Walking to school alone - advice please

[chickensarnie]

DD is 9 (early may baby)

DS is 15 and usually takes her to school but lately has been making my life a misery because he doesn't want to. Even though it's the same road as his own school!

I can’t change my work hours, I commute so I leave at 740. I don't have any family or friends who can help.

AIBU to let DD walk alone? She's not allowed a phone at school which is my only worry, how would I know she got there?

It's 2 streets away, no main roads. Takes less than 5 mins to get to school. Theres a pelican crossing to cross the road, which she knows how to use. It's not a main road but it can get busy.

I think it's fine but I'm worried school will say it's not.

It's a village not a city if that makes a difference.

My only worry is how would I know she got there safe?

Tell your DS to grow up. Doesn’t he care about what she thinks of his refusal to help her?

Maybe she has already told him what she thinks, and she would prefer to walk on her own and meet her friends without big brother trailing along?

I don't think op has said what DD wants to do.

You are teaching them its normal to be tracked. And that sets their boundaries accordingly.

They think tracking is harmless so are happy to be tracked, not realising it can make them vulnerable to it being abusive in the future.

You are teaching them that tracking = protection. Thats fine. But what happens when they have someone come along innocently saying 'let me track you, so i know you are safe' and then uses the tracker to follow them and control them by asking why they have done x, y or z. Is that ok? Just because YOU are using it innocently, doesn't mean others won't. And tbh, you ARE being controlling because you feel the need to track them. You are using the lie that it 'keeps them' safe.

How exactly is it keeping them safe? If something happens to them, by the time you realise that something is amiss, that thing has already happened. They are already in a situation. Are you going to keep tabs on their location the whole time they are out or check occasionally? Its controlling. You are normalising controlling behaviour.

In terms of 'safety' if something actually happens, the only difference is potentially having a better idea of where to start. But not necessarily. Its certainly not guarenteed. The tracker is also not the child. What happens if the tracker goes offline? Or its used to fool you that they are somewhere they are not? ("Mum's put a tracker in my phone so I'm going to leave it here", thus leaving them without the means to contact you should they need to).

The tracker is a misplaced sense of security. It allows you to perhaps ask less questions about where they are going and with who. It may stop them taking as much responsibly. Ultimately it doesn't jump out and beat up someone who is attacking them.

Think about this. How does the tracker ACTUALLY make them safer. Its a reassurance to you, but it doesn't make them safer. Pyschologically I think there are harms within that dynamic too.

Can’t really imagine a 4 year old getting on the underground by themselves here can you?

Child in question is 9, not 4. And not using underground. Just walking a couple of streets.

They think tracking is harmless so are happy to be tracked, not realising it can make them vulnerable to it being abusive in the future.

My issue with trackers is that you don't know which third party gets your data and what are they going to do with it. All those toys and apps which track your location, fitness or lifestyle can turn out very sinister when you least expect it.

@RedToothBrush that is one of the best posts I have ever read about trackers. It articulates exactly what I feel about them.

2 streets at 9? Can't see a problem with this at all. My DD walked a lot further than that when she was 10 so only a year older. Their school allowed children from Y4 to walk to and from school as long as parents gave permission.
I also think the school would call you if she didn't turn up, especially if they know she's walking alone.
Not a bad thing to start giving them independence otherwise they will struggle at secondary school.

I think trackers highlight the point about us all having these rather warped ideas of what risks and protections there are out there.

We pick and choose them, in line with what we WANT to believe rather than looking at things from other angles and what unintended consquences and alternative, perhaps indirect risks are. In other words we don't actually consider risk logically and dispassionately. We are measuring risk emotionally, which is worse than useless. It can actually be harmful despite intentions.

A tracker is a parental soothing device. It is not protective. It can be used to mislead you if someone so chooses. It can be used to control. It doesn't solve anything nor reduce risk. It creates other potential issues.

Equally saying that someone is 'too young' to walk to school, without risk assessing on an individual basis according to the area, the child and the community is mindless unthinking nonsense. Its not identifying the actual risks. Nor is it quantifying them. Nor is it considering what the impact of a lack of independence in children does.

Understanding risk is something people do very badly - precisely because of this emotional thing. And people don't understand statistics around risk either.

There was a study done on doctors and how they explained risk to people. Firstly the number who couldn't accurately explain risk was actually alarming. Then theres the biased in the way you phrase things which can influence behavior. Theres a whole world of research about how you remove bias when you present statistics around risk for this reason.

Society has changed quite significantly since we were kids ffs!

OK @HauntedbyMagpies I'll bite. Yes society has changed. In many many ways. Here's one - handguns are now banned, so the Dunblane massacre would not happen now in the same way, thank goodness.

What ways has it changed that mean an NT 9yo who is happy to do so is not now safe to walk alone 5 mins to school, crossing no roads, while dozens of other children and parents are doing the same?

I am genuinely interested in knowing what you mean.

You posted earlier that there are more people therefore more predators (!) - even if that is true, while this is a risk, it is a tiny tiny one. And it still exists for a 12yo or a 15yo. When would you let a child walk a safe five-min walk on their own?

As I say, I really believe community aspect of the walk to school makes it a perfect time to start some independence. as @RedToothBrush says, what will magically change when the child hits 10 or 11yo?

Btw my DCs' junior school (separate school from infants) allowed (and I presume still allows) all ages out unsupervised to their parents at the end of the day (so from year 3). It was very very unusual for a year 6 child to be picked up. I don't think this is unsafe or in any way awful @LetItGoHome - why do you think so out of interest?

Edited to add: oh yes @RedToothBrush I very very much agree wrt assessment of risk. No one is saying a 9yo should be left alone all weekend, or allowed to get on a train to London alone. This specific risk (short walk, school times, no roads) sounds very low and perfectly acceptable. If the child were unwilling, there were big roads to cross, it was a 45-minute walk, the answer (from me anyway) would be different. All of this is why there is (thank goodness, and despite the NSPCC) no blanket rule about what age you can allow a child independence.

