularly takes the train now to meet friends an hour or two away, knows what he's doing when it comes to bus and train timetables and knows what to do in emergencies and needs a helping hand.

He's now talking about going on a trip to Stockholm to meet up with friends in the summer he leaves school, next year. I'm encouraging him. He couldn't have done that it I'd only started letting him get the bus at 16 or whatever, you need time to build up experience and confidence. Yes I know young people get murdered or abducted on gap years etc but for every one that does there are tens of thousands that don't and are perfectly fine. It's just that you only hear about the tiny minority of incidents where something goes wrong. You do have to let them off the leash eventually otherwise what happens? An 18 year old that's never been allowed out of the house on their own and has been driven everywhere? A 21 year old that has no clue how to use a bus timetable? A 30 year old whose parents are still doing everything for him or her? Kids have to turn into adults at some point, after all, but it's a gradual process that takes years not a magical transformation overnight. And yes, there's a lot of input required by parents as to organisation, training and information, not to mention huge amounts of worry about kids, but that's no excuse not to do it. It's a disservice to keep kids wrapped up in cotton wool just to save you the parent a bit of anxiety. And it's not doing the child any favours in the end.