emcbassett123

I have a 16 year old daughter who is doing a year abroad in France right now. She is very mature and looks older than she is. She has traveled a lot before and knows how to make good decisions. She recently asked to travel to Paris with two of her friends alone for a weekend. All three of them are responsible, but I still do not feel comfortable letting her go. These opportunities do not come very often though, and I know she can travel safely and smartly, but is 16 too young to be traveling without a chaperone? Or am I being overprotective?

Sarastro

Firstly, I am very glade that you are making this difficult decision and not me.

Our daughter is not yet 16 but is a fluent French speaker and we have a number of family friends living in Paris. Even with these advantages, I believe that 16 is just too young to be travelling to a large city unaccompanied. I do not believe you are being overprotective, you are exercising your protective rights as an adult and parent. Your daughter will be very disappointed and unhappy with you but there will be plenty of wonderful opportunities in her future.

suze

If she's "doing a year abroad in France right now", seems like she's already "traveling without a chaperone". If she is "very mature" I think it's fine.

zeppole

How far would they be traveling? Do they all have ATM cards and cell phones? One of my concerns would be 3 girls staying in Paris until the last possible moment, and then taking a long ride back on a sparsely populated train at night.

The word "chaperone" suggests to me a certain kind of worry, beyond issues of whether the kids have enough French and maturity to handle a medical emergency. Or maybe you just meant "adult" with adult judgment. Despite your daughter's maturity, are you worried that they will be preyed upon as girls, or that they will find it too tempting to drink or go off with strangers if no adult they know is watching? If so, you should follow your gut on that one. While it is of course true that every opportunity to go to Paris is special, a 16 year old girl who already speaks French is highly likely to get there in the future even if she misses this opportunity.

If it is a fairly short train ride to Paris, and if your daughter is fluent in French -- fluent enough to handle telephone calls in French and other emergencies -- and you are absolutely certain that, for all 3 travelers, the attraction of a weekend in Paris isn't late-night partying away from the eyes of adults but sightseeing, Paris is generally a safe place for teens. But I wouldn't want my daughter to be left in the position of being odd-girl-out if the other two insist on night-clubbing or hooking up with strangers, and I would probably say no if I didn't personally know the other girls.

Have you asked her teachers in France what they think?

kerouac

No, it is not too young. Incidents can happen at age 10, 16, 26 or 36 to name just a few. At what age would you stop being overprotective? Of course, I am a guy, but when I was 17, I took a trip all over Europe from Portugal to Austria to Norway and everywhere in between, and this trip lasted 3 months before cell phones or the internet. I will be forever grateful that my parents supported me completely (far away in California) and trusted me 100% to make the right decisions. I was not always in safe places and did not always do safe things, but this was part of becoming an adult.

If you show your daughter that you trust her for such a simple trip to such a safe city, you will be rewarded for years to come by her own trust of you.

kerouac

I should mention that I traveled compeletely alone on this wonderful and very rewarding trip.

kerouac

After reading some of these other comment, I am wondering if some people will ever believe in equality of the sexes. However, zeppole is correct in one detail -- she should not count on "protection" from her friends. We must all know how to be responsible when we are abandoned by people we know.

zeppole

PS: One way I would think about this is that the girls will be responsible for each other, so how would your daughter feel if she found herself responsible for getting medical help for one of the other girls if she fell by accident and broke a bone or was bleeding? (Sorry to be so graphic!) Would your daughter be devastated if she made a mistake or things didn't turn out right? Your daughter's school accepts that kind of responsibility with open eyes, but it might be too much to put on a kid.

I also wanted to add that I would reserve the right to veto the hotel choice, or to pick the hotel myself to begin with.

zeppole

kerouac,

I too traveled alone when I was 17, and to the Middle East, not France -- and these girls will not be alone.

In truth, the sexes are not equal when it comes to threats. I suffered two attempted rapes during that three-month trip. Fortunately, both were deterred by my outsized yelling. More than 10 years later, I had to fend off some very aggressive, alarming attention my first morning Paris when I made the mistake of walking at dawn in the Tuileries because I was so excited to be in Paris I couldn't sleep. That same year, I had to run from someone who tried to get me to follow him to an isolated corner of Hampstead Heath in London under the guise of showing me a lovely tourist attraction I really "shouldn't miss" as a visiting American.

apersuader65

I suspect that if you have enough trust with your daughter to take a study abroad program for one year in France that you, while concerned, have the trust in her already, and are seeking solace. I guess my question is where in France is she currently staying? Is it totally rural? Are the two friends from home or from France? What do the host parents think of the idea?

flanneruk

A large proportion of us regulars in this forum, I think you'll find, travelled round Europe in our mid teens by ourselves, on what we'd made from weekend jobs or paper-rounds, before mobile phones, email or Western Union cash transmission and relying on hitchhiking. Inevitably, however fluent we might have been in French or Italian, there'd be countries whose languages we didn't speak - and in those days, English certainly wasn't Europe's lingua franca.

