Marcus is 15 and turns 16 at the end of June. He gets LA school transport door to door so there hasn’t been much reason to do travel training with him or indeed much opportunity. We are doing it now, taking it slowly but surely, my preferred way to go about tackling any big step.
On Wednesday evening, he went to the National Theatre. We arranged for him to see it with one of our fab actor carers Alex so they could talk together about the set design, the staging etc and make notes as he has to write about it for his drama GCSE next month.
Jonathan (dad) saw him onto the train at our local station at 6 pm. It’s a straight journey to Waterloo and one he knows well but this was his first time travelling on the train alone. He was met at the other end by Alex.
The play finished late. 10.30pm. His big brother, Thomas caught the train up and met Marcus and Alex at the barriers to acompany Marcus home. They spent the journey sending each other daft memes and messages and having a fun time playing on their phones. Jonathan collected them from the station at our end. Thank goodness for mobile phones, which make it all so easy when arranging pick ups/getting confirmation at every stage.
I have never wanted to push the boys to travel alone until they feel ready and we’ve always started with familiar routes. I am also aware of not putting the responsibility on anyone else eg it wouldn’t have been fair on Alex to put Marcus on the train home alone, he would have felt responsible if anything went wrong. When Thomas started running with the local running shop as a teenager, we did the same thing. I would see him onto the bus and four stops later, when he arrived at the shop, the manager Ricky would message me to let me know he had arrived. I would collect him myself after the session. If Ricky had put him on the bus home, he would have felt responsible if anything happened to Thomas on the way home.
I used the same method again when Thomas started going to the running track on Tuesday evenings. After years of me dropping him off and picking him up, a carer went on the bus with him. When he was ready, he travelled there alone by bus. I continued to collect him for a long time until he was ready to travel home alone.
We have also used Ubers to get the boys home. I couldn’t collect one of the boys if Jonathan was out as we couldn’t leave the others alone in the house eg I would book a car to collect Thomas from a running celebration in the pub, then text the details and reg number to his coach/mentor who would see him into the car and I could then track the trip. These days, the older boys can all book their own Ubers and will do so if they are out late at a Uni event. Peace of mind for them and me.
Local authorities do offer travel training to teenagers/young adults but we haven’t ever used it. I’ve always preferred to do it naturally on very familiar routes, as the occasions arise.
Sarah Ziegel - Author 