To think school trip to science museum tomorrow is not a great idea ! After Westminster.

[OopsDearyMe]

My daughters school have a trip arranged for tomorrow to the science museum in London. I know I'm gonna look like a bubble wrapper, but I'm not sure why but I'm not comfortable with the idea of a school taking a group of 100 kids to a known landmark and possible terror target , just a few days after what has just happened.

I know the threat is more likely to be for political places , but look at the bataclan (sp) and beach attacks. I know we should be standing firm and not be cowed, bu my daughter is profoundly deaf on one side and as a result gets lost easily and struggles in busy places. Should something happen even nearby, I'm not sure she would be able to react quickly etc.

I'm also annoyed because the statement sent out, was quite insensitive about what happened and was full of feeble reasons as to why they could not cancel (it would cost them to re book the coaches, the terror threat has not been raised and they have plenty of staff).

I used to work in the West End, when 7/7 happened and still went to work, so I'm no snowflake....

Mega, yes I do, I acknowledge that to you it may seem irrational but I whole heartedly think a child is in less danger crossing the street in Hertfordshire than they are visiting London after a attack.

Sudocream - you take risks with your children all the time though. As do I. Every time we drive them somewhere. Every time we do anything quite frankly. And the risk of being caught up in a terrorist attack in London is tiny. So to deny your child an educational activity on that basis doesn't make any sense.

You're not unreasonable to be worried but you are unreasonable not to try to think through the risk rationally. Terrorism is not a leading cause of child death and injury in the U.K. Leading causes of death are transport accidents (by far the biggest), asphyxia (so choking or accidental strangulation) and then drowning.

The risk is minuscule. Even to say these attacks are happening in our cities all the time is a massive exaggeration. Since the Paris attacks people have been saying don't go to London but nothing has happened in the UK since then until Wednesday. Being alive makes you vulnerable to many dangers but if we worried about all of them all the time we would never get out of bed.

I worry sometimes that my 15 year old son will choke on his pizza when I'm out. You'd probably tell me that's ridiculous. It's more likely than that your child will be involved in a terrorist attack. And I still go out and he still eats the pizza.

Cyclehire i acknowledge what you are saying and I understand but to me my gut feeling is 'this is a risk too far that I'm not comfortable with' there is nothing wrong with that. I have assessed the situation and feel it is not safe at the minute.

Then you need a crash course in statistics and probability theory Sudocream. But there's no arguing with irrationality I suppose.

Just because someone feels different to you does not mean they need a course in statistics. Did the statistics help the people who died in the attack? Probably not.

Let her go otherwise the terrorists win. I was there on Wed as my office is next to Parliament Sq. I was scared walking down Whitehall knowing there was a serious incident taking place but I'm back on a train going into London as I was yesterday. Everything is normal. A museum is very unlikely to be targeted anyway. Please carry on.

There's 8,000,000 people in London all carrying on as normal. One deluded isolated nutter caused a fucking devastating tragedy, but it was a oneoff.

I'm sure it's been said, but it might help if someone with better knowledge of statistics than me could illustrate how small the risk is. Your fear is not 'irrational' in the sense that as parents we want to keep our children safe and I'm sure those people involved at Westminster never for one moment thought they'd be caught up in something like that. However, the actual risk is minimal and we expose our dc to greater risks every single day without even thinking about it. Fwiw I'm taking my 4 month old dd to London on Saturday. Security is currently high and it's probably the safest time to go. So yabu, but it's understandable.

Terrorism is not a new thing. Back in the 80s 90s there was the risk from the IRA. In fact it was more noticeable then. There were no public bins at train stations. You just left your rubbish on the floor and it was picked up. There were a lot of bomb alerts and buildings were shut.
Yes it was slightly different, they would plant a bomb, mostly give a warning and they didn't kill themselves.
Everyone has always carried on.
My dh is from Northern Ireland. He was brought up there in the 80s. There seemed to live under a much greater risk and they still went about their daily lives. He has very strong views about this (in the you must still go sense!)

Suducreme it's not a case of different opinion. You are genuinely overstating this particular risk. But it's understandable that people do, given the media and social media coverage.

I've actually been in two bomb attacks in places where I've lived and worked Sudocream, Manchester in the 90's and 7/7 more recently. I had cuts & bruises from Manchester and was pregnant in London. I've not felt fear like it since. However I'm also a post graduate educated mathematician; and risk, statistics and probability were my daily profession too. The fear is understandable but utterly irrational.

