DD12 got into the car with a stranger

[Studdles]

Got a big fright this weekend so posting to get it off my chest, and to also hopefully alert others who might be in the same boat without realising it.

DD is 12 and very reasonable (I thought) for the most part. We went out at the weekend and a random man my own age greeted her in passing. I had never seen or met him before, and obviously asked DD about him especially since she had returned the greeting in a subdued manner.

Long story short is that she had missed her bus on the way to her music lesson and said man had stopped the car and offered to drive her to catch up on the bus as he was heading the same way, and she has agreed to get into the car. He did just drive her to catch up with the bus and nothing bad happened, but DD was upset and said she knew that she had made a big mistake once she had gotten into the car and that this was why she’d hadn’t told me.

I’m still shocked if I’m honest, and for several reasons. First of all I still struggle to accept that she got into the car with a stranger, because this is a lesson that I have instilled in her (or at least I thought I had) since she was little. I also feel quite upset that she chose to do this over admitting to me that she had missed the bus, and that she also didn’t tell me afterwards and had a guilty conscience for several weeks.
I will admit that we had several fights about her missing the bus in the past, which is obviously whh she had opted to avoid another confrontation and get into the car 😔

I know that I am more than lucky, and that this could have ended up so much worse. So by all means, don’t do what I did and take your children’s maturity for granted. I’m not even angry, but just thankful.

Obviously she is still to young to be travelling alone . No matter how many time you have told her about interaction with strangers

As a teenager in the mid-80s (15+ yrs), I was a regular hitchhiker as we lived in the arse end of nowhere, there were no buses & was about a 5 mile walk to the nearest town & civilisation.
Once I started to drive, I would stop for people to pay the favour on.
Thinking about it now, I can't believe my idiocy & how lucky I've been. In all occasions I was a young woman on my own getting into cars & vans with both women & men.
At that time in my area due to lack of transport options, a lot of young people were hitchhiking around. It felt normal as you'd always see someone at the roadside with their thumb out.
I was one of the fortunate ones. And I never told my parents.
Back to the here & now...
I hope your daughter now realises how she had put herself in a really dodgy situation.
The fact he then recognised her would concern me from a grooming point of view & whatever details she can remember, it might be worth reporting to 101.
His intentions might have been innocent - paying on the favour - I just hope they were but if she sees him again at her stop, she should get his details & pass them onto you.

You need to give your head a wobble.

Part of the weakness with ‘stranger danger’ is that kids expect a bad stranger to look or act weird, not that they can be ordinary and/or charming. There’s a concept of ‘tricky people’ that addresses some situations. It’s a fine balancing act, but maybe she’s not ready to be responsible enough to get public transport. The fear of getting into trouble can lead to poor decision making in an otherwise level headed kid.

I think you need to look to your parenting to see why your dd is so scared of your reaction to missing the bus, she was prepared to take a risk with a stranger!
To the poster suggesting that a secondary school-aged child is too young to catch a bus, you need a reality check!!

Sad how many comments are focused on the gender of the driver, as if a female offering a lift is quite acceptable but a helpful man must be either stupid or up to no good.
Also LOL at PPs suggesting you phone the police... Seriously, what do you think the police would do, send out officers to innvestigate someone for giving a lift?😂😂😂

I think that what is also very chilling is that a lot of the time it’s not exactly a stranger, it’s the friends dad, the dad of the family you babysit for, the guy who helps at the group you attend.

I don’t think people should be offering lifts to unknown children: there are times when it’s obviously probably the best thing to do but it does blur the boundaries. You’re fine but the next one might not be and if children are doing it a lot and it’s fine then that means their guard isn’t up when it’s not fine.

What is quite frightening is that there are any number of men who have no previous history of assault and no previous convictions. But if the opportunity presents itself they will take it. I was friends with a girl who was murdered. She was walking home from a Christmas party and a man saw her, took her, raped her and strangled her. The only reason he was caught was because he did have a previous conviction but it was for possession of an offensive weapon. Nothing sexual, arguably violent but still. And I do wonder how many cold cases were one time terrible acts from men who never did anything like that before or since.

I don’t think for the most part females should be offering lifts but it is disingenuous to claim that women and men are somehow the same in this respect.

I gave a lift to a young man 16/17 walking home on a rural road. I was worried he would get run over. If your daughter is okay then I wouldn’t report someone for doing a kind act.

I will admit that we had several fights about her missing the bus in the past, which is obviously whh she had opted to avoid another confrontation and get into the car

This is your problem ^

So in the past she has missed the bus you have torn her off a strip and she didn't want that to happen again.

This is how teenagers think. They think, "Mum / Dad / teacher will kill me so I'll do X".

X might be getting in to a car with a stranger, trying to sleep off the alcohol in a park, walking home alone. Insert your own scenario.

Can you reschedule her music lesson because it is obviously a fine line between her catching and missing the bus?

Talk with her not to her and listen. Do not talk at her.

Example from my own teenage years. I was allowed to go out on a Saturday night. I had to be home at 11.

In order to get home for 11 I had to leave my friends at 10.30, walk to the bus station, get the bus, get off and walk a fair way to my home.

My friends would get the bus that left the bus station at 11.00 and was direct and stopped literally over the street from home. But catching that bus meant I would be out until 11.15.

I kept asking if I could get the later bus but no, my mother had decided I needed to be in for 11 so I made that journey every week.

