Sad about reaction to summer residential trip but is it a sign of the times?

[Flowersinthehood]

DC is in year 5, we were speaking amongst us (the parents in the class) about the year six residential trip next year. It’s five days, three hours drive away doing activities and stuff that most children would probably enjoy doing with their friends.
My DC has SEN and is emotionally about two years younger. She still needs some help with dressing, time management etc, making sure she has things she needs, even more so than most kids of her age.
That said, I really want her to go on the residential trip. I have such fond memories of my trip. I know she’s not me though, and she’s not a kid of the nineties.
So many other parents said they didn’t think their kids would go, or they didn’t want them to. The main reason was anxiety (the child’s), them not trusting school, didn’t see a need for it as they did lots of activities ‘as a family’ (failing to see how much more fun it would be with friends), kids haven’t slept in anyone else’s house or been apart from them.
It made me think about how much has changed. I grew up in a council estate (whilst we live in an affluent area now) and we were out and about on our bikes. Kids walked to the local shop on their own from around 7, no real discussion of stranger danger.
My DC hasn’t had any of these experiences. We parents manage her social life, we are cautious about knowing friends families before she goes for play dates. I’m a single parent so she goes to her dads for sleepovers but hasn’t been anywhere else to sleep.
Are we unrealistic to expect our children to cope with the same things at the same age when they have so much less freedom?

I've been teaching since the 90s, many modern parents need hand holding themselves, this was not the case until the last decade.

Residentials were really formative for me. I had a very anxious mum who was not in the least bit adventurous and I credit school trips with setting me on a path to live abroad.

My schools were pretty shit but the trips were great and some of the things I really remember.

y6: week long residential in the UK
y7: week long activity residential (amazing trip)
y8: France
y:9 spain
y12 Spain

My daughter is due to do a two night trip this year. I want her to go on as many trips as possible and I’d do my best to facilitate them. however, it sounds like the school won’t be able to offer as many as they’re so tight on funds and not everyone pays the voluntary contribution and the rules are so tight on charging. It would be such a shame if more and more schools are unable to run them.

It’s hardly surprising, is it? Look at how many parents on Mn would prefer never to leave the house, loathe and fear the slightest social contact with others, resent invitations, don’t want to go on holiday because it’s stressful and unfamiliar and they prefer not to sleep anywhere other than their own bed. That’s inevitable going to rub off on their children.

Sleepovers were definitely a thing in the 80s and 90s! I had sleepovers with primary school friends in the 80s from about age 9/10; and in secondary school, individual sleepovers, and also birthday sleepover parties, where several girls would stay over, watch films with sweets and crisps and just sleep in duvets on the birthday child’s living room floor. It was probably more of a thing than today, to be honest, because it wasn’t as common then to have expensive activity parties like kids have these days.

Maybe in the U.K. but not in here I grew up . Nobody had sleepovers

Sleepovers weren't a given. I went on a few. Some families allowed them, others didn't.

I think something has gone wrong somewhere, children used to love an adventure away from home. When I was on holiday last summer 2 primary aged children had to sit next to a stranger whilst their parents stood in the aisle and they were sitting themselves, needed constant reassurance, I thought how sad it was.

I think it's so important to encourage independence and resilience in DC. Staying away from home is one good way of building this up but there are others. I feel so cross with adults who project their own anxieties on to their DC, there's just no excuse. Let your kids explore the world themselves and stop wrapping them up in cotton wool.

No at school I had the well known school peadophile keep me after class only to sit on the same same seat as me and ask me to take off my tights before I made my excuses and ran. He was later (years later) done for child sexual abuse and all the parents were like ohh why didn’t you all tell us - decades of kids staring back at them saying we did but you all thought we were just being kids talking smack about a teacher.

three other teachers and one admin were. Arrested and charged too over the years my siblings and I were at the school. several friends and friends of siblings were directly abused by them or groomed.

a male teacher bought us vodka and fags and let us vanish off on a Europe trip at age 13. One girl was raped. The rest of us were as stupidly behaved as kids are likely to be on vodka as 13 year olds.

i went to a “outstanding” school in an affluent area.

here’s some sleepover experiences I had before the age of 11:
drunk bipolar dad came in swinging a machete talking about being Lawrence or Arabia

red wined mum screamed bloody murder because we were talking too much at 10pm and sat over us on the sofa swigging from the bottle and muttering until we fell asleep

a different mother had a complete bizarre sobbing fest and sent us to the pool on our own where I fell into the hot tub and almost slipped under the cover. My friend pulled me out but it could’ve gone the other way. We also sat in the sauna for about an hour which is obviously a stupid thing to do.

