Surely 12 year olds can care for themselves?

Wily Seatrout Cole

Children of secondary school age are deemed capable of getting themselves to school on their own by whatever means up to a distance of about 8 km. So you are right - the kid should have been able to look after himself. But if his parents forgot him, it doesn't sound like they should have been allowed out on their own either.

dave, surrey

Trouble is we’ve had 13 years of zanulabour government constantly ramming home the message we’re all (regardless of age) thick and incapable of making our own decisions. (A classic tactic of the left, brow beet the common man so he becomes in awe of the state and ends up loving Big Brother.. something like that). An example: my kids brought home some NHS propaganda about eating 5 portions of fruit and veg. It had a handy calculator that allowed you to work out how much you had eaten, something like this:

1: Number of portions of fruit eaten today
2: Number of portions of veg eaten today
Add box 1 and 2
If total is 5 or more well done etc.. etc..

I mean, how fucking thick do they think we are.. And now after 13 years we’ve collectively come to accept we are thick and incapable of doing pretty much anything other than cowering in a corner and biting our nails.

Dixon

Why the furore? B.e.c.a.u.s.e t.h.e. p.a.r.e.n.t.s d.r.o.v.e o.f.f. a.n.d f.o.r.g.o.t. t.h.e.y. e.v.e.n h.a.d. h.a.d h.i.m .a.b.o.a.r.d.!.!.! Although one shouldnt really need to spell it out as you even said it yourself: "two hours “being cared for” by service station staff before his parents remembered that they had a son and came back to get him..."

Sir Graphus

Sometimes, Rodders, I think you make these posts just to see if we're still awake.

"Cared for"; I have a vision of them showing him the top shelf and thinking "that'll keep the blighter quiet for a bit".

Dixon

On the other hand, at age 12 (and no quarters) I was travelling to school via two bus journeys totalling an hour each way. So there is something to say for the point.

Lord Monkington-Smythe

I suspect this story is subject to media hulabaloo because people love to read stories about people mistreating their children. It allows the general public to celebrate the fact that other middle class people are worse parents than themselves, and rejoice in their own sensibleness. Hence the synthetic anger and hand-wringing.

He was 12 for God's Sake... at 12 I was given £20 and told to find my own way from London to Newcastle to see my Grandma. I was quite pleased because once I got on the coach I had enough cash for a stottie at Scotch Corner.

Rosa

It's the sort of thing I coudl easily have done. Funny you mention Christ, Rod , because Christ was , famously, lost for two days at exactly that age!

toby kier hardie forward

When I was twelve I was doing a fifteen hour day down the pit and was glad to doing it. I started work when I was five years old crawling under the looms with a dustpan and brush and worked my way down till I could could swing a pick at the coal face. I was transported to Australia when I was fourteen for stealing the crust off pitman's pasty. Happy days.

DM Davies

The real scandal is that the boy was allowed to sleep in a caravan whilst it was being towed. Have you ever seen a caravan after a collision?
No safety cages or crumple zones there - it smashed to smithereens like the matchwood it is made of. The boy was doing himself a favour by leaving it and seeking refuge with the people from the service station.

WetherspoonThree

The kid sounds sensible enough. Just hope he wasn't persuaded to had over his credit cards to the filling station staff who are notorious for this type of fraud throughtout the length and breadth of the country...

Ray

My local council recently trialled a scheme whereby twelve-year olds found out drinking and dossing about late at night were scooped up and taken to a police station miles away, where there parents were then contacted and told to come and collect them forthwith.

Apparently, the thing that jolted their parents most was not the prospect of having to explain their inability to account for their childrens' whereabouts to the police, nor the hassle of having to summarily abandon the pint down the pub or the night on the sofa watching Jonathan Ross. Rather, it was the threat that social workers might have to 'become involved'.

Read some of Christopher Booker's articles in the Daily Telegraph and you will understand why all those old jokes about social workers and rottweilers are no longer a laughing matter - even to decent and diligent parents.

Noa Photos

I too was abandoned some years ago at a Swiss service station. In this case by my wife and children who, thinking I was on the coach, allowed it to depart without me.
I was distraught and the feelings of dissociation this abandonment created only left me when I discovered the service station's pornography store, which contained a surprising number of adolescent English boys.

