AIBU to not let Y7 DD walk home in the dark?

[Floorfeelslikelava]

DD has over the last 6 months started walking home from school (with friends). She’s sensible and whilst it’s light, I’m comfortable that this is a perfectly age-appropriate thing to do.

Now that the clocks have gone back, however, I am reluctant to let her walk home in the dark. She usually finishes school clubs at 5.30. Whilst it’s only actually about ten minutes’ walk, it’s down a very dark, quiet side street and there are stretches which are pretty much pitch black. Her friends are still doing it, and DH thinks it’s fine, but I feel very uncomfortable about the idea. I was attacked in my 20s so I’m not sure whether my view is unreasonable. Would you be letting your Y7 DD walk home in the dark under these circumstances?

It's not "few" amongst the people I know both friends and acquaintances. I don't think we should see flexibility as a privilege, it's not the Victorian era!

Well, my mum sucked and during secondary years she spent all her money on alcohol and cigarettes and nights out, so I had no bus fare and she didn't drive. I had no choice but walking to / from school alone everyday. All weather all year round, it sucked so bad. It was about a 30 minute walk each way too. So, yeah I'd pick her up even if you collect her from around the corner or something.

Also, I have a good friend who is a nurse, she definitely works flexibly. Surely in a shop you can work flexibly if there are different shifts.

I regularly walk by myself after 11pm.

I LIKE to go for a very late night walk because it's lovely and peaceful and no twats. And it's a nice area. We chose it because of this.

The idea of not walking home isn't one I couldn't isn't one that computes. My neighbour is having utter meltdowns over her daughter over this ATM. My neighbour has major mental health issues and a number of us think she's actually got a codependency issue which she's effectively emotionally abusing her daughter with.

I very belligerently refused to stop walking home by myself at uni when my crazy homemate said we should all walk home together after 4pm.

It was a very busy route.

I frequently went to gigs on my own and left by myself to go to my car. Again, risk management - always parked in busy area.

Honestly, if women aren't determined to walk then women effectively allow the normalisation of mens inappropriate behaviour and there's a shaming of women who somehow do get attacked 'because they shouldn't have walked home'.

Of course they fucking should.

Demand more. Expect more.

@Goldenbear regardless of whether I could pick them up - my job is flexible so I absolutely could I wouldn't necessarily.

Walking is good for us, 10 minutes on a route they know well is fine. 530pm is not late, this time next month it will be practically dark at 3.

The biggest risk is cars, get her a reflective patch for her bag and coat and let her get a bit more independent. T

@Floorfeelslikelava I couldn't see if you said she wanted to walk or not?

Maybe the people you know. If a shop/cafe etc is open 9_9 then its very unlikely you can be that bloody flexible. I don't know any nurses who have that level of flexibility. 7 till 7 shifts either day or night are commonplace, ambulance service is often 6 till 6. Care home workers often different shifts each week.

And surely its the people with YOUNG kids that need the flexibility more anyway.

I had the 30 min plus walk both ways. Didn't think anything of it. Many of my friends walked even longer. Just the norm

I walk pretty much everywhere as do my teens as we live on that kind of City that is walkable. In fact my teens were walking home from school 2.5 miles away at four - with me or DH of course but I know how good walking is for you. I would worry about lonely roads, for my 11/12 year old, if it was dark and it wasn't the regular leaving time i.e. end of the school day but I would equally worry about roads. It isn't so irrational in that I know two girls near us that were approached at that time by a man threatening them, one with a knife, she was told to get on his moped but she luckily managed to get to the front door of a house, knock avidly and the people inside helped her.

That said, I have a 15 year old DD that often goes to friends' houses after school, hasn't got her phone on and this worries me but she is always at friends homes when this has happened and 15 is different to year 7/8. I would have been more worried at that age about her disappearances. My eldest teen is an adult so can do what he wants but on nights out to gigs in London we are about an hour away, I'm still worried about him when he has returned until 3 am, I think that is pretty normal.

This isn’t about adult women, though. This is about a twelve year old girl. Some of the twelve year olds in my DD’s class look 16 and are the height of adult women. Many of them, however, are still under 5ft and look like primary school children.

My DD was approached by a man at 4:30pm coming home from school aged 11. Thankfully she ran off in terror and he didn’t follow her, but despite reporting it to the police, they didn’t even follow it up (there is even local CCTV which they didn’t look at!) and they just said it was sadly quite common.

There’s a whole range of experiences between no problem at all, and getting abducted and murdered, which I still don’t want to risk my pre-teen DD having. And there’s obviously a big difference between 12, and older teenagers aged 15 or 16+.

