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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To not want daughter going to a wood by herself?

532 replies

Vellia · 26/04/2019 00:18

Dd is 16. We live in a town with lots of countryside/footpaths at close proximity. About a 15 minute walk away from our house, you get to the edge of some farmers’ fields. If you walk down the side of one of these you find yourself in a lovely small wood. At the moment the bluebells are out and it’s absolutely magical.

Over Easter, dd and I have gone for a walk in this wood most mornings before she starts revising (I work in a school so have school holidays off). But in a few weeks’ time she’ll be off school on pre-GCSE study leave while I’ll be working.

She’s said in passing that she’s going to go for a walk in the woods at the start of each day to get herself in the right frame of mind for revision.

I feel rather uncomfortable about this as the wood is a significant distance away from the road & any houses. Definitely out of ear-shot. And the wood is never very busy - we rarely bump into more than one or two people, mostly dog walkers; often it’s entirely empty apart from us.

AIBU to think it would be unwise for dd to go walking there by herself? Would I be unreasonable to tell her she can’t?

OP posts:
Innernutshell · 26/04/2019 14:01

My mum told me not to go walking in the local woods the other day.

I'm 56. Confused

I told her that I don't want to live in a world ruled by fear.

I've been walking alone in woods for years.

I'm far more likely to get run over crossing the road.
[mind you she told me to look for cars doing that the other day too!]

Please give your DD the freedom to embrace nature op.

JoinTheMicrodots · 26/04/2019 14:03

I hadn’t seen that you posted that you’re a Traveller, @chocolatelog - I guess cultural differences partly explains your very protective attitude to your DD’s safety (that’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of non-Traveller British people on this thread with attitudes that I also find over-protective by my standards!).

LimeKiwi · 26/04/2019 14:05

It's not nice but it's part of being a woman, sadly.

Oh give over. I refuse to put myself in victim mentality and be too scared to go out alone in parks/woodland out on an evening after dark.
Living with that level of fear inside must be horrible.

Bookworm4 · 26/04/2019 14:06

@chocolatelog
Your 17 yr old isn't allowed to go for a walk but is allowed at parties until 2/3am? do you vet these 'parties'?
How do teenagers learn to make a judgement of their parents take all the de time from them?

Bookworm4 · 26/04/2019 14:06

Decisions not de time

JoinTheMicrodots · 26/04/2019 14:08

@chocolatelog There's more rapes and murders on non travellers than there is on travellers. I wonder why 🤔

Do you mean as a percentage? I’d be interested to see your source for that, if you’d share (genuinely - not being snarky)?

insecure123 · 26/04/2019 14:11

I'm with cashmerecardigan on this. I was walking/playing in the woods younger than 16 and still love my early Morning walks when it is quiet and peaceful. i was brought up rural though so it was normal..... I tend to be more on edge in busy towns etc where crime rate is higher

youknowmedontyou · 26/04/2019 14:13

There's more rapes and murders on non travellers than there is on travellers. I wonder why 🤔

And where was that statistic from? You keep quoting them with no back up!

MIA12 · 26/04/2019 14:16

It is utterly depressing but after a scary experience in some fields while walking my dog aged 16 I’d be worried too. I’m in my late twenties now but it’s stuck with me and made me cautious ever since about isolated places.

chocolatelog · 26/04/2019 14:16

@Bookworm4 yes I know who's at these party's and it's mostly family/friends ect they make their own decisions and judgments they have opinions and lives we don't chain them up lol.

It's just a fact I know. If it was on the news then they would make a point of saying it was travellers because they like to point us out. I bet if you googled it you wouldn't find much. I'm 34 I've known one girl to be raped by her boyfriend. I've heard of a few being murdered but it's mostly men. Think of all the murders and rapes that happen in the world and none of them are travellers.

chocolatelog · 26/04/2019 14:18

Sorry posted to soon.

Probably less than a handful.

Molytol · 26/04/2019 14:29

It's just a fact I know.

Ah, the ol' pulled it out of my arse, I see.

And of course, no cultural reasons for traveller girls not reporting rape.

