TV Expert: No Kid Should Go Outside Alone Till Age 11, And Then Only in “Short Spurts.” UPDATE, BELOW

Do you ever challenge these idiots to a debate?

Lordy! Usually my kids walk/ride bikes to school (riding in defiance of the school’s “safety” ban of bike riding, I might add). But today I took them since we have a scheduled event right after. At my daughter’s 4th and 5th grade school, a mom in a van held up traffic for a full 3-4 minutes because she had to watch her kid walk all the way into the building before she would leave.

“Part of being a responsible parent is keeping your child out of harm’s way.”

So no driving, ever.
That would reduce harm to most children.

This *expert* should not be perpetuating myths. She needs to see a medical professional herself to treat the irrational paranoia of the boogeyman in the bushes. Child molesters are known to most children and not lurking at public parks. More likely, it’s sitting on Uncle Creeper’s lap or the relative you entrust them with because they can’t be alone.

Stop spewing nonsense and turning the basic freedom to play outdoors into criminal activity. The goal of parenting is to work yourself out of a job. Self confidence, self reliance, and self esteem can only come from learning to do things by yourself. It IS my job to be the parent. And I am not raising some mindless blob who will suddenly gain magical maturity and life skills at the age of 12.

Times have changed.
We are assuming that our children are complete idiots and prey to imagined boogeymans perpetuated by media hungry journalists who think a kid playing kid the can has a bullseye on his back.

That kind of advice guarantees you will raise children.

I want to raise SELF-SUFFICIENT ADULTS.

In general, I tend to be leery of anyone who says that the entirety of history, and the paradigm under which children have always been raised for all eternity, is wrong, and our revolutionary new way is right. Children have been given independence and allowed to play mostly unsupervised in all locations and in all historical eras. Why is right here and right now suddenly and totally different?

What I find interesting is she is a psychologist and implies that her education provides her with a unique experience, yet her advice is in direct conflict with the advice of other psychologists. She also ignores the sociocultural norms that may be influencing her opinion, and is downright shaming to parents who may not have the time or ability to supervise their child 24/7.

Honestly, my guess is she sees herself at the next pop psychologist, rather than having a firm grip on solid psychological theories and current research.

anotheranon, they need to claim their way is the only way, they need to fear monger..if they don’t succeed a generation will grow up capable and able to think..they need them to grow up in fear and dependent.. otherwise how can the masses be trained to depend on the government to take care of them and so senslessly obey even the stupidest of rules and laws because “they know best”. this is social engeneering of the most insidious form. if people question authority, then authority is in danger, can’t have that can we. i would not be surprised if in the stone age the headman would say”do as i say ,there’s alion out there, you need me to protect you from it”. only then and until now there was always someone to say”lion? i don’t see a lion”. where are those people now?

My comment at Dr. Ruskin’s website is awaiting moderation, so I will post it here. I do hope she does take a moment to clarify some of her points. I am genuinely interested in hearing more about her views than she was able to express in her three minute interview.

“I watched your recent interview which was featured on a blog I follow called “Free Range Kids”. I have a few questions I hoped you could clarify, as the interview was very short. I am also going through your blog posts to get a more clear understanding of your point of view as I don’t want to be disrespectful just because this clip makes you appear (to me) to hold a point of view that is vastly different from my own.

1) What harm do you believe is being prevented by ensuring that a child is never left unsupervised even for a minute before age 13? I would like to make sure that the harm being prevented outweighs the harm of the kind of intense supervision you seem to be encouraging.

2) Do you think it is possible your work with people that are struggling has given you a skewed view of what the world is actually like? For example, I was a very happy latchkey kid with extremely involved parents. It is unlikely you would see me in your office.

3) I pay a very responsible twelve year old in my neighborhood to babysit my three children for up to two hours once a month or so. She is an outstanding student and cellist, and in fact a much more attentive and reliable sitter than many of the college students we have employed. She appears to me to have had a very loving upbringing, though by your standards I suppose she has been “parentified”. (The main side effect of this upbringing appears to be that she has become an incredibly articulate and mature young woman.) Should parents who allow their children to experience increasing levels of independence based on their individual developmental readiness be imprisoned, visited upon by protective services, and held up as examples of what not to do in popular media? Am I contributing to the harm of a minor by providing this girl a safe environment in which to learn valuable skills about employment?

