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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

...To think a 16 year old should be capable of catching a train

70 replies

prettybird · 30/07/2010 16:59

SIL's 16 year old ds is staying with us while she is way on holiday. He is doing a course in place on the other side of the city.

She arranged for him to get lifts there and back as she didn't think he would be able to get there (would involve catching train, changing stations in the centre of town to get another train and then maybe a walk or bus at the other end) without having been shown what to do.

Last night he said that he wouldn't be able to get the lift today and would we be able to give him a lift.

We told him no, and that he could get the train, explaining to him what he needed to do. We are presuming that since we didn't get a text or call from him, he succeededin getting there.

Were we unreasonable?

OP posts:
prettybird · 30/07/2010 17:36

We did tell SIL before she left that he should make his own way there - which was why she arranged the lifts with other people

The comment dh got when he queried this was "well, we haven't had a chance to show him the route".

Well, he knows it now

OP posts:
ChippingIn · 30/07/2010 19:42

Is he home yet???

Alibabaandthe40nappies · 30/07/2010 19:46

Bloody hell, I flew back from Spain on my own at 16, and I had a fairly sheltered and molly-coddled childhood compared to a lot of friends! If I could do that, then he can manage to catch a train!

Goblinchild · 30/07/2010 19:53

Mine catch trains alone, but to begin with we did it together. Then when they got to around 10 or so, they bought the tickets and read the info and located platforms. I was there but only as an emergency reference. The challenge fort hem was to remember all the necessary stuff correctly.
Then they did local trains to Brighton and other nearby places and back without me when they were 14 or so.
Now DD has been going everywhere happily wit and without company. DS at 15 with sn has done a couple of unaccompanieds, but we've met up in town. He has yet to tackle London on his own, but has done the trip with me shadowing him.
They both have mobiles and call me if muddled.
The point is that if your 6 year old never goes anywhere with you using public transport, it will be a mystery to him. So suddenly chucking him on it at 16 will be something he might not relish. If you want them to be confident, independent travellers, train them up to it from being small.

pippylongstockings · 30/07/2010 19:56

Wow - I am guessing it was all so much easier in our day!

I was getting the train to the city from about 14 years old with my friends - sometime hiding in the toilets so I could bunk off the train fare and spend that extra money in Miss Selfridges instead....

By the time I was 17 I had left home and travelled through France with my BF.

Hassled · 30/07/2010 20:02

When I was NINE I was catching two buses across central Dublin, changing buses in the centre somwhere. Seems gobsmacking now. That was before we moved into the shoebox by the side of the motorway, obviously.

TeenyTinyToria · 30/07/2010 20:06

Glasgow is easy to navigate by train - let him get on with it. I regularly catch trains out in Dennistoun at night and have always been fine, just tell him not to wander round Govan

TheProvincialLady · 30/07/2010 20:07

When I was 18 months I toddled backwards and barefoot from Daventry to Newcastle Under Lyme, earning my own rusks by selling milky kisses to pensioners.

What a sad state of affairs. Isn't he even ashamed?

MummyOfSuburbia · 30/07/2010 20:08

I think that might be my thread in Teenagers which maryz is referring to, at 13 going on 14 I would not be sure (hence posting the thread) but if my son got to 16yo without being able to do this then I would be quite embarrassed and certainly wouldn't expect my SIL to ferry him about.

I agree that him being a bit of a dreamer is all the more reason to give him a bit of independence. YANBU.

Goblinchild · 30/07/2010 20:13

'What a sad state of affairs. Isn't he even ashamed?'

Some of my DD's friends are ashamed at their lack of lifeskills, a situation largely created by the helicopter parenting they were subjected to as they were raised inside their plastic bubble.
Parents of littlies, you have been warned.

smallorange · 30/07/2010 20:15

I went on holiday to France - train, boat, coach - with friends when I was 15.

Was working behind the bar at music festivals all over the country at 16.

It'll be the making of him, getting that train...

cupofteaplease · 30/07/2010 20:17

Hmm, well I had done a lot of travelling on my own by my 18th birthday, including flying alone to the US at 16.

HOWEVER, I am now 28 and I STILL find catching the train/underground confusing and slightly stressful! I think if you haven't had a lot of experience in this area, then it is understandable that you may not want to do it if avoidable.

Kathyjelly · 30/07/2010 20:24

He's old enough to be in the army or married with a wife and child. I think he can probably manage an off-peak return!