Carl

The boy was lucky - being "cared for" in Switzerland is usually terminal.

timac

at 12 I rode my bike to and from school. We all did. I would ride to the sweetshop, the next town, friends' houses, the seaside, the forest. We all did. And our parents rarely knew exactly where we were. And it was fine.

But, I grew up in Spain

Cyclefree

There are very few parents who haven't left their children behind somewhere at some time and even fewer who haven't wanted to.

Quisling, OBE

In suburban Oslo it is normal for children to walk themselves to kindergarten. I believe I did so from the age of 5 or 6... and of course I got to primary school, aged 7, throughout the year by foot, bike, or skis, like all my class mates.

rod liddle

Carl - very good, very very good.

Oi Toby childrens books boy - don't do the reverse chippiness on my blog mate..............

anne allan

Anyone else remember the children's book called "The Children Who Lived in a Barn"? Written in the 1930's it told the story of a family of children whose parents had disappeared (I can't remember why). From that book, I learnt you could cook in a hay box; I later discovered you cook the food first, and then let it stew gently in the hay box. But, hey, these kids survived this and other set-backs and it was wonderful to picture a world where you were able to stand on your own two feet. No adult interference; pure bliss. Can twenty first century children imagine such a life let alone relish the idea?
And the Famous Five and the Secret Seven managed just fine.
I wonder, do modern children's authors dare to write such books?

Jono

It also seems if your 12 and may have potentially fathered a child, your also old enough to be splashed across the front page of every red hot tabloid, speculating over paternity and being seen as symbiotic with Broken Britain.
How we infantilise the youth of today indeed!

rod liddle

anne - yes

mairT

Carl
July 20th, 2010 2:38pm

The boy was lucky - being "cared for" in Switzerland is usually terminal.

Carl> Thanks 1st Class lol

Baron

am often more than tempted to do the same travelling with my three grandchildren, the depth of a large forested area rather than a petrol station would be my preferred spot for the act of mercy.

Snowman

Did the parents come back voluntarily?

J Davis

My parents accidentally left my two-year-old brother behind on a railway platform. (They'd boarded the train separately, and each thought he was with the other one.) The station, informed by telephone, put him in the guard's van of the next train and sent him on to join them. He was found eating the guard's chocolate, and seemed none the worse for abandonment.

That was nearly sixty years ago, and he's still around. Mind you, he is mildly addled from forty years of smoking wacky-baccy, so maybe...

Hysteria

At that age (and younger) I was travelling unaccompanied from Lincolnshire to Germany - entirely unremarkable.

Except the day I got on the wrong train which had a ripple effect through the rest of the journey - I wasn't popular.....

Fergus Pickering

Well, Rod, when I was twelve I wouldn't have hitch-hiked anywhere. You must have been a bvery BIG twelve. As for forgetting your twelve-year-old child, I'm sure many parents would wish to do that. Oh and my wife and I severally forgot about our five-year-old child in Sissinghurst Garden. When we met and rememberedd her we shot off to the ticket office where she was eating high class chocolates with the nice ladies. Of course thie WAS the National Trust where you get a very good class of people, as I am sure you know. Anyway, you must have seen that great American movie 'Home Alone'.

ferdigrofe

A sociologist is a person who needs a $20,000.00 grant to find a whorehouse. Saul Alinsky

Eddie

Our children are infantilised by our paranoid parent helicopter mummy society - and that is a form of child abuse.

It means that kids in this country hit secondary school age (11 or 12) without ever having crossed a road by themselves. The result> We have a high casualty rate for child traffic accidents.

We also have teenagers with infantalised brains precisely because mummy has not allowed them to take any responsibility for themselves during childhood. This, I believe, is the real cause of depression and anxiety in adolescents: a mismatch between brain and body caused by their paranoid parents.

At age 8 I was walking halfway home from school to some shops where I'd meet my mum.

At age 10 I was travelling on the train alone to stay the weekend with my dad.

At age 12 I was regularly left home alone (I belive it is now a criminal offence to leave a child under the age of 13 alone!!!).

Is it a more dangerous age now? No! But the perception promoted by a ratings-hungry media is that there is a peedyfile behind every lampost! Perhaps it's actually the feminisation of society which has led irrational mummy thinking to get taken seriously - in the past, a quick 'don't be so daft, darling, let the boy out on his new bike' would have sufficed; now every hysterical helicopter mum has to be listened too (and anyway, these women practically run the BBC!)