I'd let her walk it if she was happy to. It'll be good for her independence! If I or she were worried, I'd get her a brick phone to travel with.

9 year old child left for hours in the evening whilst parents go to the pub. Not ok.
9 year old child left for 45 mins with phone whilst parents nips to the shops. Perfectly fine.
Can we see the differences here? Cos there's a lot of posters who can't.

Whats fascinating is the number of posters who say its 'more dangerous', but can't actually show any data that supports this idea.

Here's some stats straight off the bat here:

This release provides the number of personal injury road traffic casualties in Great Britain that were reported by the police to the Department for Transport in 2022 using the STATS19 reporting system.
Since 1979, there has been a general downward trend in the number of people killed on roads in Great Britain with a flatter trend in the decade since 2010. In 2022, road casualties showed signs of a return to pre-pandemic trends, increasing compared to 2020 and 2021 when casualty numbers were low, largely as a result of periods of lockdown leading to a reduction in road traffic.
The headline figures for 2022 are:

• 1,711 fatalities, a decline of 2% compared to 2019
• 29,742 killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties, a decline of 3% compared to 2019
• 135,480 casualties of all severities, a decline of 12% compared to 2019

Considering road collision rates per billion miles travelled, the final estimates show:

• 328 billion vehicle miles travelled in 2022, a return to travel levels seen in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic
• 5 road fatalities per billion vehicle miles travelled in 2022, up 2% compared to 2019

The final estimates further show:

• the road user type with the biggest estimated percentage change for 2022 compared to 2019 for fatalities was pedestrians, which showed a decline of 18%
• in 2022, 76% of fatalities and 62% of casualties of all severities were male
• in international comparisons for 2022, Great Britain ranked 5 out of 38 countries with available data for lowest number of road fatalities per million population

So the risk isn't from loads more speeding cars around the place since I was a kid. (Which is talked about in the thread). There are more cars but there are also a lot more safety features in cars to protect passengers and pedestrians.

Does anyone want to drag up the data on other forms of risks that a child might face on their way to school?

My point being this idea that its 'more dangerous', often does not survive contact with water...

Remember that 'cultural difference' where roads in the UK were somehow much worse than in Europe??

Thats not what the data above is showing...

Does anyone want to drag up the data on other forms of risks that a child might face on their way to school?

Funny thing - kids are in so much more danger when IN school, yet nobody considers them "too young" for it.

MartinCrieffsLemon · Yesterday 21:42

The school will ring if she doesn't turn up

Bit late then.

My year 5 walks to school with a friend. It’s a further journey than yours, quiet roads. She doesn’t have a phone. She’s an August baby so just 9.

No way. It's not just walking to school...it's being at home alone, locking up, and getting to school all assuming absolutely nothing goes wrong. And there's a routine, she'll be seen walking to school alone every day using the same route at the same time. I live in another country and we've had police charge parents for letting their children do this.

So - no way. At age nine specifically? So when then?

btw what the op suggests is very much not illegal in the UK or a lot of pps would have been breaking the law.

Given that walking to school improves behaviour, especially for kids with ADHD in the context of massive concerns about the uptick in poor behaviour including violence particular from ADHD kids, its a funny old world.

Yes but that tracking device will have saved them from the man abducting them in front of all the other kids and parents on the two streets from the OP's house until school....

We are in the land of the ridicilously unlikely.

Your realistic worse case scenario is the child is still at home playing computer games...

No way. It's not just walking to school...it's being at home alone, locking up, and getting to school all assuming absolutely nothing goes wrong.

9yo should be capable of doing those things?

Oh wow . Just shows how times change. I went to school walking to bus stop and catching bus at 7. So did my mother although she had the school bd from 5 and public one from 7. My DD1 walked the 5 mins to primary from year 4 . All perfectly safe. As for schools not " releasing" a year 5 to walk home . Well that's bloody ridiculous.

Haven’t read the thread.

my DS is an early July 9 year old and he is walking to school and sometimes from school on his own. It’s fine.

I walked to school from year 3. Now that very same school I went to doesn't let children leave alone until they are in year 5 at the youngest.

I imagine that there will be plenty of other kids and parents walking that way so hardly walking as a solitary figure by herself

Gogogo12345 · Today 13:15
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Oh wow . Just shows how times change. I went to school walking to bus stop and catching bus at 7. So did my mother although she had the school bd from 5 and public one from 7. My DD1 walked the 5 mins to primary from year 4 . All perfectly safe. As for schools not " releasing" a year 5 to walk home . Well that's bloody ridiculous.”

So did I in the late 60s. My introduction to flashers.

It's totally fine.

I don't get the rules about not being allowed to walk to school alone. I mean what happens? Sorry you walked to school alone that's not allowed walk back home alone and come with an adult?

Stupid.

In Europe totally normal for kids as young as 6 to walk to school alone. At 9 nobody bats an eyelid

I'd be interested to know where the flashers would be hiding on a residental street around parents walking their own children home at the same time and how me not being there would ultimately stop the flasher. Would the flasher cease to do the same if my child was in yr6 or yr7 compared with yr5?

Description of the OP DD's route:
It's 2 streets away, no main roads. Takes less than 5 mins to get to school. Theres a pelican crossing to cross the road, which she knows how to use.

I'm going to stick my neck out here and say, in the morning on the school run, parents would gravitate to crossing the road at the same point, thus meaning the five minute route isn't going to be particularly quiet.

(Going back to my points about risk assessing individual routes and bizarre blanket ideas of how age alone is the defining thing about whether a child is 'safe' or not.)