12 is too young to journey to the big city but around the right sort of age to start venturing into the local town, with a deadline to be back home (or back at the car).

I'm sure that 'the big wide world' is safer than we paranoid parents like to believe but I think it's more about allowing a gently increasing amount of freedom to allow the child's confidence to build together with an understanding that they need to be home when you say - that pays dividends when they get to be 15-16 let me tell you :-)

Let her go shopping. There's no more likelihood of her coming to harm than when you or I were kids. Less, if anything. And being trusted is the only way we learn to become trustworthy.

That said, I didn't have anything as big as Birmingham available to me. But I was getting the bus in and out of Gloucester when I was maybe 10. Like Stimps says, maybe work up to it. But my instinct would be for more freedom rather than less.

EDIT: on the other hand, my kids are still little. I might find I feel very differently in seven years.

still has worried parents concerned for her welfare years after she's flown the nest. I won't embarrass her by revealing her age but they are retired now and still see her as their little girl. Unsurprisingly they are Daily Mail readers but even the news in the local rag is enough to alarm them. I'd agree Lichfield is a different proposition to Birmingham. I can also see the attraction of Birmingham to a teenager but a 12 year old? Ultimately only you can make that decision but our offspring mature at different speeds.

I agree with Bob, trust her to be sensible, but build up to it. Maybe take her to town a few times and arrange to meet back at the car by a given time, etc, to make sure she's being sensible. I used to get the bus into Stockport with my mates to go swimming when I was 10! Amazing to think it. I think what the friends are like is a factor too. Are they "nice girls"? My friend's daughter ended up in the police station for shop lifting at 13 after her stupid friend dared her to steal some CDs. Actually, the police handled it really well, my friend told me.

I suspect there is no correct answer to this. It depends on the parents and the child. Twelve year-olds can be very different to each other.

I was relatively grown-up child, and I don't think I'd have been allowed to London (local equivalent) on my own at that age, but the local town was fine. I think I started going to London on my own at 14/15. But only you & her mother know the answer, and I do worry about children these days being cossetted too much and not given enough freedom,but I do think a big city is a different proposition.

Is there a middle way, such as you and/or her mother going into Brum with her & friends but leaving them to shop on their own for a couple of hours while you have a coffee/pint/go record shopping?

and probably never will (we've decided to travel the world and be selfish instead).
But as a proud uncle of 11 year old twins and observer of the world I think it's vital for them to be able to be a part of their peers group activities but to also impose rules that define whether he/she can carry on doing it regularly (time to be home, phone call home, never be on your own, etc)
What they do when they are out of sight is always a worry but they have to make the mistakes and get into scrapes to shape their lives and inform future choices.

I approached this by allowing them to go to town, Middlesbrough, with their friends when they were twelve with the following conditions:
1) Everyones parents were happy for them to go
2) They agreed to stick together, no one was to wander off on their own.
3) They agree a rendevous point in case one child does get split off from the group
4) They carry a phone with my mobile number saved in it.
5) They have to be at a specific place to meet me at a specific time to be taken home

I took them to town, dropped them off, bought a copy of When Saturday Comes and sat in Starbucks drinking coffee and checking for missed calls every 30 seconds!

Needless to say they had a great time with no issues.

This only works if the kids are familiar with the shopping district.

My daughter was 12 (she's now almost 14) when I started letting her go shopping with friends, without an adult. We had a few rules:

1. She had to keep her phone with her -- and turned on -- at all times.
2. She was NEVER to go anywhere alone but must always be with at least one other girl. In other words, don't go to the bathroom by yourself, don't split off from the group to get yourself an ice-cream cone, don't go into one shop by yourself while the other girls go into another shop, etc. Stay together at all times or split up into smaller groups so that no one is ever alone.
3. And the usual advice: Don't go anywhere with anyone you don't know.
4. We went over the rules each time before she went off with her friends.

And she's been fine. The way we started, though, was I would take her and her friends to a mall, or to shop in Georgetown (I'm in Wash DC), and I would go, too, but I would shop separately and we'd meet up after 2 hours or whatever. Like a test run.

by my side as I was about to offer my words of wisdom, and asked "Are you on old man's Facebook again?":

I think that you should let her go as if she goes and comes back during daytime or comes back with a friend it's safe. Otherwise she'll just blame you and not get to experience this with her friends because if you guard her now she just wont be as confident when shes older. And if all the other parents agree whats stopping you and she'll compare you to them.

Edit: Also when I came back and started to reply I had just been to the fair by myself with some friends and because it was dark (it was ok we stayed in the fair the whole time) and then because it got dark at 7 my friend's mum's boyfriend picked us up and took us all home. This had all been arranged before with our parents. I live in Stoke Newington in London and the fair was in Islington. We went there on the bus by ourselves.

All of the above is sound advice... let her go, but insist on a prearranged time to be home, and stick to it.
There was no mobiles when my kids were young, so they HAD to be at a specific place at a specific time to get a lift home when they ventured into the metropolis of Aberdeen, and if they did not comply, they were grounded.... with no right of appeal... it worked.
This advice comes from a man who at the age of 16 hitch hiked from The Wee Toon to Embra to see Family/ Chicken Shack at the Usher Hall, leaving home at 11pm and tramped thru' the night a distance of 200 miles, and did the same on the way back, getting home 36 hours later.
Me Mum was not best pleased....

Bad stuff is out there which never used to be. You can give these girls all the advice you like but.. It'll happen.

Clare's Accessories. Two weeks worth of pocket-money blown on sparkly fluffy silver, purple and pink tat.

broadly echo mine and thanks IanP for letting your daughter put her perspective. We are more comfortable with it ourselves than the parents of some of her friends and i think that is what causes the doubt. We know that she is sensible and pretty streetwise. She is well travelled which I think has made her more grounded too. I am sure that it is the start of the next phase in her life and we certainly want to offer her encouragement.

I was going round Brum and West Brom in the 70s as a 12+ year old, and my parents were ok with it. Said parents are now terrified of their 50 yr old son going walkabout in either city. Yes there are dodgy parts, but Brum in particular is a hell of a lot better than I remember it. I think it's more to do with general (media induced) hysteria of some perceived risk than an overwhelming reality. I haven't seen roaming gangs beating up the terrified shoppers. Or any fighting at all come to think of it.

I think the trick is whether they know where the boundaries are - do they know they way around the town, where not to go, and where to look for help ? At least they're not faced with those god awful underpasses (thankfully filled in), or the Bull Ring (Pallisades)....I was let loose in the malls of 70's Brum around 9 or 10 and managed to get lost round Snow Hill. I was in a right panic but my mum was fine, knew I'd figure it out sooner or later (at least that was the impression I was given). But then I had form, getting lost at places like Hampton Court and finding my way to the car as a 5 yr old, so as mentioned repeatedly above, it will vary from child to child.

We're in the same boat, starting to think our 11 yr old *needs* to go out into the world, but he seems too intimidated to do it. we've probably gone too far the other way, over-protective.

I know at that age I was off round the neighbourhood on my bike with friends all over the place, including the forbidden places. We only needed ambulances a couple of times....really.

Having learned to ride a bike in Birmingham and graduating to the main roads, I'm constantly amazed by the lack of situational awareness of other cyclists, including and especially my own family. It just reinforces my view that they need to be out there, supplied with and learning the right tools.