4) What sorts of punishment and intervention do you advocate for the kinds of adults who would be so brash as to send their children down to the neighborhood park for 30 minutes before dinner to get their energy out while mom finishes cooking? Or those parents who are so self-absorbed as to allow their nine year old to walk unaccompanied across the street to the school bus stop that is visible from the kitchen window? I believe that the cases that have been in the media as of late are not interesting so much because of the behavior that is allowed/encouraged by the parent, but because of a punitive response that seems to be a bit forceful given the situation at hand. (Imprisonment, removal of children, being forced to go through ‘remidiation’ for behaviors that you as a parent believe are key to raising resilient children, etc.)

Thank you for your response, and your thoughtful consideration of these matters which are currently a topic of public discourse.”

@Dirk, I don’t know why I’m even bothering to reply to you, but I’m not sure if you’re aware that, for many types of crimes, including sex offenses, “reoffenses” are often probation violations. Probation terms can be extremely stringent, and many people, regardless of the offense they are arrested for, end up violating and therefore being convicted of another offense.

For sex offenders, the stakes are higher, because they not only have to abide by probation terms, but also the registry, which many are on for decades or life. So, a registered sex offender who has not committed a crime for twenty years but who fails or forgets to register a new e-mail address or a new car or a new place of employment with the police within the given time frame (in some cases, only several days) has violated the registry, and in many states that is a felony. In some states, it’s actually a felony sex crime, even though the offense did not involve sex.

It’s honestly shocking that we don’t see recidivism rates of more than 20%, when it’s so incredibly easy to violate the registry and thereby reoffend.

My daughter is not yet two. All the time I hear from people about how she’s “So independent!”, “Not afraid of anything!”, “So outgoing!”, and a real kicker, “I don’t think my kid would have been willing/able to do that at her age.”

My daughter is not special (except, perhaps in my eyes). She is just not overprotected, coddled, or prevented from having important kid experiences like falling off swings and dealing with issues on her own. It’s not that we’re raising her any way that’s different or revolutionary, its just that all of her little cohorts are being raised as if they were made of glass. So by comparison, her not being overly timid, comes off as her brimming with natural confidence.

That is not even what “parentifying” means!!! Parentifying is a term of art in psychology and this “psychologist” is using it totally wrong. It absolutely doesn’t mean that children are allowed, or even required, to do age-appropriate things for themselves, like walk the dog or bike to a friends. It means that a child is taking on the role of the parent towards younger siblings or the actual parents themselves or often both.

I wonder how child molesters survive. It would be impossible to work. Molesting more than 100 different kids must take up all their time.

My mother was not exactly what you would call the model of free range parenting. She is a fairly typical Italian housewife who was (and still is) rather overprotective. And yet even she granted us freedoms that would appall these ninnies. Having to walk me to school until 11 years old? Yeah, that would not have been cool.

This is just unbelievable. My grandson goes to the park alone every Saturday for hours at a time. He is learn how to skateboard from so older kids at the skateboard park. He gets into pick up baseball games with friend that he meets. He is 10. He has been doing it from a while never has there been an incident. He lives in Brooklyn. Our fear is unfounded. Could something happen? Of course. That’s the thing about growing up. It involves taking calculated risks.

I was out alone at ten as where most of the people who are now telling us that it is irresponsible to let our kids do what we were allowed to do. Will the foolishness ever stop.

That expert sounds like someone you’d meet at a party or at the bar, holding forth on some topic but saying nothing more than what lay people already believe — often incorrectly. Is this a video by The Onion?

This “expert” is a dangerous idiot.

Why is there no accountability?

Why can a lunatic go on camera, use their credentials, be called an expert by the media, then go on to spout lies and myths as truths to influence and frighten the viewing audience?

I checked out her facebook. On this story she had a few people challenge her data and logic. On person supported her with a comment “Behind you 100%. You go girl”. Dr. Karen took the time to thank her for her input and support. But ignored everyone else.

Does anyone even know what degree she has to make her a doctor? For all we know she has a doctorate in art.

She’s a loon. I just hope it’s as obvious to other parents as it is to me.

She got paid for spewing that nonsense. Lord help us.

Again – she is a psychotherapist, that means she deals with messed up people / kids, including kids who have been victimized. But even so, she of all people should know that kids are more likely to be victimized if they are kept behind closed doors with a “trusted adult.”

OK, I just went to her blog. Not only does her writing reflect a lack of intelligence and mental balance, but I don’t see any indication that she is a parent.

Years of giving sucky advice plus a lot of psychology classes do not a valued expert make.

Makes me wonder how Fox chose this idiot for the interview.

That woman should not be allowed in public unsupervised for any period of time! She belongs in a lunatic asylum and should have an attendant with her at all times for her own protection. After all, she must be kept safe (and we sane people must be kept safe from her). But what else should I expect from Fox “News.”