Namestheyareachangin · 26/04/2019 14:30

Sorry but bigger that. Yes shit happens. But it happens vanishingly rarely in the kind of "psycho jumps out of bushes" way people on here are implying. Is the OP going to stop her daughter getting married/divorced because 2 women a week (or whatever it is) get murdered by their partner or ex partner? Far more likely proposition than her being in danger in a wood. Is she going to stop her learning to drive because of the likelihood of road traffic accidents? Again far more likely danger than a stranger rapistc urking in a clump of bluebells.

I have a daughter and I'm scared for her every day (she's 2, god knows what I'll be like when she's 16). But I'm damned if I'm going to curtail and quash her, deny her life experiences and her rightful sense of entitlement to move through the world freely in order to protect her from the unlikeliest of dangers. What she'd definitely lose if I do weighs too heavy against what is very unlikely to happen to her if I don't.

Let your daughter walk where she will OP, same as you would your son. Teach her self awareness, get her to take self defence classes, and then support her to make her own evaluation of the risks of living a normal, full life. Don't let the misogynists win.

youknowmedontyou · 26/04/2019 14:30

They don't get to tell us to mind our own business until their married. And then they can do as they please 😁

@chocolatelog, they then become magically safe to walk in woods, make their own decisions? Suddenly they become grown up and sensible? What's the average age to get married?

TheBulb · 26/04/2019 14:31

Most murders/rapes happen in secluded areas not on a high street.

Have you looked at the fatal knife attacks in London and other major cities recently? Hmm

And the statistics that suggest 90% of rape victims who report the crime know their attackers, hence it's far more likely to happen indoors, in their own home or the perpetrator's home?

This thread seems to have been taken over by the people who get the vapours in their own homes when their husbands are away overnight, or who turn a draught and a few creaks into a full-blown supernatural experience.

TheTitOfTheIceberg · 26/04/2019 14:36

Most murders/rapes happen in secluded areas not on a high street.

Most murders and rapes happen in the victim's home or the home of a person known to them, actually.

The most harm likely to come to the OP's DD is tripping over a tree root and twisting her ankle.

TeacupDrama · 26/04/2019 14:39

@chocolatelog I'm confused you say you are travellers then on another thread you don't want to travel and are making all sorts of excuses about why it is unreasonable for your family to want to travel for a holiday when you don't as "abroad" is too scary
you also said you had anxiety issues etc so I think it is colouring your judgment
The girl is likely to be much much much safer in a bluebell wood than on the tube in the middle of the day

Jengnr · 26/04/2019 14:42

I am astounded by this thread. I was gobsmacked by the OP even thinking about it for a 16 year old but I’m even more shocked about how many people wouldn’t do it themselves!!

It’s a walk through some woods, not a crack pipe!

chocolatelog · 26/04/2019 14:47

@TeacupDrama what's that got to do with it? Travellers doesn't mean we travel.

Mitzicoco · 26/04/2019 14:47

The risk is real, like it or not. I was assaulted in a secluded rural area at the age of 18. My mistake (looking back) was to go to this place roughly the same time on certain days. So if you do let her go, I would definitely encourage her to vary the route and time she goes.

BastianBux · 26/04/2019 14:47

see dog walkers walking down dark back alleys at night night and I think why? Why not just walk in lit up built up areas. What you gonna benefit from walking down there? It's crazy.

They turn the streetlights off early here, so no streetlights in the whole area. Still walk my dog.

youknowmedontyou · 26/04/2019 14:49

@chocolatelog are you going to answer any of the questions put to you?

chocolatelog · 26/04/2019 14:49

What questions?

BastianBux · 26/04/2019 14:50

They don't get to tell us to mind our own business until their married.

Well, as long as they are all married by 18 that's fine then, right? How many are getting married in their say late 20s and 30s? What a horrible mentality of 'they are mine until they belong to someone else'. They are their own person in their own right.

TheInvestigator · 26/04/2019 14:52

This might be very ignorant of me, but don't most travellers get married at 16/17/18?

If that is the case then all of your posts aren't relevant because that's the age we are talking about and by then, they're married and out of your control.

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