Should a 13 Year Old Be Allowed to Sail Around the World by Herself?

A thirteen - yes, thirteen - year old Dutch girl by the name of Laura Dekker wants to be able to sail around the world by herself. Laura is the proud owner of a 26 foot boat she named Guppy. Yet the Dutch courts do not believe that such a young girl is capable of handling such a trip all by herself, and chances are they are correct.

This story brings to mind the case of an even younger Jessica Dubroff, a grade school child who, in 1996, decided to fly a Cessna 177B from California that year, all the way across the nation. Jessica did not get very far, though. Right after her first sop in Wyoming, the plane she was at the controls of crashed into the ground. The media made much hype about this but it asked an even more important question: Should children be doing things that adults do?

Most Americans at the time believed it was foolish on Jessica's parent's part to even fathom allowing a child who should be playing with dolls, Legos, and reading Charlotte's Web, to fly a Cessna. It did not matter that Jessica's father was with her at the time, plus her flight instructor, who were also killed in the crash. Okay, so the media lied in saying that Jessica flew the plane by herself since she had two adults with her. Yet those adults were not too bright either in thinking "So long as I am by her side to guide her, everything will be all right." It wasn't all right by the time the Cessna plunged into the ground.

Laura Dekker has been appointed a psychologist to undergo evaluation on the dangers of a trip she badly wants to make. It is not wrong for a child to have dreams and ambitions within reach, but risking something like a boat trip around the world by herself is more than flirting with suicide: it is flirting with the media, as Jessica Dubroff has already shown us. Dekker would never survive the sea in the middle of a major storm, for example - most small boats do not. The outcome of her case is positive, though: the courts ruled that Dekker is not quite ready for such a dangerous trip around the world by herself. It does not matter that Laura herself was born on the sea herself in a boat and can swim like a mermaid. It is good, though that in the case of foolish parents, the government steps in for the welfare of the child so that the Dutch media headlines do not read: "Missing 13 Year Old At Sea" while the parents cry hysterically and wonder what they did wrong. Too bad the state of California did not do the same thing for Jessica Dubroff, who might still be alive now with her father and flight instructor.