? about 10 yr old on the Wonder cruise

[Barbmouse63]

I would not allow my 11 dd to roam about the ship either. She is a great kid and very responsible but as previous posters have stated I'm not so concerned about her decision making as others that I don't know. I would never allow her to roam around a mall either at her age. I just think that she would be uncomfortable with that much freedom on a large ship. I also have a ds who is 8 and I can't imagine letting him roam about a ship in 2 years.

 

[crisi]

Depends on the kid. In your case, depends on all three of them....if one of them is a troublemaker and a ringleader, your in trouble. If two are pretty responsible and one very mature for his age, I think you'd be fine. Not all boys push all the elevator buttons, make crank phone calls or swim unsupervised when their parents have said "pools are off limits unless we are there."

I wouldn't worry about THREE responsible boys being targeted, so as long as they are together, its extra insurance against that risk. Much easier for a predator to pick on the kid wandering the ship alone.

 

[logan1_2000]

I think the best advise this board can do on this topic is to provide the forum that it does, in which different DISers raise different issues that some other might not have considered, and that each parent can decide for themselves and their own children what level of maturity, of understanding, of ability to follow rules set by parents, and other characteristics their own child happens to possess at their particular stage of development. Obviously some posters in this thread have focused on spending, others on mischief, and some focus on the possibility that their children may become the victims of sexual predators who go on cruise ships. I don't think there is one answer for all children.

 

[sln88]

nope- I am not an overprotective parent, but my son will be 11 and no way will he be anywhere by himself on the ship. That boy that drown at the Vistana was 10, and I think his relatives were with him when it happened.

what if he falls overboard?? I know that is ridiculous, but it has happened to adults. Some other kid daring him to climb the rails or something? Makes me crazy to think about it.

My younger son(dad was supervising) took a dive off one of those half walls in Suess land at US. From my vantage(walking out of the rest room one second too late to stop him), it looked like he had fallen right into their lake! Luckily, they had a little grassy area he fell onto(no broken bones thank God), but he fell a good 15 feet. This one will not only be supervised, he will be holding my hand anytime we walk anywhere!

sorry- just don't trust young boys(or older ones, but for different reasons-lol)

 

[Jsme]

I have to say this is a personal decision for each parent to make.

Now with that being said....
We did allow our 11 and 10 year old some freedom, but they had to be together. My DD is the oldest and extremely mature for her age, but my youngest is a boy. We did allow our DD to sign herself out but she had to call first. We never let her leave with another "friend" she had met onboard. I did not feel comfortable enough to do this. The freedom my two had was to go to get food and come straight back.

I have to say children do tend to loss control when left on their own. We had several bad experiences with this. On our last cruise the room next to us was all children. The parents were in the room next to them. One night the oldest locked one of the other children out of the room on to the balcony. The child hit the door for about 2 hours before the parents came home and made let the child in. I did make a complaint but nothing ever came of it. Another time 4 girls about the age of 10 (that is a guess) decided to run up and down the hall yelling quite loudly for 30 minutes. The only reason they quit was my FIL told them to stop, they told him no, so he told them he was going to get Mickey, they said they did not like Mickey, then he told them the captain would handle them. They went into their rooms complaining. I later found out the children's parents were out until 3:00 am the next morning. Another time my DH was almost knocked down by two boys racing to the elevator. Oh...the elevator is another one. Children love to push every floor button and then leave. A CM told us them do this often and it holds up the elevators a lot.

So like I said my children had very little freedom. I just did not trust them enough to not bother adult guest. We love Disney and we realize by chosing to cruise with them we will always have some type of problems with the children. I am sure my son got on the nerves of someone racing his sister back to the room. BUT I do wish parents would watch their children a little better. We found a 3 year old little boy screaming on the stairs, he did not speak a word of English. Once he realized we wanted to help him he would not let the CM's help out. It took us about 20 minutes to locate his father. His dad had not clue the child was missing. Anything could have happened to this precious child.