Kirstie Allsopp is right, mollycoddling doesn’t do children any good in the long run - Sarah Todd

One pupil, television presenter Kirstie Allsopp’s son, will doubtless have taken some ribbing for his mother’s revelations about his interrailing trip across Europe.

She hit the headlines after writing that her then 15-year-old son had spent part of his summer holidays travelling around several European cities with a 16-year-old friend. It caused such consternation that after he returned (safe and well) she was contacted by a social worker, who informed her that a file had been opened because child protection concerns had been raised.

The Location, Location, Location property presenter immediately hit out at the social services report as “absurd”.

“Oscar’s birthday is in late August,” she explained. “This means he was always going to be 15 not 16 when doing post-GCSE activities. The obsession with this age boundary is bizarre."

To be honest, she hasn’t been this viewer’s favourite television presenter.

In mitigation, it’s more to do with the dozens of smug southerners she has gushingly relocated out of shoeboxes in central London to buy up rural properties - pushing prices out of the reach of locals - than her as a person.

But credit where it’s due. She is spot on with her argument that mollycoddling doesn’t do children any good in the long run.

As Ms Allsopp rightly pointed out, improved communications, safer transport and excellent emergency healthcare make travel safer than it’s ever been, adding that her son was proud of his trip and “seeing him return so happy and confident was a joy".

She has stated that she hopes the silver lining of all the fuss over her son’s summer trip will be beginning a national debate about how we best help teenagers become confident, capable adults. As well as how we perceive risk.

Our children were quite free range. They would go off on their bikes building dens in the woods a couple of miles away from quite a young age. Also on their bikes, they would deliver eggs. The Daughter had a basket on the front of hers, especially for the eggs, and would only be eight or nine when she went off around the village which is a good mile from our home down quite a busy road. She was told to stay on the pavement and to ask to use one of her customers’ phones if she got a flat tyre or had any other emergency.

When The Son was 15 or 16, he went on the train to visit his sister at university. It never crossed his mother’s mind that he should have been 18 to be allowed to stay in the halls of residence. He had a rare old time and was so capped to have gone all the way down south, changing trains a couple of times along the way.

All young people get it wrong, it’s part of growing up, but time and again the ones that go completely off the rails are the ones who have been kept wrapped in cotton wool.

Those that haven’t had so much as a shandy at Christmas. Kind and well-meaning parents - and all the ferrying about they do to organised activities every day of the week - don’t do their offspring any favours in the long run.

As a teenager, if we’d wanted to go to the cinema or shopping with friends the bus would have been caught. Maybe a lift home, but you were expected to put some leg work in yourself.

Paddling your own canoe also made the trip so much more exciting.

Finally, Ms Allsopp is spot on with her comments about mobile phones being more dangerous to young people than travel.

How have we become a world that doesn’t let them walk to school or catch a bus but lets them sit slack-jawed in their bedrooms looking up goodness knows what on their phones?

In fact, forget the numbers of yuppies (are they still a thing?) that she has persuaded to relocate to the countryside, this woman is a new hero and her comments about children being prevented from doing things which previous generations did in terms of independence, travel and being trusted to take jobs like paper rounds are so very true.

Also, more than a grain of truth in her thinking that “risk-averse” parenting is contributing to the current crisis in young people’s mental health.