To think 11 is not too young to travel on a train alone?

[Tellmeifimwrong]

Please settle a debate! Happy to hear all opinions.

Is 11 years old, starting y7 in Sept, too young to take a one hour train journey, without parents but with a slightly younger child? Put on at one end by an adult and met at the other end by an adult, with a phone and data, and train staff informed? No behavioural problems or SEN.

Statistics show

1. there are NO MORE stranger danger cases than there were in the 1960s. The only difference is that people know about more of them, so a local case might only have made the local paper before, now it makes national news.
2. statistically the most likely place for a young person to be targeted is within a mile or two of home. The most likely person to attack them is someone they know. Either a relative or someone local eg a neighbour. If you look at all the high profile cases in the last few years that is absolutley true.
3. Just because YOU are more afraid of your kids being abducted, that doesn't mean that your kids are actually at more risk.
4. The best way to keep your kids safe is to teach them how to react/behave if they think someone is dodgy. This applies not only to going on a train but to any time when they are out without you. Make a loud noise, scream, run, walk into a shop, etc etc.

Many of us did this type of journey this 'back in the day' (I used to go from LIverpool to London, put on at one end by adult and met at the other) and actually we were at exactly the same risk or lack or risk as today.

The person who suggested that because of immigration the rate of danger/attack is higher is DISGRACEFUL. Bloody horrible racism.

xILikeJamx · Yesterday 13:22
An 11 year old should not be responsible for a younger child on a train”

This, with bells on.

If they can't manage this at their age then I would think they have been poorly parented. They just need to sit on the train and get off at the other end. Its really not hard.

Just make sure they have a phone and can phone you if they are unsure about anything.
But 11 year olds do not get dragged off trains by abductors.
I swear some parents are going to turn their kids into anxiety ridden nervous wrecks.

I was in my teens when a creep touched my leg and tried to convince me to get off at a different stop with him, age is not necessarily as important as confidence. Would he be confident to say no? To scream if needed?

It depends how far it is and how many stops. I would do the journey with them for a week. Then see how the get on on their own. Teach them what to do in an emergency. Who to call if they need and practice those calls.

@Uokhon An 11 year old who can not say no if asked to get off at a train stop with a stranger has been poorly parented. The OP says her DC has no SN or behavioural problems. I was a painfully shy 11 year old and would not have screamed, but I would not have got off either. I would have phoned my mum though if we had mobiles then.

wrt should they go together?

generally I am of the view that the 11 year old should not be responsible for a younger child.
But in this case the younger child is 10. So they are very nearly the same age. And I think the value of having 2 of you together ooutweighs the fact that the older one is 'responsible'

But that is also one of those things which is very dependant on the 2 children, and what their friendship is like.

but again, just a bit early as they are still at primary school. Give them a year or so.

Milly Dowler was 13.

Don’t bother replying, I don’t follow threads.

The worst instances of sexual harassment I've had were on trains. Just because there are train staff checking tickets occasionally, doesn't mean passengers are policed or protected.

Most of the time the journeys are straightforward, but when things go wrong they go spectacularly wrong. Just in the past month I've had the following things happen:

1. Some sort of electrical fault so that our train returned to the station, and then I think bizarrely the staff forgot we were in the train? We were all pounding on the windows so that the station crew noticed us and activated the doors so we could exit, and then there was a huge rush for the other train, people literally body-checking and shoving.

1. On another occasion, our train left the station and then we got an announcement that the upcoming stop had an electrical fault so we were being re-routed to another major city over a half-hour away. We were all just staring at each other like WTF?

@WomblingTree86 you asked what difference it would make being 11 vs 14. It’s a big difference at that age and I refuse to believe that an 11 year old would be able to deal with potential threat as well as a 14 year old, nor have the same emotional resilience in the event of the worst happening. Just not possible.

FYI I won’t be letting my DC on a train alone until they’re 16. Unless it is necessary for school where they are accompanied by older school children/teacher.

The school we are thinking of has teachers/nominated 17/18yo students present from the furthest stop to supervise younger and a school bus at the other end.

What other people do is up to them, but I won’t be putting my DC into scenarios where they face unnecessary risk.

Abducting an 11 year old in a train would be impossible unless your 11 year old is so naive they will just go off quietly with a stranger when asked. In which case they are incredibly vulnerable. My nephew has autism and is very vulnerable as he would just go off with a stranger if asked (he is a teenager) so can not be left alone. He needs constant supervision. An NT child should not be this vulnerable.

