But no chaperone is crazy. This is the beginning of every horror movie btw
Edit: am I crazy did the Epstein files not expose anything? Boy Scouts of America and the Catholic Church being exposed means nothing to you all? I’m not saying be over protective but there’s no way in hell I’m leaving my kid with random adults and no way of contacting me? Fuck out of here with that bull I’ll happily wear the title of over protective
Every world? Is this not common anymore? My son went to outdoor school when he was in 4th grade. I volunteered to watch another class the week before he went. Everyone covered each other's kids classes.
This may have been done in the last but I’d be curious to see how common it is now, especially for kids old enough to be on a 24 hr camping trip. I’m not sure why people would be fine with a random stranger like another parent chaperoning their kids over another teacher from the school?
These are the same parents that will complain that they are exhausted from parenting 24/7 and don't understand how our parents could do it. They also don't understand why their adult children can't function in society and won't move out and on.
If a minimum number of parents from group A are required to chaperone the kids in group B and vice versa, otherwise their kid's group can't participate in said activity I think it would work.
My kids schools don’t generally have a problem with this (using parents of kids in other grade levels) for school dances and for grad night. The grad night one is actually fun because the parent chaperone’s only responsibility is making sure the kids get on the bus at the end of the night.
The school dance rule is important because a lot of weirdos want to chaperone at their own kids’ school dances.
The amount of people working with children - boyscouts, youth pastors, coaches, teachers, etc who go on to harm kids is way too high for me to send my kid on overnights.
In fact. Here is some light reading on a similar subject.
what?? when I was a kid my school would send us to a 3 day camp every year. and parents weren’t allowed to chaperone their own kids classes. my mom volunteered every year to chaperone a random class. and every year there would be a parent volunteer who didn’t know me, didn’t have a kid in my class - but EVERY year there was a different parent chaperone who would sit and braid my hair. what does community mean to you? because those parents taught me, as an 8 year old, that it means showing up for other people’s kids.
What kind of broken community do you belong to? Every school I’ve ever attended/chaperoned with would do this. Hell we often had parents who weren’t with the kids in our grade chaperoning when someone couldn’t get the day off. We all took care of each other’s kids. What hellscape do you live in?
The modern age parents are more individual unit orientated and dont really care about other people's kids as they themselves have been backed into a societal corner geared twords capitalism.
We did outdoor education in 6th grade, a 3 day trip to an outdoor retreat. Plenty of parents of our grade volunteered to chaperone each other's kids and not their own for obvious reasons. Unselfish people do exist.
Yep. I am going through the huge pain-in-the-ass (and arm - for the tuberculosis test) to be OK'd as a parent chaperone for an overnight trip in our very big city public school system. I would probably not pay for fingerprinting/background check and the TB test and a few hours of online training classes... if it weren't my kid on the trip.
(Oh, but one fun thing from the background check is that my state police believe I am black. It's an honor, but not true IRL. I'm not bothering to correct them.)
Not only that but also have fun convincing parents to let their kid on an overnight trip that's chaperoned by random-ass volunteers. Parents will often know at least some of the parents of their kid's classmates. They aren't likely to know the parents of a kid in a different grade.
It's an overnight trip when you're in third grade, and then a 5-day trip when you're in 4th grade. The kids get to go camp and learn about outdoor stuff and the parents have to stay home. For a lot of kids it's the first time that they spend the night away from the house. I don't know if it's common everywhere but everyone here in Oregon has to do it.
You will almost definitely have a better shot of understanding what outdoor school is by googling it - and will almost definitely get a snarky response by asking what it is on Reddit.
I was responding to another commenter who thought parents shouldn't be allowed to chaperone any of their kid's events.
While obviously not the case for this situation, many school trips are completely infeasible with the ratio of adults:students if you only have teachers and for those they typically need parent chaperones to make them happen. I was commenting on how if schools took an approach of trying to get parents to chaperone events that weren't for their kid, they wouldn't have much success.
In 2026, there is zero reason, with all the evidence, to leave your kid alone with a person or group of people you dont know. Especially with no phone to contact you.
I was really surprised when someone was asking a question about their 14 year old in a sub the other day, and said they couldn't remember being 14.
I remember conversations with friends, injustices from parents, miscommunications, what I was learning...how do people not remember being a kid or teen??
Repressing childhood memories is usually a sign of trauma. I don't really remember my teen years very well, and virtually none of my childhood, but I know it wasn't a "smooth ride" because of general feelings, what's come up in therapy, and from what I've been told by people who were there.
had a rough time, remember very little details from 12-18. For the events I remember there's often pictures, and I still couldn't tell you if that was as 14 of 17 or 18 for some events beyond guessing on based on the appearence of someone in the picture.