Acanthus · 30/07/2010 20:26

The scouts DO teach map reading.

My friend's 15yo is going to his grandparents' for a few days by train. She's sending him first class!

prettybird · 30/07/2010 20:27

No, he's not home yet - he had football training to go to afterwards and then will be getting the train home (I think - unless one of his friends is also going to training and he cadges a lift, which is what he did for training earlier in the week).

Dh and I, being that bit older, maybe have a different attitude to SIL.

At 7 or 8 (I thought it was 8, my dad says it was 7) I was getting a train from Bearsden to Partick for ballet lessons, walking up a hill (narrow lane) to where the lessons were held - and from the station back to our house on the return journey. In the winter, this would all be in the dark. To be fair, my mum did "train" me to do this, following me on the first couple of occasions.

At 16, I caught a plane to London, (too tight a) connecting flight to Paris (which my luggage didn't make), had to report the non arrival of my luggage, arrange for where it should be sent to, get a train into Paris, taxi across Paris, train down to the South of France to meet my pen friend. If my luggage ahd arrived, I'd have missed the train as I only caught it by the skin of my teeth, having raced through the Gare de Lyon. The only place I had a melt down was when I arrived at the taxi rank at Gare du Nord and saw the giant queue and knew I'd miss my train. The kind man next to me in the queue told me to go to the gendarme at the front of the queue and explain - and he put me into the next taxi.

Understandably, my parents had decided not to do a dry run of this trip to "prepare" me (which was the justification SIL gave for not expecting her ds to go via public transport - not having had time to do a dry run with him)

Dh was catching two trains and a bus across the city from age 11 to go to school.

How else are teeneagers going to learn independence, responsibility and, dare I say it, a bit of gumption, if they aren't given "easy" problems/challenges/adventures to solve themselves ??

OP posts:
MiladyDeSummer · 30/07/2010 20:29

It must have been piss easy in my day, I was eleven when I first took the 7:48 train to secondary school on my own in 1983. Twenty minute journey and they were usually horrible single carriages too.

at TheProvincialLady

Chil1234 · 30/07/2010 20:32

Presumably this lad has got the requisite mobile phone/ipod .... they come with GPS and, if the worst came to the worst, he could even ring for help.

Like a lot of posters I used to travel a long way to school and back on various buses for years. All pre-mobile phone with nobbut a 10p piece in my pocket 'in case I need to use a phone-box' for security. Tell young'uns that these days and they don't believe you.... LOL

ILovePlayingDarts · 30/07/2010 20:42

My brother took a plane to the US to visit some friends when he was 16. He certainly managed alright.

prettybird · 30/07/2010 20:42

at ProvincialLady too

....come to think of it, maybe that is when my own independence started - apparently I walked nearly a mile from my house to my granny's house when I was 12 months old. Nothing that unusual about that you might think - but this was in the South African veld and I walked through under a herd of cattle on the way (my dad was a cattle farmer back then). I was supposed to be having a nap but arrived on my granny's stoop stark naked, having lost my nappy on the way

OP posts:
sb6699 · 30/07/2010 20:50

Och, bet he's fine. If he gets lost he can always ask somebody (Friendliest City is it not!).

And Glasgow trains are easy - I still get lost on London tubes though!

prettybird · 30/07/2010 23:31

Dnephew is home safely

sb66 - your comment reminds me of a complaint that my dad got when he organised a European medical conference here....

"....no-one will give us directions........

.........they keep on insisting on taking us there themselves... they say they were going roughly that way themselves....."

OP posts:
mumeeee · 30/07/2010 23:38

I would have showed him the route. By that I mean show him on a map and explain how to get there. DD3 is 18 but is dysprasic and has some other special needs. She has been using buses since she was 12, She has only recently started going places by train by herself. But she as I've said is an 18 year old with special needs and does not have much sense of direction.

mumeeee · 30/07/2010 23:40

DD1 went to germany on a plane by herself when she was 16.5

prettybird · 30/07/2010 23:49

Dnephew has no special needs (... unless you count being a wee bit of a dreamer )

He says he had no real problems - except for not being sure which station on the subway to get off at (all of three stops away on a circle line: dh had told him - and he remembered/guessed correctly)

OP posts:
lovely74 · 30/07/2010 23:50

Oh how ridiculous! Please don't let me turn into a parent like the SIL.........

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