Don't tell me to think about what I'm saying. I thought very hard before posting.

It wasn't your fault BUT maybe you should have been a little more aware of how these things can develop, especially as a teenager.

I'd been advised for years, by my parents, never to talk to strangers in those kind of situations no matter what sob stories they came up with.

I'd have made an excuse, and moved seats or not responded to him. I would definitely have told my family about the encounter and alarm bells would have rung, and I'd be told not to call him- or they might have made the call themselves much to his horror.

@WomblingTree86 Then your 16 year old will be very vulnerable because they will not have learned basic life skills gradually. I have met 18 year olds like this. They appear like much much younger children and do not have the skills adults need. If they are lucky they have friends who look after them, of they are not they are vulnerable and can get into very difficult situations.

But you cherry-picked your unsourced statistics.
British Transport Police statistics show an increase in anti-social behaviour on trains and at stations. Scottish police warned of a similar rise on trains and on buses.
The number of violent incidents on trains and public transport rose by over 10% from 2018-2019 (last stats pre-Covid). The number of people needing MH support and/or intervention on trains has risen by 30%. Half of all young women on British streets have been harrassed. And nearly 40% of women have had unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport in London.
Anyone who thinks because they 'did something back in the day' that the risks are the same now - hasn't been paying attention to crime stats at all.
(Your point about immigration is correct - the growing rise in crime on public transport has no correlation to immigration).

@OliveOilly Exactly. Overprotected teenagers and young adults are much more vulnerable as they have no idea what to do in any difficult situations.

Things all being well, which is likely, two kids this age should be able to navigate sitting in a seat for an hour and getting off at the right place.

But what if the train is delayed?
What if there is a replacement bus service for part of the journey?
What if they lose their tickets?
What if there's an issue with the tickets you're not aware of? (E.g. you need to have the travel card with you)
What if someone on the train is making them feel uncomfortable?
What if one of them chokes?
What if one of them is sick?
What if they fall asleep and miss the stop?
What if they get a bit silly and giggly and annoy other passengers?

Unless you can say with 100% confidence that both kids would know exactly what to do in any of these quite possible scenarios, I wouldn't leave them to it.

@RobinaHood Sexual harassment was common back in the day as well. The difference is we knew what to do.
And an 11 year old boy is at far less risk than an 18 year old woman of this.

Violence on trains tends to be late trains with drunk people. There used to be more guards to handle this than now. The behaviour has not changed though.

Children don't "learn resilience" by being put in dangerous situations.

@ClawedButler So nobody should do anything unless they can deal with every potential scenario no matter how unlikely?
They will have mobile phones. They can phone their parents. And by the way most tickets now are electronic. You can't lose them.

Milly Dowler was 13.

Milly was snatched while walking down the road, not pulled from a train, or dragged through the middle of a station concourse.
She was also snatched on her way home from school, which reinforces what I said about the most danger actually being close to home.

I assume that most people on here would not stop all children from walking to and from secondary school just in case the same thing happened to them?

Don't get me wrong. What happened to Milly was appalling, but it is also extremely rare. You child is much more likely to be killed by a car on their way to or from school. But we don't stop our kids walking to school, or even stop driving them to school.
It is called a managed risk. Most people don't even think about it, they just get int he car and go.

@Coffeetree they learn by being put in situations just outside their comfort zone. So gradually. A train ride in the middle of the day with adults either side is exactly the kind of situation an 11 year old learns in.

@AskMeMore
I didn't say the 11-yr-old shouldn't get the train. I said the OP had to consider the dynamic between the DCs.
I was just providing the facts and figures. But I can see you'd rather argue about them because they don't suit your opinion. Facts can be inconvenient like that. (and fwiw the increase in violence and anti-social behaviour wasn't linked to late night trains with drunk people - the upsurge in anti-social behaviour was linked to young people and county lines).

Can you imagine an adult pulling an 11 year old off a train and through a station? You think no one would intervene if an 11 year old was being physically dragged in this manner? Christ I don't think I would even be physically capable of doing this if an 11 year old resisted or fought back.
Bundling into a car although extremely rare, is more physically possible. It is a very short distance from a pavement to a car.

I would have been absolutely fine with this. But then I do find the "an older child should under no circumstances have any responsibility for a younger one" Mumsnet trope utterly baffling.