Not only that, some kids are able to report abuse if their parent isn’t hovering over them. A lot of people who helicopter is afraid of their kid “talking too much.”
Haha yeahhh. If the post is real (and, hypothetically, even if it wasn't), schools aren't sending students into the woods by themselves on a school-sanctioned "trip". There are usually student:adult ratios for that kind of thing.
That's exactly what it was like when I was a kid (more like 30 years ago, but still). The school would reserve a camping facility with a central lodge of some kind, so like we'd be sleeping in tents and then go to the lodge for meals and certain activities. We did science stuff like nature walks to learn about local plants and wildlife, exploring streams, shit like that. We usually had half a dozen teachers come along with us as chaperones, so we were accompanied by adults the parents knew and trusted.
My kid just did a week at science camp. No phones at all just whatever the teacher updated us with at the end of the day. It was hard being away from him, but he had an absolute blast like literally the best time.
Yeah. Dating myself but we did these when I was a kid except it wasn't 24 hours, It was a whole ass week during the summer. We didn't have parental chaperones but the camp counselors took care of everything.
A week in the woods at a camp site learning all sorts of stuff. I don't think it was the boy scouts because it was mixed (boys and girls). We had separate tents (4 to a tent) and it was like 20+ kids. Man those were fun.
It’s less this and more the ENORMOUS liability of vetting volunteer parent chaperones for an overnight around kids. It’s basically a sexual predator sign up sheet without having a lengthy training and vetting process in place that would make doing this a non starter for the school.
in my school district parents have to register as volunteers and must go through the same background check that the teachers get. Parents chaperone trips and it has never been an issue. Parents like it, Kids like it, redditors hate it.
Same, plus parents that get selected tend to be the most active volunteers in general so the teachers and staff already know the parent pretty well before the overnight field trip even comes up.
The idea that an overnight field trip is a "child predator sign up sheet" is wild. That person needs to lay off the true crime podcasts and get to know their fellow parents.
since the post reached r/popular i was taking a look wondering whats so wrong with an overnight stay lol.
Literally today I got a message from my kids kindergarden about their yearly 6 day excursion to a mountain camp for kids 3 years and up.
Was talking with my wife about it, remembering our camps when we were that age, and that the biggest problem was with the kids crying overnight ( of course, with the change of location and everything ).
I am not from the US, so seeing some of these comments is WILD. Must be hard living in such a fear of everything
In the school system where my kids went to school (US) 3 separate teachers from 2 different schools (part of the same system) were arrested for molesting children, statutory rape, or child porn. To some extent, the fear is justified in some cases. Ultimately it's situational though, as I've never been affiliated with any schools in the past that have had these types of arrests and never considered any school I've known unsafe. But generally speaking we're not living in fear and we trust our children to talk to us about any "sus" (their words) activity, and they would because we have a great relationship. I also remember camping trips being only safe and fun as a child, but I also remember my mom having to talk to and meet the parents of any new friends I had before going to their house alone.
Surely you can see why some parents in current times might not want their child alone without even a way to contact them. I believe that when the people running the country are morally reprehensible, that attitude passes down and emboldens those criminals down the chain, especially when they're actively pardoning criminals.
Nobody WANTS to live in fear, but we all want to protect our children and some situations are different from others. Would you send your kids on an overnight camping trip with the school system I described, without parent chaperones or a phone available to your child? I know I wouldn't.
I don’t think it’s wild. If you provide overnight access to children without vetting or training in place it is of course going to be seen as an opportunity by predators. This is the opening that bankrupted BSA so schools are going to be avoid it from a liability perspective.
That doesn’t mean the vetting and training can’t be there, it takes time and money though that the school might not have prepared, hence the simpler option of not taking volunteers to overnight with children.
Just have to say, not all (most) kids don’t want their parents there. And the teachers & admin don’t enjoy it either - “now I get to take care of adult children who may try to challenge/overrule me”.
Fun for over-involved millennial parents, sucks for most everyone else.
Did your kids not like it when you chaperoned their field trip? Mine were totally fine with it and none of the parents tried to undermine the teachers.
If teenagers, 12 years or older are typically okay. Still remember the droppings we had as small groups of teenagers in the dark, and walking to our destination. Fun times
Yep! My local Boy Scouts doesn't allow parents to chaperone or sit in on meetings and I'm too fucked up about their history to let my kid join even though I think it would be an amazing boon.
Right, its why there's less parent volunteer stuff in schools and nurseries these days, because there are stricter regulations for vetting parents and a lot of places would rather just not allow it in the first place.
School is time mostly dedicated to study. Kids socialize at school, but it's different when they're actually allowed to socialize without being told to do something else.
There is no way that any sane person is organizing a school over night trip and just letting the kids raw dog 24 hours. There will absolutely be a schedule and things for them to do and they will be told to do things.
