Teenagers travelling alone

Jagraf

At what age would you / do you let your teen:

Travel by national express on their own to visit a relative
Travel by train up and down the country
Travel by tube across London
Travel on a plane on their own (if dropped off and met the other end).

Bearing in mind legal requirements, would you let a relatively sensible 15/16 year old do all of the above.

GwylimT

I did all of the above by the time I was eleven.

comeandgo

Yup, if child sensible no problem with 13 or 14. As long as they have instructions on what to do, who to contact if things go wrong.

Voyager2002

Jagraf wrote: »

At what age would you / do you let your teen:

Travel by national express on their own to visit a relative
Travel by train up and down the country
Travel by tube across London
Travel on a plane on their own (if dropped off and met the other end).

Bearing in mind legal requirements, would you let a relatively sensible 15/16 year old do all of the above.

Yes: no issue at all. Just make sure that s/he has adequate refreshments and entertainment for the journey, and knows exactly what to expect at each stage.

moomoomama27

Yes my DD was doing all if the above except the plane journey by the time she was 14.

bylromarha

Jagraf wrote: »

At what age would you / do you let your teen:

Travel by national express on their own to visit a relative
Travel by train up and down the country
Travel by tube across London
Travel on a plane on their own (if dropped off and met the other end).

Bearing in mind legal requirements, would you let a relatively sensible 15/16 year old do all of the above.

Absolutely would let them, if the need arose.

I like to think I'm training my kids to become relatively sensible adults, so ask me again in 6 years when this could be a reality for me.

Jagraf

bylromarha wrote: »

Absolutely would let them, if the need arose.

I like to think I'm training my kids to become relatively sensible adults, so ask me again in 6 years when this could be a reality for me.

Ha Ha - I can feel a cosy sense of freedom coming back!

LilElvis

I did all of the above as a young teen, and without the safety net of a mobile phone in case of problems.

My Dad still likes to remind me, decades later, of the time I went to a concert in Hammersmith and missed the last train back. Called him from a payphone at midnight from Waterloo station and he drove up from Surrey to pick me up. He didn't say a word to me the whole journey back .... or for several days afterwards. I think I was 13 or 14 at the time.

Nikkisun

My son is 14 and for the last year he has been travelling from the South Coast up to Hull by himself on the train to visit his dad.

This involves a train into London, a tube across town and then the train to Hull.

We managed it in stages - the first few trips I took him to Kings Cross and put him on the last leg, then I made him direct us on the tube so I knew he was confident where to go, then I met him at Victoria as I figured if he got lost on the tube at least I was in London to 'rescue' him!

He's now been doing the journey completely by himself for a year or so and I have to say it's much easier (and cheaper) now I just have to drop him off and pick him up at the train station 5 minutes down the road!

Gloomendoom

It does depend on the individual. I was doing long distance train journeys on my own from age nine and planning my own trips in the summer holidays using Rail Rover tickets from 13.

My sister on the other hand couldn't be trusted to get the bus into town on her own until she was about 16. Whenever she tried, some calamity always befell her. Once, she got off at the wrong stop and managed to fall in the river.
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Spendless

Certainly if the teen was confident about doing it and they were aware of what steps to take in the event of something going wrong.

My son is on an outreach programme via his school at a Uni in the nearest city about 25 miles away. A condition of the place was he/we were responsible for getting him there and back. For the first year we arranged lifts. For the second year we taught him how to catch the train/tram by doing a dummy run in the school holidays. He was 14 when he started doing this, fair enough there was another child with him, but he said he now would be happy to do it alone.

A family friend's son came to stay with us when he was 16 from Canada and then flew to Germany and back to UK before returning home. He was put on and met as far as you can go at the airport. I remember a neighbour telling me that there was no way she would have let her 16yo do that and remembering replying 'why? it isn't as though he could get off at the wrong stop'