Good. Because this isn’t about your DD’s maturity. The fact that she was this worried about missing the bus and didn’t tell you about the lift for several weeks however is worrying.

I strongly believe that you need to consider why she was so worried about missing the bus.
Your DD was (apparently) desperate to avoid an other argument. Desperate enough she knowingly did something incredibly dangerous. That’s worrying.

It seems to me as if these previous arguments had a fairly big impact on your DD and are a source of anxiety/ fear.

Are you sure that her missing the bus is worth this kind of reaction? Is it truly bad enough to warrant the kind of arguments you’ve apparently been having?

Something similar happened here recently a while back. Guy in a van offered two girls walking home from school a lift. They were early secondary age.

Their mum put it in the village Facebook, someone else had spotted him trying to talk to a lone girl 10 minutes earlier and had watched til the girl got through her door up the road. They had also taken a snap of number plate as they didn’t like the cut of his jib basically.

Information was shared with the police and they did follow up.

I agree that this has been a wake up call. We did have several long talks and I don’t think anything else happened to her. She had missed the bus and apparently he had seen her running for it, and drove her to a stop along the route so she could get on the bus. DD described the route he drove which is a drive of a few minutes. She is adamant that he didn’t do anything to her. Obviously I’ll keep an eye on her but she did seem very relieved that she had told me and that she didn’t have to keep this secret any more.

It’s generally a very safe area but it was still extremely dangerous. We live in the suburbs of a town and he must be local as he knew the bus route and way into town. There is a very big supermarket servicing the area and he was leaving it as we were walking up towards it in the car park. I am glad that he did say hello to her in front of me, as I would not have found out about it afterwards.

I am not angry with my DD, and I have made that very clear. I obviously have to really think about the way I communicate with her. The reason we had gotten into fights about this in the past is that the bus is often delayed which meant that DD developed the habit of leaving the house too late and rushing and missing the bus at times. But it’s time to pick my battles because a missed bus is so trivial compared to what could have happened because she has been scared to tell me.

Thank you all. I wanted to share this as I had not expected her to do this in a million years and I wouldn’t want this to happen to others in a similar situation.

I see what you mean, but I imagine a man - probably a dad - saw a girl in distress and didn’t think much further than to help her. Statistically that is way more likely than him being dodgy

Your dd may feel more confident if you assure her that she can tell you about her mistakes without fear of getting into trouble. A lot of children and teenagers are scared of getting into trouble if they admit to doing anything their parents have advised against. But I'd rather they feel secure enough to call and ask for help. I try to make the distinction between staying safe and just random bad behaviour ie. missing the bus is a safety concern, leaving dirty laundry in your room is not.

I agree as well. I’m not convinced it was a coincidence that he bumped into her again.

I've always talked not about strangers but rather doing something that's unexpected or not planned which includes complete strangers, people who pretend they know you and people they actually know. Eg if a neighbour/teacher/someone from a sports club unexpectedly offers a lift, ive always said they need to check with me first.

She shouldn’t have got in the car but it sounds pretty innocent to me. Having seen her run and miss the bus he probably just stopped instinctively as he was a nice bloke. It’s the sort of thing that would have been commonplace, even expected, in many parts of the country a couple of generations ago.

He greeted her in passing the next time as it would have been more odd for him to pretended not to know her - or just because that is what people do when they see someone they’ve met before.

I wouldn’t be surprised if on reflection he also regrets getting her to her class on time!

This exact same scenario happened to me over 30 years ago when I was 12. I still think about how stupid I was till this day and I still haven't told my mum. I think I just panicked at the time as I'd missed my bus. It's great that she's talked to you about it and it sounds like she's learnt a very big lesson.

The reason we had gotten into fights about this in the past is that the bus is often delayed which meant that DD developed the habit of leaving the house too late and rushing and missing the bus at times. But it’s time to pick my battles because a missed bus is so trivial compared to what could have happened because she has been scared to tell me.

The Book You wish you Parents had Read has a good section on this. Fighting with your children creates a lack of emotional safety and teaches your children to go against their gut instinct and breakds down trust and communication. She provides far better ways to communicate with them.

OP, I would honestly report this. It's not normal for a man to volunteer to give a teenage girl a lift.

It might be something this person does regularly and there might be CCTV of the car. I think it's worth reporting.

But how do you tell which lifts are going to have a good outcome and which aren’t?

I drummed it into my kids to never go off with strangers.

How did he know that she had missed the bus?

Isn't 12 2ndry school age?

That's fine to be getting busses isn't it?

Agree with this. Very odd and very scary

I also did this, in my early 20s. Instant what have you done, getting in a car with a strange man after all your mother told you? But the other polar opposite female socialisation - be kind, be nice, he's being helpful and pleasant, don't say no - kicked in harder. And in I got. It was fine, but could so easily have not been.

She knew she'd made a mistake but she's 12. If a woman ten years older finds herself doing it why should we expect maturity from a child?

He knew what he did and I agree, the friendly hello may be a sinister element - see, we know each other, I helped you, your mum's met me ... I'm safe.

She does realise she made a mistake.

So control any anger, 'what were you thinking?' reaction etc and have a very frank and age appropriate conversation with her, get her to take the lead and find out what she does understand could have happened. Ensure she realises that sadly some men's motives around women and children are not good, and that she has the right to say no.

Use it as a learning experience, a teachable moment as they say.