Four teens lost in North Wales ⚠️

[SuperDuperCabriolet]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12772971/police-hunt-four-young-men-vanished-Ford-Fiesta-North-Wales.html

Their families must be frantic :(

Posting to spread awareness in case any locals reading.

@JANEY205 honestly I'm not sure. The boyfriend was quite a lot older and very manipulative (a whole other story) and I think I just knew what they would say as the relationship was completely wrong.

It's true though they probably wouldn't have been as calm if they found out about him as your mum was with the morning after pill.

The problem with being that age is you just don't have the same life experience to realise the impact that lying about where you are / what you are doing.

It's a good point though that as a parent all you can do is be as open and accepting as possible and just hope your kids feel like they can be honest.

How about let's stop criticising the parents of 4 young people whose safety is currently unknown. They're old enough to know how to be safe, it's likely it's just a combination of bad decisions and bad luck.

This is just a reminder to double check where your kids are going, and if your children go on a camping trip, make sure you have their location/they check in often. Nothing else can be done, don't bring more negativity to a hard situation.

I agree with You

When I was 17 my DPs had good reason to keep a check of my whereabouts
I carried this on though (phoning home, saying if I was going onto a nightclub with my mates or staying over) even when I was over 21 and working
It didn't take 5 minutes to ring home and inform DM or DF

Quite typical for there to be lots of helicopters in and around Shrewsbury. It's where RAF Shawbury is and their flying defence school..

The vast majority of the posts are catastrophising though. If I were a parent to one of these boys reading this thread, Id absolutely be imagining the worst.

The fact the boy lied suggests he did not want his family knowing what he was up to. – no offense but well obviously, that's kind of the purpose of a lie.

She said: "If I'd have known [where he was going] I wouldn't have let him due to the winter weather conditions.

They are all sensitive, intelligent lads and we are just hoping they parked up, got lost and are OK."

Sometimes you can have a really healthy relationship and teens still insist on doing borderline suicidal things.

This isn't the same but say if an underage girl insisted on sleeping with a middle aged man – no mother is going to say "well I disagree but just make sure you stay safe dearie", which is why the DD wouldn't tell her mum in the first place. Or if someone were almost certainly risking their life as an inexperienced camper in harsh advanced conditions due to peer pressure, they wouldn't expect their parents to say yes. Etc etc

They would switch it off if they didn't want their parents to know. I think things like snap maps are perhaps useful for older teens and adults though as then at least their friends will know where they are.

Not usually this many - I can see/hear a fair few, and there are at least 10 on my Flight Radar app..

I very much doubt any of the parents are going to be perusing mumsnet right now.

Teens do lie, trackers aren't even of use, some of Dd's friends had burner phones at 14. They would leave the tracked phone somewhere else. It's a different world now.

Young people are rash and irresponsible and make poor decisions. They dont listen to reason. As a parent it is terrifying but you cannot blame the parents. Keeping too tight a leash can make the problem ten times worse.

I am keeping everything crossed for a good outcome.

Not going to be helpful in a situation like this with no signal and then dead phones though.

And, of course, doesn’t always show where the teen in, it shows where the phone is. A friend of mine left her phone here several times when she was looking at flats and speaking to WA for help leaving her relationship.

With teenagers, it's a fine balance of wanting them to be safe {obviously} but also they want independence - Striking this balance is a fine art.

Parents want to know where the teen is going, not to be 'controlling' but to be 'safe'.

With 'groups' of teens, risks can be taken due to peer pressure- The one with the vehicle wields most power {from remembering own teenaged years}, and the others just have to go along with it as there is no way of getting back without the vehicle.

{Not saying this is what happened in this case, but just what happened in my own experience and that of friends}.

The latest BBC update is odd, given the time listed:

Ambulance service issues statement
The Welsh Ambulance Service says it was called at about 10:08 GMT this morning to reports of an incident near the A4085 between Nantmor and Tan-Lan in Gwynedd.
“We sent an operations manager, two emergency ambulances and two Cymru High Acuity Response Units to the scene where we were supported by the Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service in two Wales Air Ambulance charity helicopters," it said.

A good old fashioned OS map doesn't have the same issue.

However the phones have worked to a degree. So there is SOME value in having them.

DH worked out the rough location from which masts got pinged and which was the last ping (and which didn't - topography of the land). He knew they had to have gone up in that direction and then 'something' has happened. It massively reduces the search area.

The police will have must more detailed information and mountain rescue will have much more local information too.

To be fair camping in Snowdonia in a mild November isn’t suicidal of itself - as long as you’re not up a mountain peak (or in cave), if you’re pitched near the car and can drive home if you get cold.

Luckily these types of incidents are rare, so I don't see any point in arguing about whether parents should know where their 17yr olds are at every moment. I imagine most of us pulled the trick with a friend, saying we were at each others houses, in our youth. And for most of us, it was absolutely fine. Some teenagers go backpacking around the world at not much older.

I hope they are found safe and well.

The car wasn’t found in Shrewsbury, according to the BBC the road is closed on the A4085 between Penrhyndeudraeth and Garreg.

BBC
Ambulance service issues statement
The Welsh Ambulance Service says it was called at about 10:08 GMT this morning to reports of an incident near the A4085 between Nantmor and Tan-Lan in Gwynedd.
“We sent an operations manager, two emergency ambulances and two Cymru High Acuity Response Units to the scene where we were supported by the Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service in two Wales Air Ambulance charity helicopters," it said.

Oh dear.

It's not odd. The police won't issue up to the minute updates just to keep the public informed. Their priority is the boys, their families and the scene.

The car would have been found (and ambulances called in) quite some time before they announced it on Facebook.

The parents of these boys will be imagining the worst anyway.

Could someone else please copy and paste the latest report from the BBC onto this thread, please. We all must do our best to raise awareness.

That's a normal number.

I think the most I've counted is 13, though I don'r check Flight Radar every day.

When I was about 15 my friend had a much older boyfriend and she’d always be sneaking off with him and telling her parents she was with me. I imagine this still happens very frequently but with the girl leaving her mobile at her friend’s (alibi) house (whilst she’s off doing God knows what) as she knows her parents will be tracking her.

As you said, it’s a different world now and it is extremely easy for teenagers to deceive and lie to their parents about what they’re up to.