It should be safer as security is very tight after Westminster

I can understand your anxieties and it is your decision as her parent whether you let her go or not but it would have been wrong of the school to cancel the trip for all. They are no less safe this week than they were last week. There are always risks in everything we do but we keep living. Your child is more at risk from crossing the road or cycling a bike in London than any terror attack. I was living in London when the London bombing happened in 2005 and I had to get the tube to work the following day. I was so nervous about it but did and everyone was just going about their business way more security about and people a little bit edgy but everyone still travelled and got on with their business.

As I said completely your decision whether you let her go but the school are right here when is the right time for this trip? there are always risks

Just because someone feels different to you does not mean they need a course in statistics. Did the statistics help the people who died in the attack? Probably not.

But you could drop down dead at any moment. Why would you restrict your life over the TINY possibility that you might be caught up in a terrorist attack? Are you never going to visit London? Or Paris? Or get on a plane? Or the train?

You're saying someone is more at risk going to London than crossing the road in Hertfordshire, but that's not the case. 305 children were injured in car accidents in Hertfordshire in 2015 - that's nearly 1/day. (www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/media-library/documents/highways/transport-planning/transport-and-accident-data/casualty-factsheet/casualty-factsheet-2016.pdf)

That's more than the number of people killed by terrorism across the WHOLE OF EUROPE in the same year (175).

Miniscule is still a risk

There's 8 million of us living in Greater London, this apparently swells to 12 million when everyone comes in to work during the day.
As far as I'm aware (I'm prepared to be corrected) until Wednesday there hadn't been any deaths from terrorism since 2005. So that's 12 million people in London pretty much every day for 12 years and no one has been killed in a terrorist attack.
I could understand it if you were worried about knife crime or being hit by a drunk driver, but terrorism? It's just almost an irrational fear to me.

*at risk of terrorism going to London, that should say.

Miniscule is still a risk.

Indeed it is. But - and I don't mean to be harsh - you are being very selective in your risk assessment by your focus on this. Life is not risk free. There is a very small, but probably greater risk that your daughter suffers a fatal head injury from a tree branch falling directly on her in the school playground. A smaller risk still that the school building suffers a catastrophic structural collapse. A smaller risk still that an aeroplane crashes into it.

And a small - but not miniscule risk? You and your daughter are involved in a car accident on the way to school for her to go on the trip. And if you were (touching wood here that you're not, obviously!) it wouldn't even make the papers. Probably not even the local ones. Because these things happen every day.

It's only natural to feel uneasy, but - as you rightly say yourself - as a parent your job is to assess risk on your child's behalf. And that means doing it properly and rationally.

Why don't we all just cancel our plans and stay at home. Your child is precious, well so are mine. I'm my mother's child and am precious to her. Everyone is someone's child.

We should just all just cancel our plans and stay in. No one needs to go to work, it's far to risky. The economy would collapse and the terrorists would win, but we would all be safe wouldn't we?

You're just as anxious as me oops.

I had to get counselling last year because I was freaking out about the dc's going to the West End with school. The Bataclan incident had really got to me. We've been to London as a family loads of times but I feel more in control then. DS is going again next month so I'm having kittens over it. And we've got athletics tickets in the summer ..

I even get scared at the cinema these days. There's not much hope for me tbh.

I actually went into Westminster yesterday. In fact if you were watching BBC news at around 8:40 you may have seen me walk past with my guide dog, as I am reliably informed I was seen....

Westminster was chaos. Roads closed and police still around not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of media - we pretty much passed a load of them all reporting.....

If people stop going about their daily lives then the terrorists need never do anything again, because they will have won. Thousands of people die every year in road accidents in the UK alone. Five people died in London on Wednesday. For their families that is no less tragic, however, for the rest of us that puts the possibility of being one of them down to almost 0. We take far bigger risks every day and no-one bats an eyelid. If you put your child in a car every day then there is no reason to suggest she shouldn't go to London. London is one of the safest places to be right now.

I also don't understand the argument by some that they would go if they were with the child but not want them to go alone? Surely you're either afraid of something happening or you're not?

Personally, I think it's an important part of parenting to teach our DC how to assess risk properly.

Not only because teaching them to curtail their lives in the face of minuscule risk is simply daft but it is also dangerous as it prevents proper assessment of proper risk.

I wouldn't send my child. I couldn't care less what people thought. I am not one of those people that carry on as normal as I suffer from anxiety. My husband is one of those people and is going to London in the Summer. I on the other hand have decided not to visit my local city centre or huge shopping mall with my children a the next few months at least.

But what are you going to say to your children? It's one thing to have those anxieties and to think those things inwardly. It is totally unfair on your children to project those anxieties on to them and bring them up to believe they should be anxious and that they are in mortal danger when they're not.

Waffling you need to get help for your anxiety. Your fear is totally irrational.
.your child is more likely to be run over on the way to school (5 per day) compared to being killed in a terror attack (5 in over 5 years).