One reason parents/teachers/adults are spending so much time hovering over kids is that they are spending so much time hovering over kids: It’s a vicious circle. (Or cycle. Never figured that out.) My point is, when we spend a lot of time watching our kids, inevitably, we will see them do things that are dumb, mean, risky or wasteful. Which makes us feel we have to watch them EVEN MORE. More watching, more worrying But if we WEREN’T spending so much time scrutinizing them — if we gave them a decent dollop of unsupervised time — we would see far…
Author: lskenazy
Readers, it is true: Sometimes, a sigh escapes. One observes the forces arrayed against kids being kids and the road seems maybe unsloggable. But then you get a letter like this! Abigail Weidmer is a Montana mom who wrote this post about giving her kids – and her neighbors’ kids – unsupervised playtime. She admits it can be hard not to imagine worst-case scenarios. But here’s her hopeful message to Let Grow (the nonprofit that grew out of Free-Range Kids) for all of us in this still-new year. Not Frozen with Fear Dear Let Grow: I wanted to send you another…
The age that kids start playing — walking, biking, frolicking outside — should be up to the parents. But that’s not always the case. A few years back, after the first Reasonable Childhood Independence law passed in Utah – hooray! – we received a query from a lawmaker. He said he wanted his state to pass a similar law assuring parents that allowing their kids to play outside, stay home alone, walk to school, etc., would not be mistaken for neglect. And so, he’d drafted a bill: Parents are not to be investigated or accused of neglect simply for letting their…
SCORE! About a month ago, I visited the Strelitz Academy in Virginia Beach and it gave me SUCH HEART! Everyone in the elementary school is doing The Let Grow Experience, so there were paper trees in the hall festooned with Let Grow “leaves.” These are leaf-shaped pieces of paper where the kids wrote the new things they’d just started doing on their own: learned to ride a bike, made dinner, walked the dog… As one child put it after going on her first roller coaster ride, “I can try new things.” Amen! Why I almost cried. Then I went outside to watch…
Goodbye, 2024 – but first, a quickie look back at the forces that were allied against Free-Ranging last year. And then? A hairpin turn to hope! Worst first! Child Reported Walking: As, ahem, I was the very first person to report, Georgia mom Brittany Patterson was charged with “reckless conduct” when her son, 10, walked to town (pop: 370) without telling her. Cops handcuffed Brittany in front of her kids and threw her in jail – which is not reckless conduct at all. Now Child Protective Services wants Brittany to track her son at all times. Because walking could, theoretically,…
Thanks to John Stossel, here is a half hour of me getting the chance to make all the points swirling around in my head and heart: How we got so afraid for our kids. What it’s doing to them — and us. How these misconceptions about kids, crime, and child development feed into crazy norms and even crazier laws. AND the ways we can beat back the culture of fear and distrust (which is what it all boils down to). You’ll hear many shout-outs to Let Grow, the nonprofit that grew out of Free-Range Kids, and the work we’re doing…
My thoughts on the Brittany Patterson case, which I was the first to report. (I’ve been having trouble with my FRK blog distribution lately. Sorry for the delay in getting you this!) Brittany Patterson had to take one of her four children to a medical appointment, and her youngest son, 10-year-old Soren, was going to come with them. This was a few weeks ago on a Wednesday afternoon. But at the last minute, Soren wasn’t around, and when Patterson called him, his phone was dead. So, like moms and dads throughout history, she had to make a quick decision: Do…
What social changes gave us “helicopter parenting” and, now, even more “intensive parenting”? This New York Times podcast from a few weeks ago, inspired by the Surgeon General’s report on parental burnout, explains all. Michael Barbaro, host of “The Daily,” interviews Claire Cain Miller, the Times reporter covering family issues (and the mom of kids 8 and 12). Cain Miller defines intensive parenting as “child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor intensive and financially expensive.” Plain old hovering is so 1999! To be intensive, she says, a parent walking with their kid in the fall wouldn’t just admire the pretty leaves. They’d say, “Look, the leaves are…
We no longer live in an era of footbinding, writes my Let Grow Co-Founder Peter Gray, the psychologist who studies the importance of mixed-age, unsupervised play. But for about a thousand years, he notes in a recent Substack post, girls in China would have their feet broken and bound to stop them from growing. This was considered not only normal but crucial: Girls with unbound, functional feet were considered low class and ugly. It wasn’t until the 20th century that this practice went from cultural norm to culturally unthinkable. But today? “There are other ways in which we interfere with our children’s…
This video of John Stossel’s is going viral — as it should! It shows how crazy our country can sometimes be when an onlooker thinks all unsupervised kids are automatically in danger, no matter WHAT the actual circumstances. And then what can happen when the cops agree! TWO BIG CAVEATS: 1 — This is still rare enough that it makes news. Yes, we are trying to change the laws so it NEVER happens, but thank goodness it is not an everyday thing. And of course, the more that kids play outside again, the more seeing a kid outside becomes renormalized!…