As I write on Reason.com :
The COVID-19 crisis has produced an interesting role reversal.
Many people over the age of 50 are currently being hectored by their protective progeny to keep safe and practice social distancing—no more lunch with friends, or church, or cards, or even strolling the neighborhood. Wash all the clothes you went out in today, including daddy’s jeans… bring Clorox wipes… use baggies for gloves…. etc.
Frankly, I’m fine with this. Hectoring is where it’s at in these times of global crisis. Hector on, I say! But it does feel just the tiniest bit like Freaky Free-Range Friday.
In the movie, Freaky Friday, 16-year-old Lindsay Lohan and her “mom,” Jamie Lee Curtis, switch bodies for one day of role reversal. Hilarity and empathy ensue. And there’s something to that idea. For the longest time I have been contemplating a notion sent to me by Emily Adams, a Free-Range Kids / Let Grow enthusiast in Canada, who said that parents would stop micromanaging their kids’ lives if they had to live for one day the way today’s kids live.
They would get up, and instead of being able to get themselves to work, they would be strapped into the backseat in a five-point harness and driven there, even if they work just three blocks away….
Read the rest about what it means when helicoptered kids turn the tables on their parents (and rightly so!) by clicking here.
Sceenshot via Disney / Youtube