>>As a parent myself I am with Nick that parents should not smother their kids too much. Reasonable protection is one thing. It just seems to me that often parental (over)protection has more to do with the parent's desire for continued dependence than what the child can handle. This is a tough one. If it had been me in that role -- not quite such a stretch of imagination since I have a fairly precocious 17 year old daughter -- I can't tell you honestly whether I would have given this quest my blessing. It would be a lot easier with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, but of course that's not something we ever get at the time.
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>I don't know enough about this particular case to have an opinion, but I have plenty of opinions <g> about kids and independence. In my view, parents have the responsibility to start teaching independence from early on, and to foster it throughout childhood.
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>Thus, at appropriate ages, kids should be allowed to do various things without adults: walk to and from school (or the school bus), go to a movie with friends, walk to the neighborhood store for a sandwich or an ice cream cone, ride their bike in the street, etc., etc. The "appropriate ages" will vary by kid and community.
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>FWIW, in his senior year of HS, Nathaniel came to us with an idea to go to Europe with two buddies that summer. We thought about it and told them to come back to us with a plan: an itinerary indicating where they planned to go and where to stay. One set of parents forbade their son to do this, so we never had to actually decide if we were okay with it. (Of course, Nathaniel ended up traveling all over the world in his college years.)
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>Tamar

How old is senior HS in the USA Tamar ?