Kirstie Allsopp reported to Social Services

[Eastie77Returns]

I know she’s worshipped on MN so will don by hard hat now😅 I think reporting her was absolutely ridiculous but I do question the wisdom of letting her 15 year old son travel across Europe on his own (well with friends). She mentioned lots of kids do this after their GCSEs. I think it’s usually after A Levels?

You don't know anything about where he was staying.

I doubt he went anywhere near any dodgy places. Kirstie Allsopp is loaded and a member of the aristocracy. These people don't exactly rough it.

Jay Slater was 19, got separated from friends, made a stupid decision at 5am and ended up dead.

Jay Slater was in a remote location and possibly under the influence of drink and/or drugs. These boys will have been on trains or in busy cities. They will never have been somewhere they could not get help if needed.

He will have been in dodgy hostels.

Or staying with family or friends, who would have been available to help if needed.

Not sure what not being in the EU has to do with tourists/travellers being able to get help if needed. People had better avoid Norway and Switzerland, among other places, if that's an issue.

Your comment says more about you than it does about her

I think social services should investigate children who surf the internet unsupervised. A far greater chance of something going seriously awry. What Kirsty Allsopp does is down to her judgement as a parent and it's noone else's business to interfere. All my kids were pretty 'free range' and expected to be responsible as teenagers. They all studied hard, got good degrees, good jobs, found partners etc....unlike their peers who were wrapped up in cotton wool. As an older mum looking back I am very glad they learnt to be independent and responsible at a relatively young age.

I wouldn't have done it but I wouldn't consider it neglect if other parents made a different decision.

An interviewee once rocked up for her interview in my workplace accompanied by her dad - she was in her late 30s and he waited for her in reception!! She did get the job!

I know exactly what you mean. Thinking back to my own childhood, I remember being shocked to find out that when I was about 15, one of my school friends had never been on the Underground, not even with his parents. By this point I'd been using it solo for three years and had travelled almost all of it - I grew up in a London suburb.

Lots of people I knew had parents who were really weirdly protective and strict, and they ended up being the ones who were far more likely to (a) get into serious hot water when things didn't go to plan because they had no street-smarts or problem-solving skills and/or (b) rebel against their parents and do something epically stupid.

Do you know that for fact?!

Maybe the accommodation was booked for him? This is a lad born into massive privilege. He's probably very well-travelled and well-used to doing all of those things. If he is anything like his mother he'll be a force of nature and probably very confident! Plus he was days off turning 16 which is different to only just being 15.

I think his parents are best placed to decide what is acceptable for their son.

Have you been in Europe?

I very much doubt that KA's son will have been staying in any dodgy hotels!!

Exactly, this is the sort of person who would have travelled all over Europe, if not the world, from a very young age, on all sorts of things, probably including skiing trips and multiple other activities every single year. I suspect he's also had a very high quality education and is likely to be at least moderately fluent in another language or two.

I bet all his train travel was first class as well, which massively reduces your exposure to anti-social behaviour.

People like this absolutely ooze confidence and I suspect he took everything in his stride.

@unsync · Today 16:21

WTF are parents doing nowadays if their 15 year olds are incapable of independent travel? When I did it, there were no mobile phones, no GPS, no Internet, no plastic money. The world is so much easier to navigate now. Communications are greatly improved. Teenagers should be capable of independence and responsibility by the age of 15 if they are parented properly.

There's a lot of things that people did 'back in the day' that we wouldn't dream of doing now! Silly strawman argument! Also, some 15 year olds are capable of responsibility and a degree of independence, but it doesn't mean they should be allowed to go off on holiday ABROAD without adult supervision, especially overseas. FFS!

People need to STOP spouting nonsense. Saying 'parents of teenagers these days are crap and their teenagers are pathetic wet willies.' Just because these SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN (and their parents) aren't comfortable with said CHILD travelling abroad without adult supervision!'

F**k me, this place sometimes!!! 🙄

Well, I wasn't the most worldly-wise 15/16 year old, but I can guarantee I'd have coped just fine doing a trip around Europe by train. By that time I'd already done quite a few lengthy train journeys alone, had a decent grasp of French and German (A grades at GCSE), and had visited a few European countries, including travel on their trains.

Absolutely - this isn't Tommy who goes to the local comp!

Wow.

I agree with this. Rich kids roaming Europe is normal. Poor kids fending for themselves is neglect.

I know! People in those rarified circles travel all over the world all the time, and it's something he'd have been doing for as long as he can remember. If it's something you're so accustomed to, you're hardly going to struggle or panic, and let's be honest, having a more or less unlimited supply of money can get you out of a lot of trouble. If he'd run into any problems, a quick phone call to Mummy would have sorted everything.

As others have said, his mother is one of the most robustly self-confident people in the known universe, and I'd be very surprised if he wasn't too.

Posters have now stopped pretending it's anything else and are outright saying since he's rich he must be smart and mature. :/

Oops yes! Apologies - totally read that too quickly as 11yr old! 😬

Well, sad to say, it's probably true.

I've been around a lot of well-off, privately-educated people in my life, and they're far more self-assured and assertive than a lot of other people. It's one of the main reasons why those who privately educate their kids do so.

Yeah, in the past, planning and booking foreign train travel was a complex and difficult business. Now it can be done in minutes with an app on your phone.

The Internet can debate this ad nauseum. The argument that children are more at risk online than in real world is compelling and convincing. However no one would know about thus if KA hadn't outed this and invaded her sons privacy by...posting it online.
Don't really care about her parenting choice to allow him to go inter railing but by putting it out there she has surely caused him embarrassment