The rate of child abduction has not changed at all since records began - it is a rare, unfortunate, but unstoppable phenomenon.

The biggest danger to kids is their parents - and we should never ever forget that. Saying that is our 'Kidocracy' however, is likely to get you branded a nonce!

Sad.

timic - there are just as many paedophiles in Spain as in Britain I am sure. Probably more. Well, lots of catholic priests in Esthpania, innit...

True Bred Pomponian

Down in Cornwall 15 year olds are not deemed old enough, by the police and social services, to camp without adult supervision. They are threatened with being taken into care, unless parents pick them up immediately.

toby smike forward

Steady on, Rod. Show a bit of mercy. I had to do all that on a slice of mouldy bread and a scrape of dripping.

rod liddle

I remember hitch-hiking when I was 13, though my parents weren't terribly keen on it.

EyeSee

Maybe the concern for the child was based on the suspicion that he shared genes with people who misplace a child. On the other hand, it could be just one of those things that happens every so often and isn't really that bad. In the UK of course, social services would now kidnap the child and force him to live with a family for payment. Actually, I guess the wheels for that outcome could be in motion as I write....

timac

@Eddie

Perhaps, but there certainly isn't any media hysteria about it and it wouldn't be a parental concern. I also doubt there is a sex offenders register in Spain. People who are mentally ill and a threat tend to be put in asylums. I know! Sounds like a crazy idea, right?!

E Hart

The boy is obviously not stupid. Had he gone after his parents as you suggest, he'd have set in play a pan-European police hunt - undoubtedly involving Interpol - which would have cost millions. When you have a reference point - the service station - it is sensible to stay put. The boy should be commended for not being an idiot.

It says a lot about the parents that they forget for 2hrs hours someone they'd looked after for 12 years. It must have been a very relaxing holiday.

rod liddle

Oh come on, E Hart and others. They forgot the kid was there - he'd been in the caravan they were towing. It's hardly a capital offence.

Simon Stephenson

Eddie : July 21st, 6.26am

Spot on!

DeeJay

I'm not sure 2 hours is that long. According to Luke it was a day before Mary and Joseph even realised that their 12 year old was missing? How many kids did they have? It was another 3 days before they actually found him. I expect they blamed each other when social services in Nazareth came knocking a few days later. Not helped when the kid said you knew where I was anyway in that truculent manner favoured by teenagers.

DeeJay

I'm not sure 2 hours is that long. According to Luke it was a day before Mary and Joseph even realised that their 12 year old was missing? How many kids did they have? It was another 3 days before they actually found him. I expect they blamed each other when social services in Nazareth came knocking a few days later. Not helped when the kid said you knew where I was anyway in that truculent manner favoured by teenagers.

DeeJay

I am not sure 2 hours is really that long. According to Luke, it was a day before Mary and Joseph realised that their 12 year old was missing. How many children did they have? It was another 3 days before they actually found him. I expect they blamed each other when social services in Narareth came knocking a few days later.

E Hart

Who said it was? Nonetheless, you'd have thought it might have occurred to them to check before two hours were up? What were they doing in the service station that it didn't occur to them to see how he was? They could have offered to stuff him full of carbonated drinks and vile food!

Oedipus Rex

Surely there's one clear factor no-one has mentioned - when I, and obviously others here, were kids we didn't have a car & many families like us also didn't have cars. Hence, being 'put on buses/trains' etc, was quite normal and led to a sense of both independence and interaction with other travelers.

Now so many families do have cars (and caravans). It is a strangely imprisoning vehicle, shut in, you have to stay with it all the time - you become dependent on it. There's nobody else, no 'general public' to share the journey with, you don't look out for each other in the same way.

Cost and living in London aside, it's one of the reasons why I've almost never owned a car.

kiwi

Some basic maths needs to be introduced here. If the kid spent two hours at the service station, then one hour, at most, would have elapsed before the parents realised he wasn't with them. The next hour would have been spent returning to the service station.

Who knows? They may have realised the kid was missing after a mere twenty minutes and taken an hour and forty minutes retracing their steps.

For a serious look at a tragic subject, Gene Weingarten at the Washington Post is worth reading.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701549.html