ISOBEL REILLY’S DEATH – EVERY LONDON PARENT’S NIGHTMARE

My 15 year old daughter missed the whole of the Easter weekend because she was on her Duke of Edinburgh million kilometre a day walk, carrying practically a house on her back. She was dreading it. However, her blisters and aches and pains paled into insignificance when on Saturday morning the friend she was sharing a tent with received a text saying “OMG have u heard about Izzy?” and when she sent back “no, is she OK?”, she wasn’t expecting to hear that No, she wasn’t OK, she was dead. Dead from a drug overdose at an unsupervised teenage party in London.

Shocking and tragic and such a stupid waste of a young life. Every parents worst nightmare.

Our children could of course have been there. It could have been them. Or could it? Would my daughter and her friends take an unknown substance stolen from the house? Would they have been at an unsupervised party where there was no adult even at 4am when the ambulance was finally called? I don’t know the details as to why the parents weren’t there – perhaps they didn’t know it was happening, but no doubt those kids would have been scared when she was clearly not well and some disappeared and others no doubt panicked. Perhaps if an ambulance had been called earlier things would have been different. Teenagers do not expect somebody to die at a party. They wouldn’t have known what to do. Wouldn’t have read the signs.

To what extent should a 15 year old be taking responsibility for their own actions ? How much trust and space are we supposed to give them at this delicate age and stage? There will always be the ones who go that step too far and take a dangerous cocktail of drugs but are we as their parents culpable and responsible? Is it any worse now than it was then? We had drugs available. Drink. Excessive behaviour. I do think our modern London teenagers have more of a free reign than most – and to be honest cult programmes like “Skins” won’t have helped at all. They grow up so quickly and they are certainly exposed to drugs and alcohol at an early stage.

Of course as parents we are all dealing with the same issues – “Why don’t you trust me?” “WHY do you have to speak to their parents, nobody else’s parents do that, it’s SO unfair/embarrassing/annoying/humiliating……” but what else can we do? I know a bit from watching my son go through it – the plans to find out who’s house is empty for the night/weekend, where they are going for their “pre-lash”, what drugs might or might not be available, what they are drinking, but generally, as parents, even if we have a good communication with our children, what do we really know about what they’re getting up to? Is that scary or is that normal? My parents didn’t know what I was getting up to, not all the time anyway.

It’s even worse as a single parent. The kids can use the fact they’ve got two separate parents to their advantage – all we can do is continue to liaise in matters of where they’re going to be and when and keep our fingers crossed.

What a nightmare for everybody concerned. So so sad.