Teenagers: should we let them roam?

Kirstie Allsopp revealed she let her 15-year-old go Interrailing with a friend causing a 'predictable furore'

Kirstie Allsopp.
Allsopp's tweet prompted an anonymous report to social services
(Image credit: Getty / Jeff Spicer / Stringer)

I've always "prided myself on giving my sons very long reins," said Rowan Pelling in The Independent. Yet that said, I'm still a "bit in awe" of TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp, who last week revealed that her 15-year-old son has just returned from Interrailing around Europe for three weeks with a 16-year-old friend. "If we're afraid our children will also be afraid," she tweeted. "If we let go, they will fly." Her post caused a predictable furore – and even prompted an anonymous report to social services, who have opened a file on her child, Oscar.

As I see it though, said Sam Leith in The Spectator, we should be celebrating Allsopp's decision to let him stray that far from the coop. Ignore the busybodies and helicopter parents: "The average switched-on teenager" with a smartphone should be perfectly able to navigate a European transport system "without a chaperone". In fact, isn't that sort of thing – taking risks, finding a "bridge to the adult world" – exactly what growing up is all about?

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