Dear Surgeon General: The Easiest, Free-est Way to Help Frazzled Parents

The Surgeon General just issued a report announcing something most of us suspected: Parenting is not easy. In fact, it is frazzling folks.

To ease the pain – parents are woefully lonely, and about half report overwhelming daily stress vs. 26% of others – General Vivek Murthy endorses measures personal, political, and workplace: more paid time off, more child care funding, more mental health screening and more funding, more child income-tax credits, more meditating, mindfulness (on the part of parents), more helping out and empathy (on the part of everyone else). And all this goes double for parents in poverty and/or whose kids have health problems. So true!

Also mentioned ever-so-briefly is that “the modern practice of time-intensive parenting and contemporary expectations around childhood achievement may contribute further to the stressors faced by parents.”

MAY CONTRIBUTE??? Aieeeee!

At Let Grow, the nonprofit I helm, we can’t fix poverty, disease, or taxes. But we are working day and night to fix those “intensive” parenting expectations that have led the Surgeon General to note that moms spend 40% more time on childcare than in 1985. Dads now spend 154% more time on childcare too.

Our part of the solution? Simple:

Give kids back some independence.

Renormalize kids doing things on their own without constant adult supervision. This can ease parents’ burden starting…today!

For example, we recently ran a piece suggesting parents don’t have to play with their kids so much. They can if they want to, of course! But getting down on all fours to play donkey when the chicken needs sautéing is unnecessary. Around the world, a cultural anthropologist explained, kids are expected to play with other kids or come up with some other way of shaking off boredom without a decades-older playmate. It’s actually good for them to figure out how to do this, so there should be NO GUILT about being a bored or AWOL playmate!

Let Grow also encourages parents to open the door – and let kids walk out unsupervised. To this end, we created The Let Grow Experience – a free curriculum for schools K-12 that gives students the assignment, “Go home and do something new on your own, with your parents’ permission–but without your parents.”

This simple nudge helps parents let go, often for the first time. Off their kids’ trot to the store, park, or even just to the kitchen to make breakfast while mom and dad do something else. (Perhaps something that will make them more cheerful.) Over and over, we hear from parents stunned and proud to discover their kids are so capable – and thrilled they didn’t wait another year (or ten) to find out. The kids feel terrific, too: energized and needed.

Result? More free time for both generations. The cherry on top? The Surgeon General is asking people to lend parents a hand. Those people can be their own children.  We have a “home version” of the Let Grow Experience, too, here.

Finally, we’ve passed laws in eight states that enshrine “Reasonable Childhood Independence” – the right of parents to take their eyes off their kids so long as they’re not putting them in obvious, immediate danger. We are also working to pass laws in the rest of the country, and you can join our crusade. Note: It is NOT ILLEGAL to give your kids independence. Our law just makes that even clearer.

Long Island University Psychology Prof. Camilo Ortiz, tweeted: “Overwhelmed and overworked parents! There is a magical solution to the incessant demands that ‘good’ parents are always on the job. Independence activities like grocery shopping help kids develop grit and social skills while allowing you to have more free time. Everybody wins. It really is that simple.”

It really is. General Murthy: Spread the word!