If she came to my city in Germany and spouted that nonsense, the parents would chase her out of town with pitchforks and torches. Kids here play unattended from a fairly early age. They also walk to school by themselves in first grade, which is age 6-7. In Europe parents realize that they are raising adults and not kids and want them to be independent. Does she expect that when US kids turn 18, the parents are going to go to university with them and live in their dorm rooms?

How many kids live in the neighborhood that was described as having hundreds of sex offenders near the park? If each of those hundreds of sex offenders molested over 100 kids, that neighborhood would have a minimum of 10,000 kids!

It all comes down to money. Dr. Ruskin has to parrot this BS, because if people found out the truth, there would be no need for these so called “experts” like Dr. Ruskin. The sex offender lists are the same way. If the lists only contained people who were an actual threat, people would be able to see how small the threat actually is. By inflating the numbers on the lists it makes the problem look greater than it is. The media knows that anything concerning children will raise their ratings, so they go along. The politicians don’t want to have their opposition saying that they are soft on child molestation, so they go along with increases in funding.

I also sent an email to Ruskin.

However, I am not inclined to give a rats ass about what happens to someone who commits a sexual assault. I do not care if there is a public sex offender registry (it would appear that there would always be a registry of a type available to the police because off probation records). Realistically a little more than half of these people are in there for rape or attempted rape. The other half are for sexual assaults. I don’t care at all about the registry. But when you talk about reform you should be really careful to not imply that the people on there are all 19 year olds who had sex with a high school sophomore. It isn’t the case.

Here is the link to the news story on Boston Fox. The one provided at the top of the page doesn’t take you to the story.

http://www.myfoxboston.com/clip/10485470/at-what-age-is-it-ok-to-leave-your-kids-alone

1. I was a “latchkey kid,” starting at twelve, which my parents told me was the minimum allowable age in Ontario. I enjoyed having time to myself after school, and I never felt “uncared for,” or “parentified” for it.

2. So, if your child is out in the world, and someone else helps them, you’ve “abdicated your role as a parent?” Suppose little Jimmy is walking to school, and it’s -20 C outside. His parents would have driven him, but his dad is at work, and his mom’s car is in the shop. So, Jimmy’s friend Susie is being driven by her mother, and they stop and pick Jimmy up, and take him to school along with Susie. Does that mean that Jimmy’s parents are bad parents, who’ve put an unfair burden on Susie’s parents? Not if all parties are okay with this, and definitely not if Jimmy’s parents are the kind of people who’d reciprocate, if Susie’s family was ever in a similar jam. Or, what if it was a situation that really couldn’t be planned for, like if a child fell at the playground, and one of the parents who was there with a younger child, gave the injured child a Band-Aid? That used to be normal when I was a kid, but now, I guess it’s an “abdication of parenting.”

3. Further to #2, what does this “doctor” think when ADULTS help each other out? For example, I don’t have a car right now, so I walk or take public transit everywhere. Early in the “spring” (air quotes because “calendar spring” and “real spring” are two completely different things in Canada), I went to an evening Zumba class being taught by a colleague and friend of mine. This was in early April. While we were doing Zumba, it started to snow outside, so by the time I went to leave, it was pitch-black and snowing. Colleague noticed this, and drove me home. She didn’t ask me if I wanted a ride; she said, “It’s pretty dark and cold out. Emily, where do you live?” Does this mean I’d “abdicated my responsibility as an independent adult?” Oh, and I’m subbing her Pilates class with yoga this coming Sunday. Does that mean that my friend has “abdicated her responsibility as a fitness instructor” because I’m helping her? I don’t think so–it’s just how the world works sometimes. Life isn’t perfect, so we help each other out, until we start perpetuating the idea that that’s wrong, which kills goodwill and community.

4. I hate to “go there,” but this “psychologist” says that you can’t leave kids alone for even a short time until they’re eleven years old, and you can’t leave kids alone for longer periods of time until they’re twelve or thirteen. Guess what tends to happen for human beings around age twelve and thirteen? That’s right–sexual maturity. I know it sounds far-fetched, but the first of my friends to have a baby, was fourteen at the time, which meant she probably conceived the baby at thirteen. So, it’s probably not a good idea to wait until a child is old enough to make a mistake of that magnitude, to give them any kind of freedom or independence at all. I’m not saying that there’s a 100% chance of this happening every time, but it does happen. It’s just another variation on the “Child is sheltered from age 0-18, then goes hog wild at university” theme.

