Advice needed…how to give independence to 12 and 14 year old

[OneLivelyLilacDreamer]

Sorry in advance for the long post. Really need some advice from others who have gone through similar experiences. I’m open to listening to suggestions but would ask you to read the whole post and be kind.
We live in a large city and are surrounded daily by muggings, drugs, gangs and knife crime, often involving pre-teen and teenage kids- often several times a week and taking place on roads surrounding our house.

I have DD1 (14) and DD(12). Both girls go to school over 10 miles from home for the above mentioned reasons. We drive them to and from school, mainly because it’s quicker but also because we don’t feel safe with them travelling through the city on the bus. They choose to do after school clubs and both do competitive sport several times per week and on the weekends (again their choice).
Up until now they haven’t had a lot of free time to meet up with friends outside of school due to other activities and when they do I drive them. I don’t feel comfortable with them going to our local shops by themselves due to the gang that hang around the area and recent spate of knife crime and muggings. However, both girls will be home during the summer and want to spend time with friends whilst I’m working. They are both extremely bright and sensible. They have a couple of friends locally but most are on the opposite side of the city. I’m really worried about them getting on the bus and going into town. I’m also really conscious that they absolutely need to do these things to be fully functioning adults!! Any advice for letting go and giving them some independence? I think it’s made much harder by the fact we live in a pretty rough area where the usual local places like the shop are still not safe.

You cannot remove every risk from every situation.
I would wager that the kids who end up stabbed are the ones who are in the gangs / hanging around with people who carry knives.

That would drastically reduce the risk of one of your kids being involved in something like that.

Mugging - admittedly that’s more likely to be a genuine risk but you can’t keep them chaperoned for ever and maybe you need to accept that At some point something bad is going to happen to them - that’s life - that’s how you learn, how you build resilience etc

Apart from locking them up forever, what can you realistically do to

a) reduce the chances of them being mugged
b) reduce the impact if they are

So talk to them about awareness, trusting your instincts, not waving expensive phones around, keep valuables hidden / bags zipped shut, throwing items away from you then running rather than tussling over handbags, know how to lock / disable phones, spare keys available…

It sounds daft but I’d probably rather my kid got mugged when still living at home and I could immediately help deal with the emotional and practical fall out - rather than it happening for the first time when they were 18 and away at Uni. Then if it did happen when they were living independently they’d deal with it better.

If nothing bad ever happens to them, they won’t ever build the skills to deal with anything…