| Non-motoring > One Direction Concert.... | Miscellaneous |
| Thread Author: No FM2R | Replies: 20 |
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New Fri 2 May 14 18:31
One Direction Concert.... - No FM2R
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No significant point, just something I thought I'd relate. My eldest girl, age 12, went to the One Direction concert in Santiago yesterday. Apparently 60,000 people attended the concert which was held at the National Stadium of Chile. She went with a friend, not with an adult. A decision to give permission was, I felt and feel, the right one although that did not stop me stressing big time from one end of the concert to the other. I am pretty liberal with what I allow them to do and this child for example, is into fencing, shooting, fishing hunting (horses/hounds), rock climbing and surfing. I let her go shopping and cinema within reason and trust her to do many things. Nonetheless, this was a bit of a leap. Much as I think that as a society we mollycoddle our children, she is only 12 and a 60,000 people crowd is a big crowd. They started queuing at 10:00am, even though the two of them had tickets, it was apparently all about position and occasion. Actually many people queued before, and camped out, but that was a step too far for me. They joined the queue at the 1km mark. The doors opened at 15:00 and they got into the stadium at 16:30 with the main show starting at 20:00. I was in the queue with them until it got into the Stadium proper, at which point they proceeded alone. According to both girls it was a lovely atmosphere inside, sounded proper "rock festival" actually, with everybody stood around, not surging/crushing and generally just there for the crack. The field is not seated, albeit surrounded by seats as you would expect with a stadium. They left the arena around 22:30. You have never seen so many happy young people, mostly female, in your life. Everybody singing, happy with each other, and generally getting on. A bit like Trafalgar Square on NYE 40 years ago. There was zero trouble, although there were 2 children hurt early on when they fell over and got crushed against a barrier. Reports suggest nothing serious. An excellent evening, well worth the [ridiculous amount of] money and thousands of happy young people. I was particularly impressed with an obviously poor couple living in a pretty awful and small shack who were selling their toilet at 50p a go (pun intended). As far as I could see they were probably making £10 per hour for the 10 hours in a country where that would more normally be a tradesman's weekly pay and where they were probably living a month on less than that. I am glad I took the risk, and I accept that it was a risk, and was woken this morning by a chatty, happy girl who just wanted to tell everybody about the concert and how wonderful One Direction are Again and again and again. No point, just saying. Last edited by: No FM2R on Fri 2 May 14 at 18:33
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New Fri 2 May 14 18:37
One Direction Concert.... - Alastairw
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| Glad to hear they enjoyed it. My younger son(13 yo) is a big fan, but I'm not sure I would let him go to a concert unaccompanied just yet. That's partly because he is mildly autistic, but mostly because I don't think I would trust a UK audience to behave as well as your Chilean example. |
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New Fri 2 May 14 18:44
One Direction Concert.... - No FM2R
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Alastair, you've got to do what you think is right. I do personally believe that if one's stomach isn't twisting a bit then one is probably not letting the children stretch their wings enough. If it is twisting uncontrollably, then one is probably letting them do too much. And last night was about a 6 on scale of 1 - 10. I would have thought that a mildly autistic child would have coped quite well, perhaps better than others. Personal interaction not being required, but a slightly single minded and undistracted approach to rules is. Although I am sure you would know better than I. On the subject of the Chilean crowd, then I wasn't worried about violence or assault. But I was concerned about crowd control and crushing. Unnecessarily as it turned out. |
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New Fri 2 May 14 18:38
One Direction Concert.... - Pat
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Absolutely the right decision to make and an event she'll never forget. Making memories is so good 'cos whatever happens in life, no-one can take memories away. Pat |
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New Fri 2 May 14 18:59
One Direction Concert.... - Robin O'Reliant
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| I was 10 when I first stood in a crowd of 35,000 at Upton Park accompanied by my nine year old cousin. No adults with us as we came from football agnostic families. |
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New Fri 2 May 14 19:07
One Direction Concert.... - Armel Coussine
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I've been there repeatedly FMR with three London daughters, and now God help us adolescents appearing in the next generation. You can't hold them down and you have to hope for the best. Always seemed to work. PS: One Direction? Who they? Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Fri 2 May 14 at 19:08
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New Fri 2 May 14 19:09
One Direction Concert.... - No FM2R
