Reply to Am I off base regarding reasonable ages for independent travel on metro/in D.C.?

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "Am I off base regarding reasonable ages for independent travel on metro/in D.C.?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I'm the OP, and first I just wanted to thank everyone for their input.

Sounds like this is just one of those issues where there's a wide variation in what different families are comfortable with.

She and her friends weren't proposing any specific plans at this time, more just floating the idea of the group of them going into DC on their own on weekends to do various things -- some examples were museums, checking out the mall, and going to weekend matinee events at the Kennedy Center. Obviously she would need to tell me details of her plans for a specific outing each time -- at 13 I would not be comfortable just giving her a curfew and blanket permission to go wherever on weekends or after school. But as long as her plan is sensible and she has a friend or two going along, I'm leaning towards allowing it.

- DD is quite familiar with DC because we lived in Arlington for a year before we moved to MD and we were in DC several times a week. We still end up in either the city itself or the close-in VA suburbs fairly frequently.
- Although she has never navigated the Metro alone, she has taken the MARC & AMTRAK trains alone several times (met by a family friend or relative on the other end, so not much independence really, but still) and everything went fine.
- She has had primary responsibility for navigating on public transportation during family outings for the majority of the past three years. We would step in if she had questions (at first, later we encouraged her to talk to the transit system employees for directions/issues) or if something went wrong, but we mostly just showed her a map and asked her how we would get where we needed to be. Consequently, she has some familiarity with the DC Metro, and the subway systems in London and New York. Never alone yet, but she rarely makes a mistake with routes and hasn't gotten flustered by typical small mishaps of travel in a long time.

My main concerns would be harassment and minor crimes such as theft, but I suspect being in a group would deter much of that. Getting lost is a potential concern, but they can look up directions before they leave home, and with their phones it would not be difficult to pull up a map or even GPS.

For now I have said that evening trips without an accompanying adult or trusted much older teen relative/friend are not an option, but that if several people wanted to go somewhere during the day I would consider allowing her to go, on a case-by-case basis depending on the specific details.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics