Re Andy Welch’s article on “Norwegian parenting” (How to be a Norwegian parent: let your kids roam free, stay home alone, have fun – and fail, 11 July), such willingness to allow children freedom was a feature of British life for many of us born five decades ago or more. I was not particularly unusual being put on to a bus at the age of five with a luggage label pinned to my coat for a five-hour journey to my grandparents’ house.
When there, my grandmother, who ran a seaside boarding house, would take me down to the beach in the morning with sixpence for the Punch and Judy show, and the instruction to be at the pier gate when both the clock hands were at the top of the clock. This was the era of the Moors murders, and child abduction was a public fear.