Contrary to today's myths, crime of almost every kind was far more common then than today. Traffic accidents were more frequent: the real danger we faced was drivers' bad or drink-influenced driving - but statistically then as now, the likelihood of its affecting us was trivial.

In my case, my parents could hardly make a fuss about me taking a journey in peacetime my father had taken with he whole might of the Nazis trying to kill him. That might be why no-one found our travels a worry. Or parents might in those days have realised that the perils teenagers are exposed to in a foreign country are trivial compared to what they'll get up to a few yards away from their own house.

I honestly don't know whether this proves that you're going to get answers from a completely unrepresentative sample of derring-doers. Or whether parents today are bringing up a bunch of mollycoddled hyperdependents, whose inability to act independently will stunt them as grownups.

But, reading the horrors teenage children near me inflict on each other and comparing them to the total absence of bad news about the thousands of independent young travellers around Europe, I'd plump for the option that encourages hearty independence in my children.

longhorn55

If you should decide to allow your daughter to make this trip, vet the accommodations yourself. My very intelligent and capable 21-y.o. daughter booked a hostel online when she and a friend went to Paris during their college study abroad year. The place turned out to be a brothel and she and her friend slept on the floor in a hallway because it was late at night when they arrived and they had no place else to go. Immediately after this incident, she learned about Hostels.com, a reputable online site for finding hostels.

Dukey1

I believe the OP made a point of saying,"...knows how to make good decisions."

Well, Mom, the decision has been made I suppose even though she is apparently asking your permission.

That "time" has come and you know the one I mean. Are you able to allow it to occur or not and without outside help????

jent103

You know your daughter better than any of us do. Your post makes her sound like a responsible young woman. The fact that she is an ocean away and may not technically need your permission to go (unless you are in complete charge of her finances), but is still asking, says to me that she's not someone to do rash things. I'd let her go, under the stipulations that she a) stay with her friends at all times, b) let you and her host parents know where she is staying ahead of time, and c) does not drink (since Wikipedia tells me the legal drinking age in France is 18) and doesn't go anywhere with strangers. Emphasize the need for street smarts. A weekend trip in a country where she presumably has a grasp of the language and has resources (her host parents) in case of any unexpected trouble sounds like a great way to gain some experience and independence.

kerouac

Flanneruk, I really like your phrase "bringing up a bunch of mollycoddled hyperdependents".

It really fits.

PalenQ

A large proportion of us regulars in this forum, I think you'll find, travelled round Europe in our mid teens by ourselves>

Well the world has change in the half century or so since you were a teeny bopper - the Sun Has Set on the British Empire and things have changed so so much - especially in Paris where I have traveled every year since yes the Sun Set on the British Empire!

I have escorted dozens of college students to Paris and there are many pitfalls to be avoided - mainly with the younger gals it was young Moslem men hitting on them - like in front of Notre-Dame and without painting a broad brush at times those guys were out to take advantage or pickpocket, etc.

Paris is also rife with pickpockets - now if a 16 year old is wiser than their years and realizes this there should be no problem.

BTW flanner obviously has no children.

nytraveler

You say she's doing a year abrod in France - but not where. Is she living in another sizable city? Or she in a suburb or small town?

Is she used to large cities and public transit - and navigating them on her own?

If it were either of my daughters I would have had no problem with it - since they lived in NYC, had good French and were mature and sensible (even if some of their friends weren;t). They were navigating a much larger city every day on their own.

If she does not have experience in big cities - and a good level of city smarts - then I would be hesitant to let her do it. Enough adults get themselves into trouble through naivete - and the same could happen to an inexperienced 16 year old.

I think the chaperone is a separate issue. That sounds like the 19th century. I would let her go with a relative or friend who had been to Paris alone before if they were responsible - not a chaperone - just someone with a little more knowledge and experience.

(I went to europe at 19 - with my boyfriend - and had no problems even when I was doing something on my own - he hated shopping. But, I had been taking the subway to Manhatten with friends since I was 12 and was perfectly comfortable in a to me not so big city.)

emcbassett123

Sorry I forgot to mention she is staying in the city of Grenoble. She is capable of taking the public transit on her own and has also been to Paris several time before, just not without a parent. Also, she and her friends have a relatively high level of french, but are not fluent.

kerouac

Most of the visitors to Paris do not even speak French and they seem to survive.

nytraveler

In that case - if y ou trust your daughter to behave sensibly - and the friend not to be a ditz that leads her astray - I would let her go. If she's already been to Paris several times, is comfortable with public transit and has decent French - it sounds like something she can handle.

If you want you can review with her some of the common scams to know she is ready to handle them in case she runs up against one of them.