It’s just hyperbole to suggest that not wanting a 12 year old child to walk alone in the dark, is the same as stopping an older teenager or an adult woman being free to walk where she likes, or coping with university and jobs, like some posts on this thread!

Yes but 11-12 is still young IMO. I personally didn't feel comfortable leaving my DC for stretches of time until they were 17 and 13.

I'm just saying. It being 3.30 makes zero difference.

My kids still walk to and from school and they're 11 and 14.

A girl 2 years above me was dragged into a neighbours back garden, molested and killed on her way home from school.

Not many have heard of her.

She was 14.

I wouldn't take the risk under the conditions youre describing. Id rather others take the p, to be fair, alot would think the opposite and consider her a well looked after child if she was picked up during the darker months.

It's 4.30 when everyone else is walking home

I don't give a fuck whether it's a grown woman or a teenage girl.

We should not be in this situation. We should encourage girls to have independence and fight like crazy for better handling of sex offenders and safer streets.

We shouldn't be expecting our children to grow up believing this is acceptable and normal.

I'm sorry but reclaim the fucking streets. Don't enable this shit and victim blame even more.

I don't mean to attack you but I'm genuinely interested in how you came to this opinion. What are the risk factors as you see them, and the liklihood of those risks coming true?

I absolutely agree, I often walk home for nights out with friends if we have met at a pub as the pub is often local and residential it's not the City Centre but in the summer I walked back at Midnight from a meal out in the centre. DH offers to meet me and tells me to get a cab but I feel confident in what I'm doing. Now the DC don't need someone in the house, he will meet me half way or something and walk back the rest of the way.

A 12 year old is still a child and I know as my DD is 15 and going to parties like on Halloween night, no parent would let their 15 year old DD walk back at night on their own across the City. I don't even know the parents but all of them have offered DD a lift home. I live in a very liberal place as well but so far I haven't come across any parent happy for their DD to walk on their own at 15 across the City at 11.30/12 at night! I get at uni she may be doing that at 18/19 but I hope she doesn't, again though assessing risk is a bit different at 18 to 12.

exactly. there was actually an interesting piece in the Times today that was talking about this in the context of the terrible train attack on the weekend. And people being scared to travel by train now. And the number he quoted for pedestrians killed my cars, every year, was something like 20,000 so he was making the point that horrific though that attack was, trains are still statistically a lot safer.

The pedestrian thing is why I worry about my children in the dark, especially when younger. They're not necessarily savvy enough to understand that they have to be more cautious in the dark. If they fall and hurt themselves, theyr'e less likely to be able to stay calm and know what to do. I worry less about DS now that he's older because he's more mature and more sensible and I know he's less likely to casually stroll into the road and get hit by a car he didn't realise was a) moving that fast and b) couldn't see him.

Why not actually read the OP’s posts? She says it’s 5:30pm in the pitch black and not when “everyone else is going home”.

You might not care about young teenage girls, but it isn’t the job of my tiny DD who is 4ft 10in tall to “reclaim the streets”. It’s my job as her parent to decide what’s safe for her — and frankly, your lack of concern at hearing she was approached by a man (who asked her to get in his van with him) aged only 11 is pretty astonishing, to be honest.

There's a reason there isn't childcare available for secondary school aged kids. Wonder if you can guess why?

My sister is also 4ft10 and size 6. She's 42 though. What has size hot to do with it?

I'm very much on the side of letting her walk - just get her to wear something reflective to be visible.

Honestly, we need to allow our children to learn to be independent. There's a family who live near me where one of the parents insists on walking their Year 9(!) DD to the bus stop each morning so that she doesn't have to cross a road alone. She's bloody lucky she's the only one from her school getting on that bus as she's be (rightly) ridiculed.

I mean, yes, but I am lucky as I have a job where I can WFH and didn't have to leave my 11/12 year olds at home on their own for long stretches. I just think you can be a bit lonely in the house on your own at that age but teenagers especially older ones love the peace and quiet IME. My DC have walked home at the end of a school day since year 7 but if it was an after school club like the OP and not many around 100% I would be collecting them or at least meeting half way on foot.

She’s an ADULT. She assesses risks for herself.

TWELVE IS A CHILD.

Presumably your sister also doesn’t walk around in school uniform, and isn’t a magnet for men in vans, teenage boys, bullies and people who want to sell her vapes, either; and has 42 years of experience in the world.

'rightly', how old are you and do you have kids, such an immature comment.

Not a chance that I'd let her walk. It's much too risky.

She's an adult but that is unusually small, maybe she would be more at risk. Context is everything! I mean is she fast?