And in a society that still tries preteens at adults in their courtroom… Its sanctimonious BS.

And parentifying, seriously!!.. Did she pull that out of her own arse or did she regurgitate it straight from swallowing someone else’s BS?

Wow! When I read the title, I thought this was a joke. How sad. I’m so grateful to live in a rural town where it’s normal for little kids to play outside, ride bikes alone, and take a trip to a convenience store for a candy bar with only a friend or sibling. How sad that some people think like this woman and treat competent children like infants.

I wish people would stop blaming Fox News for this. I’ve heard similar stuff from MSNBC and CNN. (I really wish I’d had the links, but I’m too lazy to look them up.) It’s not Fox News’ fault, it’s the way News isn’t really about the truth anymore, it’s about what sells. Terror gets people in the seats. Reminds me of an Ellen bit where she comments about Dinner lead-ins to the 11 o’clock news.
(Paraphrasing)
Announcer: Well, that’s your 6 o’clock evening news. Tune in tonight at 11, where we discuss how what you’re eating now may kill you.

Ellen mimics lifting a spoon to her mouth: Is it Peas???? Tell me now, Is it Peas?

Sensationalism sells, if they told all about how it is more likely that that college friend (you know, the one who’s always offering to watch your daughter…just to give you a break) is the one who will molest your kid, people would blast them for that. Unfortunately, the people who refuse to suspect their friends and believe a ‘stranger’ is a danger (sorry) seem to outnumber those who know the truth.

Since they’re more of them, the News agencies will go after their viewership and thus more stories like this go out.

Just my two cents.

Sensationalizing kids safety with false information only increases business for Dr. Ruskin. She knows exactly what’s she’s doing. She will have these kids and their parents on her couch soon to treat for anxiety disorders.

After listening to this nonsense, I found it refreshing to read in our community newsletter a Back to School Safety Checklist that read like REALLY good advise:

“Whether children walk, ride their bicycles or take the bus to school, it is extremely important that they take proper safety precautions. Here are some tips to make sure your child safely travels to school.
Walking to school
Review your family’s walking safety rules. Practice walking to school with your child.
*Walk on the sidewalk, if one is available. When on a street with no sidewalk, walk facing the traffic.
*Before crossing, stop and look all ways to see if cars are coming.
*Never dart in front of a parked car.

Riding a bicycle to school
Make sure your child always wears a helmet when leaving the house. Teach your children the rules of the road they need to know to ride their bicycles.
*Ride along the right side of the road and in single file.
*Come to a complete stop before crossing the street.

Riding the bus to school
Go to the bus stop with your child to teach them the proper way to get on and off the bus.
*Make sure your children stand six feet away from the curb.
*If your child needs to cross the street in front of the bus, walk on the side of the road until you are 10 feet ahead of the bus.
*You should always be able to see the bus driver, and the bus driver should always be able to see you.

See?
Teach your children well.
Kids can only prove they are competent and worthy of our trust if given the opportunity. The biggest danger is never given them the chance.

My observation across the years is that therapists and psychologists are often the craziest people around, having gotten into the profession as a way to validate and enable their own psychological issues.

Well, here’s another example supporting my theory!

It is bad enough that so many adults in modern democracies harm their children by not allowing them adventure, curiosity and the freedom – which gave our forefathers the wherewithal to make our countries great. . . Yet, it is exponentially worse since the arrival of psychological mercenaries who display no shame in their exploitation of paranoia; expanding upon it by spouting out platitudes which do no less than render our children submissive to exploitation and incapable of handling any difficulty they will eventually encounter. How disgusting!!!

Booksmart. Common sense stupid. People like this do exist.

The worse part, is that they think because they went to school and got a degree, for all that memorizing of books and notes, they are smarter than the rest of us. Yet, they cannot even fathom the logic and reasoning behind such an age old, tried, tested, and true way of raising children.

They have forgotten that they too were raised to be independent. As were their parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc… For as long as humans have been around.

When one cannot see the bigger picture, and only concentrate on their narrow minded views (remember, they are human, susceptible to the same paranoia, and irrational thinking as anyone else), they are not being very smart. Scientists explore all possibilities, even the ones they think can be far fetch. Just so they can eliminate variables to come to a solid conclusion. And more times than not, it’s this “out of the box” thinking that comes up with the best answers.

Even if you have a PHD, and common sense tells me you have no clue what your are talking about, I trust my common sense. Sadly, society relies too much on people of “authority”. Especially the ones that tell them what they want to hear. It’s a terrible cycle.