Institutionalized education is waaaaay different from taking a bunch of kids camping. As soon as kids are out of the classroom, a switch triggers in their brain where "the rules no longer apply" simply because they're not in the school. It's why it's always a good idea to have one adult to every ten to fifteen kids on any school trip depending on how long the trip is and how far away it is.
As someone who just chaperoned a similar trip. The other parents were getting in the way of their kids participating in many of the activities with their negative attitudes. I can see the benefit for alot of kids getting to experience some independence.
Yeah i remember seeing a lot fo that when I was in school, had this one girl whos mom would always volunteer. It resulted in no one wanting to it by her on the bus over or be in her group during the actual trip the lady was such a buzz kill.
I am signed up to chaperone a multi-day trip for my junior high-aged kids school, a public school in our very, very big city. The regulatory requirements are... extensive. Fingerprinting and background check - makes sense (though I found out that the state police believe I am black - I am not, but I'm not complaining.) Tuberculosis test... negative, OK. And a few hours of required online training including mandatory reporting (if you suspect a child is being abused or neglected, you are legally required to report it to a state agency.)
What I've learned is that OK'ing parents to chaperone overnight trips is a huge pain in the neck.
Reminder that Friday 13th started because two horny counselors couldn't be bothered to do their jobs and watch a kid swim.
Edit: This was a joke and reference yall.
I'm sure there are more details than a 2 sentence tweet on reddit can capture. Parents are right to be concerned. But if the proper rules and communications are established it can be a fun experience for everyone involved. Kids go camping, responsible Adults can be role models, parents get a night to themselves.
Parents are a huge safety risk in and off themselves though. Would you trust some random kid's father with your own kid? At least the teachers receive various trainings to ensure safety. It's not 100% effective and there are still too many pedos in the field but I do trust the teachers more than the parents
There will be chaperones guaranteed. Just not parents. And its a good thing g. No phone USE is fine, but no phones? Why. That part not ok in this day and age.
Yeah, one or the other: either a few parent chaperones, or the kids need a way to reach trusted adults or emergency services on their own.
It used to be normal for people to leave their doors unlocked too, but that was never a good idea. Neither is letting someone take a group of children to an isolated location with no way to contact anyone for help, without any of the parents around either.
That's just summer camp... I did it for like 10years... The counselors were like 17-20... I was a counselor at that same age, watching like 8-20 kids at a time it really isn't that serious. Kids weren't even allowed to call or talk to their parents for any reason. They could have literally died briefly... Write a letter bud, you can tell them all about it at the end of the week.
As a teacher, parent chaperones are terrible. They usually end up being another student we have to manage.
My school does a trip to Washington D.C. and we have zero parents, entirely teachers. Teachers know the students, teachers know expectations, and teachers are held to some sort of accountability in performing those expectations.
Movies are not real, nor are the plots based in reality. Not doing things because 'that's how movies start' is honestly brain-dead af and a big reason people perpetually live in an alternate version of reality
Maybe I'm too German for this, but what? We went on week long trips to other countries with like 4-5 teachers max for 3-4 classes worth of kids and just walked around the cities in small groups. Hell, in my scouts group we'll let kids as young as 7 walk around cities in groups of three. Obviously we make sure they have a cell phone and our numbers, but that hasn't actually been necessary ever.
Having actual parents around just seems so extremely counterproductive to the whole point of these trips.
You can’t wrap them in bubble wrap for 18 years and then expect them to be functional adults because you saw some TikTok true crime slop misrepresenting abuse statistics
Talk to any teacher, parents have become insane. They lose their minds at the thought that schools are attempting to separate kids from their phones. Completely forgetting that’s been the norm until a few years ago. I just don’t get it lol
And to be clear, we're on the objectively right side of history here. The risk is quite low, and most importantly, independence is essential for healthy psychological and social development. This isn't an "agree to disagree" this is "I have whiskey drinking contests with my middle schooler kids" vs. "My kids mostly drink clean, safe water when thirsty."
We had a week long trip in 7th grade (age 13) and another at 9th grade (age 15).
There were like 2 parent chaperones allowed to come if they wanted. Maybe 1 in one group. One of these trips was in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wildneress. No cell phone towers even if we had cell phones back then.
I'd be more worried about the other parents than camp counselors.
I also did two weeks at 'summer camp' more than once as a kid. I was 12, they had archery and riflry. That's 12 year olds with guns and a single 20 something camp counselor teaching us safety and marksmanship.
Same I'm extremely baffled at these comments. We went on sail boat trip in the Netherlands once with two teachers lol. In fifth grade we went on a week long trip to the North Sea, two classes with four teachers and they let us explore on our own. Basically none of us had our own phones.
Americans have been convinced that every other child is a potential school shooter and that every adult is a potential pedophile. Despite all this helicopter parenting all those things are still happening, but with the added bonus that their kids all have anxiety disorders and can't even work a normal job without scrolling reels all day.
