Is it o.k to let your 11 year old daughter hang out on the local park?

I don't know what you mean.I was an urban teenager who spent time in parks and I have 2 now adult DCs who also spent time with friends in parks, perfectly normal.

How is that flipant ?
Yes it is a pain when it gets dark early, but I didn't want mine hanging about after dark- my choice.

Someone upthread did suggest location trackers like life 360 that is what I reffering to as tracking.

You trust them. Novel concept, I know.
Your post is bordering on hysterical

No one suggested tracking on here from what I can see.

How do you propose and ensure they stay together? They have free will.

What difference will hot chocolate make if the dealers in the park target them?

It gets dark at 3.45pm in the winter so how does that work?

Independence can be achieved in shopping centres, cinema visits, school trips, using public transport in the day time, visiting a city and having a few hours to discover it alone. Why does it have to be achieved in urban parks?

Have you actually ever been to a park like this Neurodiversity? I think maybe not, your post is incredibly flippant and dismissive. Bordering on offensive.

This reads like a sensible response and a happy medium to me

Of course this is fine. Few ground rules:

1. Stay together
2. Make sure they have enough money for a hot chocolate
3. 2 hours is probably enough, definately home before dark.

Please don't normalise tracking your children, they need their independence, you need to build trust and commincation.

Yeah, I’m not that old. We are talking 2000s

It's a tricky one. My slightly older DS has been going to the park since he started secondary school but it is just a group of lads going to play football when it's light (they go to the leisure centre when it'd dark) I'm sure nothing else is going on (he's had his phone in his bag when I've tried to ring him to pick him up so I've used the tracker app and just found what park/field he's in and it was just the lads playing football)

I think I'd fund your situation a bit tricker, because it's a group of randoms not really doing anything. Unfortunately I don't know what the answer is.

I’m not saying let kids hang around in parks after dark in areas that are known for this. But it’s well understood that young kids are now over protected in the real world and under protected online. It’s one of the reasons for the massive uptick in teen MH problems and why we have grown adults going to Uni who are falling apart being away from home as they lack any resilience.

It was different in the 1940s 😁

I think people are being hysterical OP! I had my first ‘boyfriend’ at that age. We used to hold hands and I once gave him a peck on the cheek when we were sitting in a tree we just climbed. I didn’t actually properly kiss a boy until I was 15 and was 18 before I first had sex!

Parks are littered with exactly those types of people paper. Gunning for easy unsupervised prey.

@Errors yes but not if county lines predators are hanging around and drug dealers and pedophiles.

You are her mother and you know what is best for her. You have used the word protected often, so I am sensing she is fragile and vulnerable. It’s only going to take one awful event and she could be in real trouble, so I wonder why you are supporting her going to high risk areas with less than salubrious friends?

You describe her private school as not being part of the ‘real world’ just because it’s different from your life. And you are exposing her to the grim realities of other settings is somehow good for her, it keeps her ‘in touch’ and rooted in your reality not hers. I would really question why you think it’s a good thing?

Perception is everything here, and it’s very individual based on our own childhood experiences.

You seem to think by exposing her to all sorts it will reduce her anxiety, but the cause of her anxiety might not be rooted in her environment but her fears of her medical condition, her body image, the pandemic fall out, school bullies, other trauma. By encouraging her to be in high risk situations you are really running the risk of something happening to her, and compounding all the issues she is facing.

I am not suggesting wrapping her up in cotton wool, but finding other strategies to deal with her anxiety. I am trying to say kindly as a girl from the park myself, help her raise the bar for herself, she is better than this. There is not a great deal of respect for girls in these places, some are deeply misogynistic- others are downright dangerous. She will need some very hard edges being in that environment, are you ready for that too? Best case she will toughen up in ways you hadn’t anticipated…

I think the way you’re reading it is that dd is hanging around the park to all hours with kids vaping, drinking and doing weed. She was walking around and at the park in the summer several times over the very long summer break they had this year. A lot of them were over the summer seeing as they’d just finished GCSEs and it didn’t get dark til late. We live in a village. I said in my post upthread that I go for a walk in the park after dark sometimes so I know what goes on down there - not much and no dealing. No one even does those NOS canisters round here.

