I am astounded that Kirstie Allsopp was reported to social services for allowing her son to travel abroad at 15 (Kirstie Allsopp reported to social services for allowing son, 15, to travel abroad, 25 August). I left school at 15 in 1973, then I left home and got a job within a couple of months. My brother went to Spain with friends for a holiday when he was 14. I sent my son to New Zealand alone when he was 14 to stay with his uncle. Until last year, you could marry at 16 with parental consent. I struggle to understand what has been done to endanger this young man. As responsible parents we should be sending out our children to find their own way in the world. At 15 they are young adults, not big children.
Sharron Murray
Carlisle
• It’s not clear why Kirstie Allsopp feels so affronted by having a child protection investigation into her 15-year-old son’s trip abroad. They’ve not said she is a bad mother, or that he shouldn’t have gone, or that the child protection concerns have been substantiated. They’ve just investigated, and that investigation will remain on file for future reference if needed. Isn’t that what we want child protection services to do, to check allegations to see if there is cause for concern or not? As to whether the original allegation was malicious, well, so are many of them. That’s why social workers go in with an open mind, as they seem to have done in this case.
Sylvia Rose
Totnes, Devon
• I read with mounting incredulity about Kirstie Allsopp’s 15-year-old son’s travel in Europe with a friend (Kirstie Allsopp defends letting son go travelling around Europe aged 15Report, 21 August). In 1956, aged 15, I hitchhiked to Copenhagen with a classmate. With no offers of lifts from the Hook of Holland, we decided to split up and meet in the youth hostel at our destination. This we duly accomplished, doing the same on the return trip. This was not, however, my first venture. Aged nine, with my 11-year-old brother – and our parents’ approval – we travelled from Deptford in London to Chislehurst (then in Kent), where we pitched our tent. The aim was to stay a week. It rained for three days. We ate all our food and returned home considerably earlier than expected.
Dr Jack Fendley
New Malden, London
• In the late 1970s, at the age of 17, I travelled alone from London to Paris for 17 days. A naive girl (only diagnosed as autistic at the age of 60), I returned with improved French; excellent budgeting skills, saving enough to increase the original fortnight by three more days; invigorated with all the culture I had experienced; and a far better understanding of how predatory men can be, and how to navigate that safely. Allowing me to go, paid with my own earnings, was the best thing my parents ever did for me.
Name and address supplied
• Money was tight in 1958. I wanted to cycle from Southall, now in west London, to the Black Forest. My parents said that I could go if I could raise the money – in the expectation that I wouldn’t. When I had raised the cash, my parents got cold feet. My grandfather forcefully intervened on my behalf. Promises had to be honoured.
I cycled off to Germany, had the time of my life and got back on my 15th birthday. I’ll be retracing some of the route on a different bike with my cycling wife – we’ve been married 54 years – and a campervan in a couple of weeks when I’ll be 80.
Kids have got to be allowed to take risks. To be sure, it might end in tragedy, but it’s more likely to be life-affirming and will build confidence in facing the years to come.
Aidan Roe
Manchester
• I took my son across Europe by train when he was 10 so he would know how simple it was and what fun it was. I made my first Interrailing trip around Europe with another girl when we were 17. It was self-funded. She had a Saturday job and I had won cash in a writing competition. On our mother-and-son journey, he made many of the decisions about platforms and timings, deciphering timetables and signage in languages he didn’t know. He’s 16 now and could certainly find his way around Europe by train without a problem. He could handle the people and stay out of trouble. Would I let him? No.
Cathy Comerford
London
• Sixty years ago, my school friend, Nick (151/2) and I (16) enjoyed a trainspotting holiday travelling around Scotland with a rail rover ticket, sleeping on overnight trains or in station waiting rooms. Apart from briefly sharing a compartment on an overnight train to Aberdeen with an loquacious inebriate who thankfully remembered to get off at Cumbernauld, we had a trouble-free and memorable trip, and, in those days, our only means of contacting our parents was by using a telephone box. How attitudes have changed.
Graham Thompson
West Burton, North Yorkshire
• Well done, Kirstie Allsopp, for giving her son independence. I am sure he will have been in touch every day on his mobile phone. In the 1970s, when I was 16, I travelled three days non-stop across Europe on the Magic Bus to Athens and then spent nine weeks backpacking around the Greek islands by ferry. The only contact I had with home was when I missed the return bus and rang home by the only way possible, a 30-second phone call from Athens phone exchange. When I told my mother I would be a week late, her reply was: “Have you got a good suntan?” Best holiday of my life.
Andrew Keeley
Stockton Heath, Cheshire
• Your report on Kirstie Allsopp being reported to social services for allowing her 15 year son to travel to Europe reminded me of my first trip there with my brother in the late 1970s. I was 10 and my brother 12 when my father put us on a train to London at York. With the help of several adults we managed to get across London, get a train to Dover, the hovercraft to Calais and then a train to Paris, where we were picked up by my parent’s friends. It didn’t strike us as particularly odd at the time and we both thought it a great adventure.
David Chadwick
Hutton Rudby, North Yorkshire
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