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| What age did you first let them go AC? |
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New Fri 2 May 14 19:10
One Direction Concert.... - No FM2R
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And One Direction are a bunch of boys who failed their auditions as solo singers at X-Factor and were then put into a band by the show. They are a lot better than that makes them sound though. Not my sort of thing at all, but they seem to be pretty good quality and certainly the shows seem to offer good value. |
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New Fri 2 May 14 19:16
One Direction Concert.... - Armel Coussine
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>> Not my sort of thing at all, but they seem to be pretty good quality and certainly the shows seem to offer good value. Yeah, a good electronic setup and some cunning old sound engineers can work wonders... some lights too no doubt. Heh heh... stood in the wings in some of those big-ass rock shows, as it were. Showbiz innit? |
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New Fri 2 May 14 20:25
One Direction Concert.... - Armel Coussine
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>> What age did you first let them go It wasn't my sole decision for one thing. They had mothers too. I seem to remember my eldest and her friend were picked up on a beach in Spain by James Hunt when they were about 12. He was a perfect gent they said, bought them a drink and let them go. On the whole though, for big concerts and the like, we loosened the reins at about 15, but with much checking of friends or other escorts for different venues. Sometimes one could ask a wicked old friend to look out for them. You know, the usual stuff. I do agree that these big rock concerts tend to be harmless, almost boringly so I sometimes thought back in the day. But you wouldn't want Altamont would you Stones or no. |
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New Fri 2 May 14 19:08
One Direction Concert.... - No FM2R
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>Upton Park I used to go to Reading when I was about that age. I have no idea what the crowds were though. Probably about 53 on a good day! I used to get passed down over the top to the front by the wall by the adults. Last edited by: No FM2R on Fri 2 May 14 at 19:11
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New Fri 2 May 14 20:40
One Direction Concert.... - Bromptonaut
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Right call I think Mark. We had that how much of the leash question in another context. Concerts were not Miss B's thing but at 13/14 she and the son of close friends living 150 miles away in North Wales had, as it were, nailed their colours to one another's masts. Fond as we are, getting both whole families, including younger siblings, together more than the customary three times a year would be a drag. The answer was independent train travel but it was still a wrench putting her alone onto the London to Holyhead train at Rugby. OTOH she had a mobile, we had access to live station arrival boards and I've enough knowledge of the rail system to work round problems. She got there fine albeit after a delay en route due snow/ice at Stafford which we talked her through. Wouldn't have been so relaxed about it before mobiles/internet though. OTOH my Mother put sis and on a Leeds/Manchester train in 1974 to meet family friends -Godmother's daughter - at Stalybridge. I guess we rang home when we got to her house but God knows what we'd have done in case of the worst sort of railway disruption I met years later commuting or travelling long distance. |
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New Fri 2 May 14 20:42
One Direction Concert.... - No FM2R
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| How old are yours now? |
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New Fri 2 May 14 21:03
One Direction Concert.... - Bromptonaut
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>> How old are yours now? She's 21 and he's 19. While that early independent travel stuff was edgy it's paid off in terms of their capacity to sort out getting A2B now when they're at Uni and beyond. Watching some of their mates worry about going home by public transport, never mind construct a real cross country journey, is quite worrying. |
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New Fri 2 May 14 21:48
One Direction Concert.... - mikeyb
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Think it also depends on the maturity of the child. Our eldest is 11, and on the whole pretty sensible. Starts secondary education in September, and will happily play out with his mates and a football, or walk to the local lido with a few quid for swimming / lunch, however, number 2 is only 16 months younger, but she lacks his common sense, and can be easily confused. Cant see us being able to extend the same freedoms any time soon |
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New Fri 2 May 14 23:15
One Direction Concert.... - Ted
