I’m looking for a reality check here. My daughter recently turned 12. I’m aiming to foster her independence, and she seems ready for it, so at this age I let her walk the 5 blocks to Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood because she loves the fries at a popular burger place there. My conditions are that it has to be daylight, with a friend, and she has to have her GPS tracker.
Yesterday afternoon on her fourth such trip there was a “weird creepy” guy (I presume mentally ill) who she said was uncomfortably close, was making weird comments like either talking to himself or at her. She felt uncomfortable and left with her friend. The weird guy came running out to catch up and follow them. A passerby noticed they were in distress, and told the weird guy to go away, and escorted them most of the way home.
Reality check: Am I crazy for letting her go to this neighborhood without someone older? or is this an acceptable age for this kind of independence and she just got unlucky but nothing worse would have happened? She’s understandably still quite shaken by it, and couldn’t sleep last night wondering about what-ifs. (The Capitol Hill neighborhood is a sort of alternative, LGBTQ+ area. It has its share of homeless and drug addicts, but within the range of what I think is normal for a big city).
I’d been planning on having her read “The Gift of Fear” but had kind of thought the right time would be when she was a little older; I guess not. She tells me that she loves being a child and isn’t in any great hurry to grow up. I assume she should attend a personal safety class so she’s with peers in the same situation. Seattle Police Department offer “women’s personal safety classes” but they say 14+ and that children should not attend. I also saw https://www.strategicliving.org/classes-item/for-teen-girls-only/ so maybe we’ll look into that.
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I don’t think you were crazy. She got unlucky.
And yeah, women get unluckier than she did at times, but that doesn’t mean you made a mistake in allowing this.
Honestly, I wouldn’t rush her to Gift of Fear or a self-defence class yet. Instead, I’d be open with her about your own risk assessments and how you make choices for yourself, perhaps when you were a bit older than she is now. I’d also give her a lot of praise for listening to her instincts, removing herself, and accepting help. These are all great choices she and her friend made. Re-focus those WhatIfs into validation of her judgement, instead of anxiety. Let her know you’re there to help her develop that judgment.
The final link, which talks about planning safe exits and recognizing red flags looks like a much more age-appropriate fit imo.
So as a woman and teacher of young people – please get your child to a self defense course.
Also prepare her by talking about situational awareness.
Before total phone saturation inner city kids and suburban kids roamed the streets aware of their surroundings not staring at a phone.
They still do, but the screens keep them looking down or staying inside and not developing awareness, confidence, and voice. A LOUD voice.
Practice yelling “I DON’T KNOW YOU” at the top of her lungs. Over and Over. She has to find her voice.
Practice when you go out. Have her identity safe places and unsafe places on her routes.
This is the Bodega – go inside and ask for help. This is Starbucks – go inside and ask for help. This is the library. This is the court house. Go inside.
This is the short cut home past the meth house. Not worth it.
Remind her to sit at the front of the bus.
Remind her she’s not a sex object. She is never portable. She is a stone.
Give her pepper spray. Aim for the eyes. Always.
(Anecdote – my gal pal and I as young women spent time on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Her good friend had a pub there even. Now retired. But we did get cat called just walking down the street. I’m all for kids 11 and up having agency but I’d never send them out there alone to wander or hang out at the park. Always have a buddy system. Library yes. YMCA yes. Kids College yes.)
GPS TRACKER???!
Thats the most US shit I ever read holy hell. Granted, rural germany is probably safer than US city but still, feels very invasive to me.
I’ve lived in Seattle for 20 years, including Capitol Hill, and I probably wouldn’t let my 12 yo walk around there alone. It really has a fair amount of people with mental illness and drug addiction. There are multiple mental health centers and addiction clinics in the area and there is even a halfway house that is known to be home to sexual predators. It’s not as bad as Belltown, but it’s definitely not Wallingford.
I do think it makes sense to have her read the Gift of Fear and talk to her about how to find someone safe, but I would suggest backing off on the unaccompanied trip for now
(Edited to address something i misread in the op.)
