Been a parent is hard. I never wanted to grow up.

I have found been a dad really easy, it came to me like a duck to water and I have found it one of the most rewarding things that I have ever done.

yes I have made mistakes along the way but I do try and learn from them.

recently my oldest went to comprehensive, this is secondary school as some of you might know it as.

her attitude and behaviour has changed and she has started testing her boundaries again just like kids do at an early age.

She turned 11 back in February and started her journey into adulthood by starting big school this september, we have had to give her more rains than before as she has to travel to school by bus in the morning.

When I was a kid I remember my mum and dad taking me to and from school and I got picked on because of it, i had to fight for my freedom to be aloud to walk to school with my friends and I really didn't want us to be like that to her.

She catches the bus in the morning and we can see her from our living room window as she gets on the bus, she travels to school and when she gets there she drops us a text to let us know that she is there safely and this is how we have asked her to do it.

After school she normally catches the bus back, she has made some new friends and they also catch the bus with her in the morning and after school and I find comfort to know that she is with a group of other girls, which I think is better than been a girl on her own.

One of the girls who live near us likes to do things her own way, this friday just gone our daughter didn't make it home on the bus and when we phoned her to find out what was going on she then told us that she was walking home.

the journey from the school back to our house is 3 miles, you have to go past a very busy road and then past a very dark woods. this is then made a little more complicated by her not knowing the area around her as we have lived at the other side of sheffield for the past 12 years.

My heart sank when my wife told me that she was walking home, to make things worse I had to be at a job interview at 4.30pm and it was already 4pm and I am a good 20 minutes drive from where the interview was been held, what should I do? leave my 11 year old at the side of the road and go to the interview. I think not.

I decided that the best thing to do was to drive all the way to her and get her and bring her home. she had a face like thunder when I got her, I explained how dangerous this world we have come to live in but still she tried to argue her case. and in a way I would have done the same at that age too.

I told her that it should never happen again and she promised me that it wouldn't.

today it happened again, but this time she thought that she could get away with it, I went to go pick my youngest daughter from school which is about 2 miles away from my oldest, i phoned her to find out if she wanted me to pick her up.

this time she told me she was just about to get on the bus and she was fine. I went to the shop to have a phone call come to me at 3.30 to tell me that she had not caught the bus and my wife was flipping out.

She had also hung up on my wife and when I phoned her she did the same to me, lucky for me I do know this area like back of my hand, i could drive around it with my eyes closed as this used to be my old stomping ground.

I set of in my car and found her wet through and in a foul mood, I asked her to get in the car and she did, I then drove home in silence because I was so mad that I really didn't want to shout at her.

I waited until I had calmed down and sat her down, in a normal voice and no raised tone I explained to her that what she had done had gone against what we had talked about this friday just gone, she burst into tears. I could feel her pain as she just wants to do her own thing, but at 11 we can not allow her to do just what she wants.

I explained that i was taking her phone from her while she was at home and could only have it when she was travelling to and from school, she cried harder, then I told her that at the end of the day I would pick her up so I knew that she was safe.

She started talking about her friend and how she wanted to be with her, I explained that I needed to talk to the other girls mum or dad to see what they thought.

I phoned them, I had never met them before and this was the first time in talking, I explained what had been going on and that I was picking my daughter up from school from now on as I didn't like them walking home on there own.

The mum of the girl spoke up, she had no clue that this had been happening and I said to her that I would pick her daughter up from school too. the mother was so happy that I could help. now I have to find a way of been in two places at once. because my youngest needs picking up at 3 too.

the stresses. what would you do?

@artonmysleeve