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Our 9 yr old grandson made a massive leap today by asking his mum if he could walk home from school without being picked up by her. He's a great lad but doesn't really like to be away from his family. This breakthrough will give him a taste of independence and make him feel a bit mature......I'm sure. In fact, the reality is that school is about 100 yards away and he only has to cross his street, outside his house. It's a long narrow street, not at all busy, he'll have his best mate, Toby, with him . After he's been home an hour, she says she'll send him to the 'Yellow Shop ' on the corner to buy some sweets as a treat for him and his 4 yr old brother. Crossing the road again outside his house and a 75 yard trip. He's coming here tomorrow so we'll be praising his efforts. I was all over the place at 9, we lived next to a field and in the junction of two railway main lines. Nobody seemed to bother then, but it was the 50s. At 13, I cycled to Borrowdale with camping kit and mates and at 15 I took my bike down to my Aunts in Westcliffe on Sea on the train and explored Essex. One day I cycled to Cheshunt to see a girl I'd met in the Lakes. I had to send a telegram to my Aunt as they had no phone and the Cheshunt family asked me to stay overnight.......in the spare room....sadly ! I wonder what became of Linda. |
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New Sat 3 May 14 10:00
One Direction Concert.... - Runfer D'Hills
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We do indeed have different attitudes today. Rightly or wrongly. From about the age of 9, I cycled 5 miles each way into and from central Edinburgh to school every day and often back again at night for evening activities, up to Hillend to the dry ski slope twice a week in the evenings in the dark ( that being a 14 mile round trip ) . Even then as a capital city, traffic wasn't exactly light. At weekends and in school holidays we'd often ride as groups of kids and dogs down to North Berwick to the beach for the day ( 50 mile round trip ) packed lunches in backpacks and be gone for the whole day with instructions only to be back before dark. Now, and I'll freely admit it, due to modern conditioning I get slightly nervous when my 14 year old son has to make his own way back from his pal's house a few streets way. |
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New Sat 3 May 14 10:36
One Direction Concert.... - mikeyb
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I do wonder if the risks now really are much greater than 30+ years ago, or is the media just responsible for making us more aware? When I was still primary age we lived in a semi-rural area, and our house backed onto fields. We, along with many of our neighbours had put gates from the back garden out into the fields, so I just used to wonder off and play with my mates. The fields also extended out into a wooded area that probably wasn't the wisest for young kids to be hanging around in, but it was great for building dens :-) If I lived there now I'm not sure if I would extend the same freedoms to my kids, but should it really make any difference |
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New Sat 3 May 14 10:49
One Direction Concert.... - Runfer D'Hills
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Same with dogs really. When I was young they were running loose everywhere. I 'knew' most of them in my neighbourhood. My own dogs were never on a lead and followed us around wherever we went. Now, if I walk through my local streets with my ( well behaved ) dog off the lead, mothers pull their children away from him as if he's suddenly liable to savage them. We seem to assume that any lone male is a potential sexual predator, that every dog is a vicious killer, that all unsupervised teenagers are dealing drugs or will mug old ladies, that crossing a road is only to be done with supervision and that after sunset the streets become a high risk zone. Maybe urging caution is wise but teaching our children to live in fear of their own shadows can't be healthy. |
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New Sat 3 May 14 11:13
One Direction Concert.... - Armel Coussine
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Quite right Humph. People worry absurdly these days. Twenty or thirty years ago I used to worry about our nice middle-class girls in North Kensington, where there were one or two pretty feral housing estates. But there was nothing to worry about. Either they had been at school with those frightening-looking black kids or their friends had... anyway they moved like fish in water and knew instinctively how to conduct themselves. |
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New Sat 3 May 14 11:32
One Direction Concert.... - Bromptonaut
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>> I do wonder if the risks now really are much greater than 30+ years ago, >> or is the media just responsible for making us more aware? Sexual predators were not unknown to earlier generations. Moors murders were a gross example but a girl I was at primary with was 'interfered with' and then murdered not long after she moved to another area. We were regularly warned about sweets/strangers as kids. The only risk that has changed significantly is that posed by motor vehicles which have increased exponentially since my childhood in the sixties. Older people in this village remember when Weedon Road, now a dual carriageway linking the ring road to M1/J16, was a shady lane. From age of 14 I rode the six miles each way from home to what we then called Yeadon Airport (now Leeds Bradford International) several times a week to watch the planes. My Mother was in hospital the first time I did it and I think might have vetoed as the Harrogate/Bradford road, last mile of ride, was fast and busy. Gran, who was left in charge, had no such knowledge and once the principle was established there was no going back. Actual traffic here now is little worse than it was in my childhood in suburban Leeds. Off the lanes that are thoroughfares to Northampton or Banbury you can ride a bike for hours and see only a handful of cars. |
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