My friends dad took us out in the sea in a boat with no jackets and no coats or blankets while he swam and we wended up with near hypothermia and were sick for days. No one knew he had taken us out. It was the middle of winter.

at school my friend and I felt we saw signs of being groomed by a sports teacher - did speak to the head of sport and she said she was afraid he might do this and sacked him?!!! She knew he couldn’t be trusted and hired him as a favour as he was a friend.

i feel like I live in an alternate universe sometimes. Did you never experience any of these types of things? Genuinely curious.

my kids are super capable, so a lot of extra curricula stuff. They can book hotels, restaurants, they can cook. They can navigate bus timetables and trains (but they don’t do it alone ifyswim - they do it, I get guided by them). They are confident and able to talk to adults as well as other kids. the go to day activities with activitiy leaders we have known for several years and trust (as far as you can). As they get older they get trusted to stray further a bit at a time. I don’t feel crazy for wanting to keep my children safe and supervised. I feel like they’ll be adults soon enough and that’s fine. They’re not going to be less adult for me risking them being kidnapped or run over while their brains are literally not developed enough to cope with the boring task of getting ready for school without a strop, let alone an emergency. 5 year olds are babies.

have you seen those social experiments where people are asked whether they think their kid would go off with a stranger if they offered them ice cream or a puppy or whatvevr, and the parents are shocked when the kid does follow the stranger (actor) because they believe they’ve taught them about stranger danger etc. kids are stupid. I know I was. I was even as a teen and I was pretty boring and sensible!

This is the uk so I fully expect they’ll be galavanting by 14, drinking cheap vodka in parks as we all have but I don’t think that makes them particularly independent or better more capable human beings Exposing kids to harm doesn’t make them stronger, it gives them trauma to discuss in therapy.

I agree. All the things we found a bit thrilling and enticing as kids - trips without parents, scary movies, doing anything we considered grown up and exciting for our age - they just seem to find so anxiety inducing and distressing now. A lot of kids in DD class still hang on to parents crying at drop off, and they’re year 1.

I think our constant warnings about how unsafe the world is has resulted in a generation of anxious kids who see risk round every corner.

It reminds me of a thread I read on here where a poster’s daughter (who was18/19) had gone clubbing with an older sibling who lost her in the crowd. She ran out of the club hysterical because in the crowd a man had touched her waist to get past her, found herself on the street where again she felt unsafe but didn’t get a taxi as she was worried the driver would be a sex pest. All the ‘warnings’ that sex offenders were round every corner actually rendered her more unsafe as she was paralysed by indecision and unable to make smart decisions as she considered them too risky.

I haven’t read the responses here OP so sorry if I am repeating others or have missed anything else important!

I think it’s a sign of the times but likely in a good way. A lot more is recognised now about things that happened at sleepovers or residential trips that wasn’t appropriate (at worst), or at best just wasn’t alright for the child. The things we or those older than us done as children and young people wasn’t necessarily right and things will always evolve and change and will do so for our children’s children, too. I think it will also depend on communities and the part of the country you are in, British culture is still pretty different from town to town and what is normal for everybody.

I never went on school residentials for various reasons and had limited sleepovers (other than v v close friends and fam) until high school. I don’t feel I missed out!

They mature a fair bit between Year 5 and 6. Most of them will be 10 or 11 on the trip. That’s a perfectly reasonable age to be away with a group of kids the same age, with good adult supervision. Most kids that age can get themselves to bed and up in the morning without too much adult supervision, other than hurrying them along. If your DC has extra help at school, have you discussed if they can provide this on the trip?

We should also remember we’re still immediately post-pandemic and these kids spent the first couple of school years in lock downs, so are likely to be a little behind kids the same age pre-pandemic. The pandemic, followed by cost of living crisis, have led to families getting used to being holed up at home together, fewer sleepovers etc.

I think the benefit is not just that it's fun (hopefully) and an adventure, trying new things, going away with your friends etc. – but also that it does take some courage (for most kids) and doing something that is a bit scary and managing it is how confidence and independence grows.

Ugh. Was on a school trip where teaching staff phones warned us there was an airtag in the group ... it was quickly found and confiscated for the day and parents were talked to. Poor kid was mortified.

I wish my DC could experience similar to my childhood too but roads are about 70% more crowded with traffic nowadays and I barely feel safe walking about myself and crossing roads. I witness cars plowing through red lights at pedestrian crossings regularly including when people are crossing. Cars regularly cut curbs so pedestrians aren’t even safe on the pavement. I was once almost mowed down on a zebra crossing.

Thats not particularly relevant to letting kids go on residential trips but is just one small aspect of modern life that causes parents to feel more protective of their kids.

That said, we often remember the past through rose tinted glasses too. I remember after a widely reported child murder case my dad gave me a whistle and I carried it everywhere for years until it rusted up.

We need to work to make society safer for children again so that we feel safe to give them these opportunities which I agree are important.

i feel like I live in an alternate universe sometimes. Did you never experience any of these types of things? Genuinely curious.

