Hide the passports! It's a new rite of passage for post-exam teens... a riotous holiday with no parents allowed


Mobile at her ear, laptop open and her head bent over a notepad, my 16-year-old daughter was deep in conversation with her best friend the other night.

In the middle of her GCSEs, it's hardly a surprise that she needs to check some last-minute facts.

Then I heard the word 'Rock'. My suspicions that they weren't talking about geology were confirmed by the addition of the word 'rave'.

Keeping a watchful eye: Tessa Cunningham with her teenage daughter Elise who has been planning a summer holiday with friends once they finish their GCSEs

Keeping a watchful eye: Tessa Cunningham with her teenage daughter Elise who has been planning a summer holiday with friends once they finish their GCSEs

This chat was all about the summer holidays. Or, more specifically, about how my daughter and her friends are planning to celebrate the end of their exams.

Rock was once a sleepy little Cornish fishing village. Now it's the dream destination for teenagers desperate to let their hair down.

From early June it's awash with teens who are unsupervised, uninhibited and - if you believe the horror stories at the school gates - out of control.

The tragic death of public schoolboy George Frewer there two summers ago may have tempered the party spirit - he fell from a cliff in the early hours of the morning after celebrating his 17th birthday with friends.

Summer tragedy: George Frewer was found dead at the foot of cliffs in Polzeath, Cornwall

Summer tragedy: George Frewer was found dead at the foot of cliffs in Polzeath, Cornwall

But Rock and neighbouring Newquay are among dozens of possible destinations, if my daughter and her pals get their way.

I can accept she might want a gap year abroad before university. No doubt she'll want to celebrate the end of her A-levels when the time comes.

By then she'll be 18 and legally allowed to drink. But right now she's barely 16. Some of her friends are only 15.

I've found myself fighting a tidal wave of pressure that must be reverberating in thousands of homes up and down the country.

While parents like me weren't paying attention, a worrying tradition appears to have sprung up.

Celebrating the end of GCSEs with an extravagant, unsupervised holiday has become a rite of passage. And it takes a brave mother indeed to fight it.

Try telling your teenage daughter she can't go and it's tantamount to banning her from the school prom. Yet I know I'm not alone in my worries.

The charity Parentline Plus recently asked parents if they'd allow their 16-year-old to go on holiday with friends, but no adults. A whopping 73 per cent said: 'No.'

My nightmare started in February. My daughter came home from school bursting with excitement.

'Mum, you'll be so pleased,' she said. 'I've sorted out what I'm doing after the exams.'

Hooray, I thought. My enterprising child has landed a summer job. But as I rushed to congratulate her, it became clear that my daughter's plans didn't involve making money; they involved spending it - lots of it. And all mine.

Her friend Alice, it transpired, has a dress designer aunt who lives in Paris. This saintly woman was eager to give her niece a holiday - and five of her friends could come along.

Barely legal: Young women down tequila shots at a bar in Ibiza - a destination that Elise and her friends were considering for their summer holiday

Barely legal: Young women down tequila shots at a bar in Ibiza - a destination that Elise and her friends were considering for their summer holiday

It sounded a bit too good to be true. And, of course, it was. One discreet phone call to Alice's mum revealed that the aunt does, indeed, have a charming little apartment in the shadow of the Louvre. But it has only one bedroom.

And she was not about to host a week-long slumber party for six girls.

Mustering a show of motherly concern and compassion, I broke the news to my daughter.

'I'm so sorry, darling,' I fibbed. 'Let's hope we can organise something for next year.'

But her reaction wiped the smile straight off my face. 'Oh, don't worry, Mum,' she said. 'Paris is boring anyway. We're thinking of Ibiza now.'

Since then, there have been tears and tantrums - and not all on my daughter's side.

There have also been increasingly furtive late-night phone calls. While my daughter's on her mobile, hatching yet more plans with her pals, I'm on my mobile to her friends' mothers trying to scotch them.

She has shown levels of tenacity, attention to detail and painstaking research that have left me awestruck - and hoping the same enthusiasm is going into her revision.

I'd be much less worried if she were a boy. Males, after all, are genetically incapable of organising anything from a sock drawer to a summer holiday. 

Teenage girls getting splashed by ocean wave

Freedom: The girls want to get away to a place where there will be no parents

But, sadly, my daughter and her friends are super-organised. Nothing is going to come between them and their chance of freedom.

It's not just the money that worries me - though £500 for a week seems to be the going rate. It's the fact that at 16 she's unprepared for solo travel.

She's so used to hopping into the taxi - my car - at her beck and call 24 hours a day that public transport is a total mystery to her.

At 16, I was expected to make my way to parties under my own steam. My daughter could not read a bus timetable to save her life.

Yes, I know it's my fault. And how I wish I had nudged her out of my comfy car and on to a draughty bus or train years ago. Instead here she is, aged 16 and desperate to go away.

The getting there is just the beginning of my worries. It's what happens when she's arrived that has me waking in the night in a cold sweat.

Mercifully, after many weeks of fraught negotiation, Ibiza was abandoned when the girl behind the plan pulled out in a huff.

She wouldn't go because the only villa they could find (yes, there was a villa owner mad enough to take six unsupervised teenagers) didn't have a pool.

Since then we've talked Glastonbury - thankfully all sold out. We came within a click of the mouse of booking a cabin at Center Parcs.

Ground down by endless arguments, one mother offered to drive the girls there and then disappear - against Center Parcs' policy, which demands an adult presence. Mercifully, a stiff talking to brought the mum to her senses.

So I bite my tongue and hope each plan will founder. Besides, I'm too worried about upsetting my daughter during her exams to start an argument over her summer holiday.

Anyone know of a cosy cottage near the sea with room for six - and a granny annex for a discreet mother?

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