Dd has just started her A levels. The last thing she needs is pressure or to be chained to a desk right now. I trust her to manage her time as she’s good at that. Dd definitely doesn’t participate as she doesn’t want to. She also has to be careful with herself as she has a medical condition.

As for normalising these things, I am not normalising them. I am being realistic and saying that some of dd’s friends will likely have tried weed or vapes and one year 13 she sees occasionally does vape. Some of her friends have been drunk at parties. That doesn’t mean every time they go out they’re going to get drunk, smoke weed or vape.

Dd has a history of being scared of everything and everyone. I actually want her to see that it is ok to not be perfect as she’s a perfectionist to her own detriment. She is in private school as she couldn’t cope in mainstream and the kids at her school are so protected it’s unreal. The school just doesn’t have a problem with drugs or vaping. I think a lot of it comes down to catchment as it is in a very small market town and a lot of the kids live in rural locations.

If anything, dd actually needs to be pulled a little away from this world but still be protected as only being part of this world is making her scared of the real world. One of the lads she always hangs with the times, when they go out goes to her school and would give her his shirt off his back. They’ve decided together that they’re siblings.

For me, these are all calculated risks I need to take as a parent because she is mentally unwell but too scared to access therapy so I’m having to do it for her. Part of this is to see the world as a less risky place. And this is working, slowly. She’s gone from being scared to be in parts of the local city you need to walk through to get to the bus station to being confident enough to walk to the bus station with just one friend, who lives in a different location, and get on a bus by herself (in daylight hours) from the city to home.

And dd is learning plenty of skills. She had to give her hobbies up for a while due to anorexia. But she is now back dancing regularly and horse riding less often. Both at a skilled level. She has completed D of E bronze and silver and is signed up to do gold. The only sticking point to that right now is the expedition as she is still emanciated and not eating an ideal diet albeit eating enough to be very slowly gaining weight.

As for pregnancy, just no. She is nowhere near ready for anything like that. And she has had a number of boys after her recently and has chosen the boy, who she knows is fine with this. Does she want to go out with one of the boys, who wouldn’t be? I think possibly yes. But she’s too scared and this is a good thing as I think they’d probably just get bored of her. With anorexia you often emotionally regress, which dd has done. She is contented with the boy she’s chosen and is just about to ask her to be his gf, which is a big thing for her as she hasn’t had a bf yet. He is absolutely smitten. Right now she needs safe and protected but as much as possible under her terms rather than mine. The way she has set her life up she has that all round.

Thanks for your post. I know it is meant to help me into understanding things aren’t perhaps as they seem. However, dd is very open about what is going on her world, naively so actually and things would get back to me. Dd’s friends are very protective of her and have been instrumental in getting her to eat again. There is no way they’d allow her to put herself at risk. Dd is so lucky to have such supportive friends. And they are friends, who are willing to talk to me with any concerns they have for dd.

With respect, you are normalising vaping, drinking and drugs. I wouldn’t want my teens around any of that, regardless of age, and especially not in a park after dark.

I suspect a lot happens that they are simply not telling you, so that you don’t worry or prevent them from going.

I am not judging you - it is your choice, but you won’t know what they are truly experiencing until there is a knock on your door or a very big issue that comes to light like a pregnancy or a charge for possession.

The point is you don’t actually know what they are doing, what they are being exposed to as you are not there.

In your place I would be phasing out the park visits. And encourage them to do something more constructive with their time.

Instead of hanging around the park vaping they could be learning a new skill or sport, doing extra maths lessons, joining a drama group if they are sociable and stretching themselves.

Surely at 16 your dd should be flat out preparing for the first set of A level exams?