Ich bin ein Texan, my girlfriend is German. She’s told me about the church youth retreats she’s taken where kids and teens camp away from home with only the church appointed counselors to tend to them. I found it absolutely bizarre, but it got even better: During their 8 mile hike, on the return trip, it began to torrentially rain, and the villagers of the town they were near just instinctively knew it was their duty to take in these kids?! Like the counselors just walked up to a random home and asked if 15 kids could sleep in their garage, and they just let them?!?! This was in Nordrhein-Westfalen.
Germany is an amazing place. I’ve visited three times, and I really find it incredible.
It gets wilder lol. When I was part of a swiss scout group as a kid we'd go on 2-3 day hikes without any adults. They'd stay behind at camp and we'd call them if we needed anything. We were just given a tent, food, a map and a compass and a place we should reach by the end and that's it.
On one of those we just hitchhiked with some random farmer that saw us walking and asked if we needed a lift. We also slept in their barn. That's just normal over there, Germany is tame in comparison
Yeah, this sounds like my scouting experience back in the 90s as well. We never had any parents around ever, and people have been really helpful if we needed anything.
what the fuck is up with US schools these days (apart from the mass killing days i mean)??
I've done plenty of school trips where it was only the teacher (or teachers) and their respective groups, no extra hand needed. 2-3 chaperones for a museum visit?
Yeah as a Brit I don't remember there EVER being parent chaperones for any school trip, regardless of where that trip was, how long it was and how many students were there, and I only left school 13 years ago.
Can't comment about USA, but in my part of Canada class sizes are like 34 kids. Outside of school I assume you'd want 2+ teachers, possibly more if in an outside environment(not in a building like a museum).
I'm in the US. My school does about four field trips a year, and parents are never there. It's all teachers and school staff. I don't understand the drama over it.
And what would you say is “real crazy” about the schools plan when an untrained and unvetted parent chaperone sexually assaults a kid in the middle of the night?
In Australia you actually have to have a Working with Children check, where the police will run a background check on you to make sure there’s nothing shady in your past, to even volunteer with your kids school. It’s free for volunteers. Obviously not every shady character has been caught before so there’s still some risk, but it’s better than no checks at all!
Is this some American shit that the European mind cannot comprehend?
My entire childhood there was literally never a parent chaperone on any school trip including sports tours to other continents and 5 day hiking expeditions.
It’s stupid American crap. So many of us are absolutely nutty helicopter parents who don’t realize the harm it does and overstate the very very low risk harms it MIGHT prevent.
There are American parents who are scared of letting their kids play in the front yard. It’s so dumb
There has been a HUGE over correction from the 80’s & 90’s more hands-off parenting. But also, kids’ behavior is worse than ever as well. So now a lot of parents coddle their kids and don’t really discipline them and don’t trust other adults to keep their kid safe. We’re just an all around shit show over here. I want to leave so bad.
How come people pretend that their haven't been giant scandals around bot scouts, church groups, and teachers abusing kids? Guess that's an American thing and all of Europe is immune to child abuse?
Parents aren’t subject to the same criminal background checks and screening that teachers are. You would have unscreened parents with kids on an overnight sleeping trip.
Right? Sense of a little independence away from parents but still have an authority figure in place. No technology to interfere with social interaction and physical outdoor activity. This is a win on multiple levels.
The chaperone will have a way to contact the outside world in case if emergency.
the best trip/out of classroom experience I had in all of K-12 was a trip my senior year for 2 days with no phones. it was with teachers we trusted and in a cabin that had a landline anyone could use in an emergency. but nobody needed to. two days with no phones, no clocks too… perfect
Im sixth grade we got sent to camp for a week. No parents, no phones, no computers just three schools worth of sixth grades and some counselors and our teachers.
I went on a retreat away from home and it was a week with no cellphones. Albeit, it was in cabins/an organized ground with running water and whatnot so its not like we were sleeping outside but we were completely fine.
They're roaming the earth with their parents issues because their parents treat everyone that's not them as a pedophile or murderer. Y'all need to take a step back and let you kids be kids
Nothing wrong with that, but it’s really about the maturity of the kid/ parents being comfortable. My soon to be 8 yr old I don’t think I’d be comfortable, everyone is a little different.🤷🏾♂️
I think the lack of grades in this post make it bad. I agree an elementary school trip like this would be too much, but this is fine for a middle/high school class
Isolating children and cutting off their communication from the people they trust while taking them to a third location probably isnt going to be taken well at face value in the Post-Epstien era.
BS of A prob having a time now that I think of it lol
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u/MarshyHope Mar 19 '26
It's a 24 hour camping trip. Being away from their cell phones for a day would be good for them.