My view: Sheena Hastings

Great, we thought – she needs to grow up a bit, and certainly deserves time out. She has worked long hours for months, first in a bar/restaurant then in a clothing chain. She has toughened up a little and learned about money.

For ages, it wasn’t clear what the “travelling” would entail, although noises about an intensive Spanish course, followed by a wildlife conservation project in Costa Rica then wandering about Guatemala and Panama, were mentioned.

The doomy pounding started in our hearts. Research revealed that the wildlife projects she was considering were not offering a great deal for a lot of hard-earned cash.

We tried not to sound relieved when that idea was shelved, nor to sound too alarmed when she then proposed travelling for a few weeks in South-East Asia with a female “gapper” friend.

Two pretty, and pretty wet-behind-the-ears girls on the backpacker trail around Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam – visions of kidnappings/having their drinks spiked and belongings stolen/terrible diseases, swam before our eyes. Headlines about road crashes that had killed gappers in Ecuador and South Africa came back to us, as did the story of my daughter’s friend who was more or less blinded in one eye by a parasitic insect picked up in the sea in Thailand.

What do you, the parent, do when your 18-year-old has worked her socks off and saved for this exciting, challenging adventure but wants to spend it on a trip that will take her thousands of miles away into situations way beyond her experience and capability?

It’s awful to bring your parental paranoia down on her shining bubble. For every gap-year disaster story there are thousands about young travellers who’ve had the time of their lives.

My husband and I restricted ourselves to anxious whispered conversations. Then we began to drop the occasional “what if...” into the conversation, such as what if one of them became ill or injured and need to be hospitalised?

About a month ago, she suddenly said: “The trip is off. We haven’t had enough time to plan, and I’ve worked too hard to spend the money on something that might be a disappointment”.

Relief, joy even. She’s still going to study Spanish for three months then travel between various European music festivals. Central America and Asia will still be there when she’s a bit older, more savvy, and travelling in a group.

I wonder how many gappers who are simply handed a credit card by their parents, would have come to the same down-to-earth conclusion?