Not all kids are up to sex acts and all sorts in year 7/8/9. Or even 10 or 11. I expect my post upthread about my dd hanging out with friends including some of the time her and one or 2 boys will probably have some people thinking I am incredibly naive.

Not all teens are the same and my dd tells me pretty much everything about herself and her friends and as I’ve always had a very open door policy with her friends, they tell me lots of stuff about themselves and come to me for advice - the girls that is… As for the boys, the friendships are more recent but they are all kids we have known since dd started primary and I know their parents. The boys also know about dd’s medical conditions and look after her so she’s actually quite protected with them. They aren’t getting drunk or smoking weed around her etc. Yes, there is one, who she hangs out from time to time, who vapes and I think some of dd’s friends male and female have had a bit of weed. Ok some of the boys get drunk at parties but that’s an entirely different setting. At 16 she wouldn’t be having sex in a park as it would be much easier to do that at his house. I think she’d find that concept disgusting actually. However she is in year 12 and hasn’t even had a boyfriend yet.

If I judged my dd by what I was getting up to at her age and younger, I wouldn’t have let her do half of what she is allowed to do. But she’s better at keeping herself safe. Part of that is personality, another part parenting and another part the education she’s received at school in PSHE.

Your lovely child has no idea what awaits her at the park, she is too young to know this side of life. Please be honest with her, educate her, tell her the truth and hopefully she will agree with you that it’s not a good idea at all.

It will be the best decision you have ever made.

11 is too young suggest they go bowling or something like that and someone drops them off then picks them up
I don't think parks when it's dark are the best places for 11 year olds to hang out I would rather they hang out round someone's house to be honest

Depends on your daughter and how much you trust her to make good choices. I remember another mother ranting to me about the kids that went to our localvrec after school. They were definitely seen as a cool but slightly dodgy crowd. It can be fun to be in that sort of group rather than stuck at home because the cool group wouldn't include you or your parents won't let you, but it can be dodgy and I would say you really need to think about how much your daughter wants to be popular, how able she is to say no, if a popular girl is bringing her along but really just using her etc.

I wouldn't personally encourage it - I dog walk on my rec and I see these kids. But peer groups are important and if she's in the in crowd, you are going to have to help her navigate it.

I work in a school and some of the year 7 and 8 look 14 to 16 years old. Smoke weed and their language is foul.
Good advice to tell her to stick up for herself.
It is a real struggle! 😩

Nothing good ever comes from hanging out at the park. I live in a naice area, but there’s still loads of bad stuff going on in the park. Also, I used to hanging out at the park (at a bit older) and know what me and my mates used to get up to and I was considered ‘good’ and responsible 😳 The park would be a hard no from me, but I would try to facilitate other ways of your dd seeing friends.

My 12yo DD walks to the park (next to our house) and has been to a couple others further away. They walk to each others houses, have sleepovers, go shopping in town, sit in Tesco cafe lol, cinema etc. Both boy and girl friends, most I have met, some I haven’t (but I make sure they are all children she knows well from school.)

Now it’s darker earlier she has to be home by 5:30 unless she’s at a friends house or someone is walking back with her. Always has her phone and I always keep an eye using ‘find my’.

The kids do all seem very keen on having a boyfriend/girlfriend as soon as they get to secondary, far more than me and my friends at that age! She and her friends have all had/have a couple of ‘boyfriends’. They say ‘ily’, awkwardly hug every now and then and end up breaking up within a few days/weeks.

Some of the behaviour of the kids around here (mostly younger kids, if you’d believe it!) is absolutely shocking but I can’t keep her inside. I teach her well and trust her to make smart decisions, she’s had to learn to stick up for herself and take no shit and there’s always drama but so far she is navigating it all pretty well.

Her and her friends are SO different to me and mine when we were growing up, it’s been a real struggle trying to know what’s best. Their main issue is they are 12 but think they are grown.