@Devonshiregal your post makes me feel like I’m in an alternate universe! No, at the sleepovers I went on between the ages of about 10 and 14 we played board games, crimped our hair, recorded ourselves pretending to be DJs on a radio programme, read books, put on glitter makeup, made fairy cakes or watched films or TV. There were no machetes, hot tubs (unheard of in my 1980s Northern city), or drunk adults. But my parents knew the parents of my friends well from school or church, and they were obviously pretty confident that the worst we’d experience would be sitting through the dead horse scene in The Neverending Story…

By 14 I was getting paid to babysit other children - looking after toddlers and small kids and putting them to bed, or spending half term looking after people’s children and taking them to activities on the bus. At 15 I took my young siblings on a six-hour journey down to London and across the Tube to stay with relatives for a week to give my mum, who was suffering from chronic illness at the time, a bit of a break. I don’t think I would have been able to handle so much responsibility at that age if I hadn’t had some gradual independence leading up to that.

My niece is 16 and has never really stayed away from home. My sister doesn’t even let her babysit my nephew (13) for an hour while she goes out! It’s noticeable that she is much more immature than I would expect a 16 year old to be.

I grew up in the 80s and my parents were ridiculously strict. I never had a sleepover, never went away with school, wasn’t even allowed to go to the park across the street on my own until I was about 13. I know why now - my mum had her own childhood experiences which made her extremely anxious. But I grew up lacking social skills and nervous of my own shadow, I didn’t go to university until I was in my thirties, and I had some disastrous relationships.

I understand why it happens but it sets children up to fail.

Except that road traffic accidents and deaths have absolutely plummeted in the last few decades: drivers drive at much lower speeds in residential areas, drunk driving is hugely less prevalent, fewer kids play out, and modern cars are better equipped to stop suddenly. All the data shows that the roads are massively safer for kids these days — just look at the numbers of road traffic accidents then compared to now!

My kids were never bothered about sleepovers until they reached the age of parties and were more than happy to stay over. They all went happily to university at 18 in another country as we lived abroad. Why are you so bothered about other people’s life choices? It really isn’t any of your business.

wow there was no talk like this when my daughter went for her yr6 residential in November!

All of my DC have been on the residentials, I’ve always found it stressful letting them go but I have tried not to show this to them and encouraged the trips as I knew they would benefit so much.

DC2 has SEN and dyspraxia and I was worried about him most of all, but I am glad as it developed his independence. I did a lot to prepare him for the trip, made him practice packing his bag etc. He did a practice sleepover at a friend’s house first.

Anyway he came back with half his clothes missing, everything in his bag muddy, and his soap and flannel untouched but that didn’t matter! I was very proud of him.

As a parent it’s your job to prepare your child for independence.

I have definitely noticed a difference in the parents behaviour between DC1 and DC3 - a lot more fretting and stressing, over-thinking everything and over-controlling e.g. tracking the DCs journey home from a secondary school trip and giving all the other parents a minute by minute update 🙄

I was born in the 70s and we did residentials so it’s not just a new thing. I still remember the sight of the headteacher in his pyjamas telling us all to be quiet and go to sleep!
I can’t quite remember if I enjoyed it or not - I think parts I did enjoy, but not others. However it’s about learning to think for yourself without your parents around.

My 8 year old has had sleepovers with grandparents and aunts/uncles so he can have those fun experiences with his cousins, and I feel he'd be fine on a residential trip with teachers. I do not allow him to go anywhere without adult supervision yet and I don't think that's sad at all.

@Ecotype I remember having sleepovers really fondly - they were an opportunity to find out how other people and other families lived! Admittedly the families I had sleepovers with were all pretty conventional and similar to my own parents (ie. no hot tubs, machetes or pools), but isn’t it good for children to learn about different foods, routines, ways of doing things, even if they’re only small things like trying soda stream, eating something new, or playing with a kind of pet you don’t have at home? I think it’s good for kids to see a bit of how other people live in a controlled way. One of my friends’ mums made all her food from things she grew herself — I was amazed to have loganberries for the first time that she’d grown in her garden and being given a bit of home-grown honeycomb to chew on. Another family had a dad who was a biological scientist and had a big library of fascinating books about tropical diseases (with pictures in colour!), and they kept a tortoise, which I’d never seen a live one of before. Another family was more religious than mine, which fascinated me because they were Catholic, and I learned about Mass and first communion and so on. They did a lot of church charity work for causes in Africa, and introduced me to African music and food.

I found being able to stay over with different families and experience different aspect of the world really enriching to my life even at a young age — I was really curious about the world and I really liked eating different foods and doing different things to my family, from being introduced to Ice Magic and computer games (neither of which we were allowed at home!) to going to church, or being taken fell-walking, or just generally seeing how people with different families lived. I think children who don’t experience that in a controlled way at a relatively young age do miss out a bit, though obviously it’s not always practical or feasible, and obviously you need to know and trust the people who your child is staying over with. But not to allow it at all because of parental fears or anxieties seems really sad for children’s experience of the world.

You can experience all these things without having to stay the night. For the record I never had a problem with them sleeping over - they just didn’t want to.

My niece is 16 and has never really stayed away from home. My sister doesn’t even let her babysit my nephew (13) for an hour while she goes out!

Why does a 13 yo boy need a 'babysitter' anyway?