You’re not crazy for letting her explore the city she lives in. 12 is a perfectly healthy age to begin going places without a chaperone. I think the rules you set were reasonable, and she followed your rules. The real reality check is: the world is full of weirdos, and we need to learn how to react to those situations in healthy and appropriate ways. This will be far from the last weirdo she encounters on the street in her life — no need to shelter her from it. Teach her about it and talk about it. Share your own experiences out loud with her. I don’t know that self defense classes are necessary. Maybe you and she could walk around that neighborhood together sometimes, so she gets more used to being a pedestrian in the area. Point out the uncomfortable things and experience them together, teach her appropriate responses and reactions.
Your daughter got unlucky. Most of us have between 12 and 15. I was your daughter’s age in the 80’s and with a ton of freedom, and still occasionally had to deal with creeps and comments.
You aren’t crazy, but I know Capitol Hill can have some colorful characters.
Parents do the best they can to raise good kids who understand how the world really is and how to handle things. You can’t encompass it all though.
Ask her how she feels after that encounter. Are there things she thought of later that she could have done? How can you help her navigate ‘what to do’ in these situations that you haven’t already done?
I personally carry pepper spray, but if you do, then you need to be ready to use it. Being a smaller person means that you can’t threaten with it, you use it instead. It can be tough to reconcile because we’re taught to warn first but your size – if you are smaller or have other difficulties – mean you need to act first, not warn.
An air horn can help too, it can stun people so they can make their escape. It can also enrage people and cause them to escalate.
Is your daughter into self defense? If so, maybe find a teen friendly or even something you both can do together. Those kinds of classes teach about awareness, how to defend yourself, how to escape, and so much more. You hope you never need to use it but it’s better to know and not need it than need it and not know.
I would say that I likely wouldn’t let her walk alone, she is more of a target but we also can’t live in such fear that we don’t live our lives. She will be an adult in a few short years, so learning how to navigate the scary can help, just with appropriate safety measures in place.
My bestie pretty much lived 20 years in that area. She is small and looks like an easy target but she isn’t. She doesn’t regret living there and experiencing all it had to offer. Sure there were scary times but those don’t out weigh the good ones.
Keep being an amazing parent and raising an amazing daughter.
I put my kids in krav maga. It focused first on being loud, and drawing attention (which is not really an easy thing to do), and second on very effective short attacks, so you can run away. It was taught by a wonderful woman who was focused on using this very effective fighting style for safety. I would reccomended this to anyone.
Capitol Hill was my favorite place I ever lived. I’ve lived in mega cities and big cities all my life. I hate to say it, but it’s not a very safe place for a young girl, especially Broadway near the park.
As other commenters said, there is a high concentration of mental health and drug clinics and halfway houses in the neighborhood. Even as an adult in my 20s/30s, I was routinely harassed and followed. Even with others, even in daylight. A friend was violently sexually assaulted by a stranger. When I worked in the area, I dealt with people having bad reactions to drugs as well as creeps at all hours of the day. During the summer, the number of drifters, people visiting for festivals, etc goes up exponentially as do incidents of harassment, assault, even petty crimes.
I hate saying it because I love that place and I loved living there, but it can be challenging for an adult to navigate. I wouldn’t want a kid to deal with that on their own.
RAD Kids is a great self-defense course for children her age (it’s presented as being anti-kidnapping, but it works on developing self-defense skills against all forms of harassment and violence), if you can find an instructor near you.
I believe Elizabeth Smart supports RAD Kids’s self-defense courses.
Honestly. Educate her. Look at her route. What are some safe businesses she can go into for help? Always encourage them to go to businesses.
Get her a smart watch. Many track her location and allow for simple messaging. So she can message you when she is leaving and who she’s with.
Get her I be I martial arts or some kind of self defense. Encourage her to not walk the same route twice.
But the sad thing is creeps are gonna happen.
I would also start educating your children of any gender about how sexual grooming works and looks like. What is sexual assault? What is sex? What is rape? What is consent?
12 is a good age to have these talks. Boys and girls. Girls are more likely to be attacked IRL but boys are very much being targeted online.
