Festival organisers should do more to protect our teenagers
COLUMNIST
AS a parent of teenagers there is one thing I hate more about the summer than exams. Just one word can bring me out in a nervous headache. Festival. There. I have said it. You will find support groups for many things.
There is even a helpline for people who believe they have had contact with extra-terrestrials (the Anomalous Mind Management, Abductee, Contactee Helpline, if you’re wondering), but so far as my research shows, there is nothing for parents whose children insist on heading off to dance away midsummer at a music festival.
Nothing wrong with that you might think. Why not celebrate the long hot days and balmy nights with a party and some music?
Well, apart from the fact it will probably rain, they’ll get no sleep, be unable to afford to grotesquely overpriced food and have to navigate hideously unhygienic toilet facilities, there are the drug dealers.
Don’t get me wrong, I went to Glastonbury as a teenager and an adult and even went to a gathering at Stonehenge back in 1985 when I was 20 and you could still get close to the stones – maybe that’s why festivals scare me.
I know what can go on. I don’t want my teenagers to be part of the worst of that.
There are now a mass of festivals all over the UK, some of which are more benign than others, but many of which actively target teenagers and then fail to have the security to protect them from drug dealers, thieves and various other undesirable things such as older men chasing teenage girls.
It has become a post-exam rite of passage for teenagers to head off to festivals to blow off exam pressure and generally have a good time.
Nothing wrong with that, except, for some, having a good time can go too far, especially in an environment where recreational drugs are rife, whatever the organisers might have you believe and claim.
If your teenager is off to a festival this summer and you haven’t already had the drugs conversation then have it now. If you don’t someone else will have that conversation for you – and they might not have your teenager’s best interests at heart.
It might also be wise to explain to them that not all adults are very nice. Appearing to share the same taste in music and clothes is no guarantee they will be good to you.
Take the Reading Festival. Anyone with any experience of this, or who has seen the media photos of the ruin left at the end, will know it’s less a celebration and more an orgy of booze, recreational drugs, tentwrecking, litter strewing and insomnia.
It is targeted at anyone aged 16 and over. You can attend aged 16 without an adult, although anyone under 16 will need to be accompanied by someone aged 18 or over.
On the face of it most 16-year-olds are quite capable of going on a weekend camping trip and I know teachers and accountants who go to Reading – it is not all undesirables.
But, this is no idyllic tent trip to Tenby with your mates and you might have to be a pretty robust 16-year-old to avoid the peer and crowd pressure of drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol or dabbling in drugs which are for sale, no matter what anyone says.
When my oldest returned from the Reading Festival a few years ago I vowed her two younger siblings would never be allowed to go.
Someone jumped on her tent, she had food and drink snatched from her hands by a (presumably hungry and thirsty) thief in the middle of the night and had stayed up with virtually no sleep for three days because of the general noise and squalor.
Her clothes and most of her belongings were so muddy, wet and dirty they had to be binned.
I am sure she saw some bands which she enjoyed, but it seems a lot of effort for the price – £213 for a weekend ticket this year.
This year my middle teenager is going to the Reading Festival. I don’t want her to go, but all her friends are going. I don’t want to be the kill joy, Victorian parent.
I’ve had the drugs, sex and rock ’n’ roll conversations with her. I’ve had the “be careful when you drive in cars with teenagers” conversation too.
She is sensible and so, I think, are her friends.
The trouble is – will they have the resilience to make the right choices among a lot of other people who are not?
At least six UK music festivals, including Reading, are expected to allow people to get their illegal drugs tested this summer after a number of drug-related deaths in recent years.
As a parent you have to feel the fear and let your children grow up which includes going to festivals and other potentiall risky situations.
All we can do is arm our children with information and support and hope they use it.
I just wish festival organisers and promoters, who make huge profits from our teenagers, paid for better security to protect them.
Drug testing is a move in the right direction but it is not enough.