I barely allow my children out of my sight and I wish I was different. I wish it, the world, my neurosis, was different. When I was Kitty’s age (she is 12) I wandered about all over the place on my own, no AirTag, no phone - nothing. Did my mother worry? I don’t know. I never bothered asking.
Now I AirTag Kitty and she also has one of those Nokia brick phone things and also I walk her to and from school every day. I am the only parent at drop off and pick up every single day. A few of the kids at Kitty’s school, in her year, travel independently on the tube to school. My helicoptering of Kitty is weird, it’s stunting her independence. I am also transferring my anxiety and neurosis on to her. I am making her anxious about simple independent forays into the world, even though nothing bad has ever happened to me, not on the tube or mooching around in Belize or drunk in Bristol town centre. Nothing. I have no personal reason to distrust the world.
My husband is also neurotic about our children. He catastrophises that they will be hit by cars, I catastrophise that they will be snatched by perverts. This is even though everyone in our area drives at 20mph and the instances of young people being snatched by perverts they don’t know, is so vanishingly small as to be basically non-existent.
When I walk Kitty to school I say to myself: look - this area is safe. There are hundreds of people on the streets at this time of day, not to mention Ring doorbells and CCTV. I see children who were at nursery with Kitty walking home from school all the time: look! There they go. I remember them when they were still in nappies and their parents are not body-guarding them about the place.
And anyway, why would anyone be crazy enough snatch a sturdy 12 year old, who is inevitably either AirTagged or has a phone with location services switched on, and looks, in our case, more like a grumpy STEM undergraduate than a Year 7 anyway? Then I go MILLIE DOWLER, which is presumably what everyone does, which is why no children play on the street ever anymore.
I don’t know what to do about this. Perhaps one day Kitty will just detach on her own. Already when I pick her up from school, she often wants to walk part of the way back with her friend and I want her to be free to, I don’t know (what do 12 year olds do?), get a spontaneous hot chocolate at Pret or whatever and not scurry home so that I can pop her into her bedroom and then triple lock the front door against completely imaginary threats and risks.
How about you? Are you still walking backwards in front of your children? Or did yours snatch their GoHenry from you aged 8 and haven’t been seen since? Please share any useful life experiences with the group in the handy box below.
Me too Esther
now the paranoia has transferred to my two eldest granddaughters .. at Uni in London. Costing me a fortune in Ubers. Aka .. ‘no don’t get a bus/tube it’s very late .. get an Uber I’ll send you the cost..and I do .. a lot ..
We are mothers of London kids and yes we must let them be just that - free to roam and travel and be guided by their own common sense in relation to their own perception of safety i.e knowing who looks dodgy who looks safe what situations are tense and when to make a quick escape. The kids will not be able to navigate these situations if they are cotton woolled by Mammy and Daddy. So yes for her own future tuned in self you should let her make her own way to and from secondary school by herself at 12 years old. It's on those buses and tubes with her friends that she'll learn valuable life skills and hear all the craic and banter that would not be discussed in school time something that she won't hear walking back from school with Mum. I would ban snap chat though as it's disgusting with adult men showing their wotsits to young girls and I did tell my youngest daughter who's 18 now that if anyone ever tried to get her into a vehicle that she'd be better running into the traffic and even suffering a broken limb than being taken away ( a bit extreme I know !!!) Tell the repeatedly what to do in a dangerous situation and advise accordingly and be assured that yes they might not appear to be listening but the kids do take in what the parents are saying