Those classes sound great. I would hope they include some role playing of how to assess and handle trouble situations. I’d also try to persuade friends’ parents to get their girls to attend too so they all have similar understandings. Peer pressure to take unwise risks is a real thing, usually led by the clueless.
As a former Seattle resident, yes, this isn’t uncommon. I am also a GenXer and at her age, was riding the city bus to the library. That was in Portland, OR, back when there was a lot of gang activity, so I may be biased.
I think your requirements of phone tracking and only doing this with a friend are fine. The only things I would add is that she program the police non-emergency line into her phone and if she ever feels unsafe, she calls you immediately and keeps you on speakerphone until she’s back home.
I haven’t entirely read The Gift of Fear. Only you can say if she’s mature enough for it, but I would pose that if she isn’t, maybe she shouldn’t be going out with just one friend. Maybe it needs to be at least three kids and not two.
Carry pepper spray
Creepy people will be everywhere. Although I do personally think 12 is young, that is your decision as her parent and I think it’s great you’re giving her more autonomy as she grows up.
In a workshop about preventing sexual abuse in minors, they explained the importance of safety nets for kids. That is having plans for unsafe situations: knowing who to talk to, identifying safe places, learning to say no, learning to shout, make noise and asking for help, how to be aware of their surroundings. Just think what she needs to know to protect herself in these small outings and create plans that make her feel safe and give her tools to be socially smart. Like, maybe stay in public places and call someone to pick them up, or alert the staff to help them out or give them a safer place to wait for you. If outings become a routine, pick them up or walk with them once in a while so people know there’s an adult around them.
Tell her to get loud. Embarrass the creeps by yelling exactly what they’re doing that isn’t ok. Role play practice at home, using a big stage voice and clear phrases. “Don’t talk to me; go away; get away from me; leave me alone; I don’t know you; I’m calling the police;” etc. Creeps thrive in quiet and don’t want to have attention drawn to what they’re doing. They know they can’t get away with bad behavior if there’s too much attention.
Teach her to find an employee and use strong clear phrasing like “That person is a stranger and won’t leave us alone” or “That person is following us and making us uncomfortable.”
I think a good compromise between nurturing her childhood, and a street safety self defense course, would be martial arts.
Specifically karate. At her age I did karate and aside from all the other awesome benefits, it also covered basic situational awareness concepts, self defense techniques, and instilled a healthy, measured sense of caution for the world. I knew I couldn’t take down a full grown 250-lb dude to the mat because it didn’t work in the dojo, but I also learned techniques to escape most wrist and body holds. I learned that the world was sometimes dangerous, but also that if most often wasn’t.
Some people will probably disagree with me but maybe it’s just an additional idea to consider instead of the only one.
Additional benefits. practicing and understanding meditation. Strong emphasis on principled values. Self-discipline. Incremental support toward building mastery in a variety of techniques. Challenging, hard working environment. Basic fitness benefits. Intro to Japanese language.
In case she is unlucky again now or when she’s older it would be a good idea for you two to work on strategies and decide what to do.
Let’s say a helpful person doesn’t appear to tell the guy to go away? What is her plan?
Mine has always been go somewhere with people around. Go into a store. Go into a restaurant and say “can I stand here for a minute? Someone is following me.” In your daughter’s case she might want to add “I want to call my mom and she’ll pick me up”.
Both of you will feel better if you have a plan in place for how to handle something similar.
I don’t think you’re crazy. We live in Seattle and my kids have a high level of independence. They’re 14&16 but have been navigating the city pretty independently for years, starting with walking from our house in then Licton Springs 5 blocks to gasp Aurora Ave to go to Game Guru, Oak Tree Cinema, etc. They were 11&9. 5 blocks to Capitol Hill is totally reasonable. That’s her neighborhood, she should explore it. Like others have said, teach her to get loud, go into businesses if she doesn’t feel comfortable, etc. (And FWIW my kids spend plenty of time on Cap Hill. Yes they’re older but those middle years got cut out because of covid. But my oldest has been going to the Hill solo since age 14, and we don’t live anywhere nearby).