Graduated responsibilities & graduated experiences, based on the capabilities, capacities, and the maturity of each child as an individual. Being involved, being emotionally & physically available to parent.Showing how to be a good person by example. Understanding how they think, and staying ahead of them so that you can *gently* guide them away from things that they’re not ready to handle, or to guide them into things that they *are* ready for.

They’re individual people, not puppies who must be crated daily for over a decade, and only allowed out to pee. How you treat each child is going to be based on how that child’s personality, how they learn, and what they like/don’t like – they’re *not* interchangeable cogs in some machine!

The whole point of good parenting is to get your sane, happy, healthy children to adulthood prepared to live in and *thrive* in the world the way it really is.

Not fill them with fear, deprive them of the life-experiences, tools, and relationships that will help sustain & partially define who they are as adults.

I fear – deeply – for our children, if these recommendations are the standard of parenting now. Seriously I’m not sure what this ‘TV expert’ is raising, but it sounds more like completely dependent neurotic house pets than human children.

Quote: “and if you trust your kids to walk the dog or bike to a friend’s, you are guilty of “parentifying” your child — turning the child into an adult.”

Goodness gracious this lady is absolutely nuts! Walking the dog and biking to a friend’s house is the epitome of childhood! Some of the greatest memories I have is of biking up to my friend, Kevin Miller’s house, when I was 9 to play army with our toy guns and our little toy soldiers. I also used to walk my elderly neighbor’s dog, Brownie, around the block when I was 10 and got paid a quarter each time! Well, I think I’ve turned out OK. At least I’m not a deranged mass murderer who was abducted and molested while riding my bike and walking the dog when I was a child!

I could not get into the video from my work computer to see the interview but many of you here are blasting Fox News. So was she not challenged by the person interviewing her? Goodness, she should have been. If I recall correctly, at least the panel on “Fox & Friends” did think it was crazy that a parent would be arrested for merely allowing their 7-year-old child to walk to the park by himself, citing the fact that they did that all the time when they were kids.

On the other hand, that nut Wendy Murphy sex crimes Prosecutor, is a much too frequent guest on that network particularly on “The O’Reilly Factor” and if it would be up to her, she would probably charge adults with a sex crime for merely winking at a cute 5-year-old child in Wal*Mart. Then according to the rantings of Judge Janine Shapiro, there are pedophiles EVERYWHERE! But on a positive note, John Stossel offers a good balance to all that nonsense and does attempt to rein Shapiro and O’Reilly in by pointing out the pitfalls of mandatory minimums and “Jessica’s Law”. Geraldo Rivera has also gone on the O’Reilly Factor and expressed some reservations, courageously I might add, about “Jessica’s Law”.

But then again, Nancy Grace who I believe has or had a show on CNN, is not much better and she too seems to be afflicted with pedophila-phobia. I guess the media in general just loves that type of fear-mongering!

My free range children are going to be so ahead and advantaged in the adult world, just from the responsibilities and freedoms they’ve had from young ages. I don’t know whether to be happy and proud, or to despair at the sad state our nation will be in because so many have raised children who are dependent and fearful even into adulthood.

Have you seen this nonsense?! Creative Writing apparently doesn’t want you to get too creative or you’ll be arrested.

Still waiting for an update on whether the dinosaurs body has been found yet.

http://www.nbc12.com/story/26319685/cops-summerville-high-school-student-arrested-after-writing-threatening-message-on-assignment#.U_Sna8ZblaU.facebook

Dr Ruskin is only trying to get a reaction. This is the same as when Lenore offered a class, “I won’t supervise your kids”. If her view wasn’t outrageous enough, she would change her stance to be even more outrageous.

BTW, people like her was what I was mocking on a previous response. “Children should be nurtured and never let out until they reach 22 years of age. This is when the backbone angel will grant them a spine. At this time they will become self reliant”.

Dirk,

Piss off will ya. It is getting as bad a SOA.

Do these 11 year-olds also still have pacifiers and diapers? This is just prolonging childhood, and teaching kids exactly ZERO of the lessons they need to get along in life. (Not to mention teaching them all the wrong ones too.)

Unless you want them to live a life of fear and ignorance, that is.

Back to my 7yos and their first school bus experience. My kids have had a day to think this over. One of them is a serious planner, so I’m sure she’s gone over every possible scenario in her mind. Tonight the bus topic came up and she said, “yeah, but you can’t be off somewhere [away from home] when it’s time for us to be dropped off by the school bus.” I said, “don’t worry, you will never come home to an empty house until you are older. When I decide you are old enough, I will give you a key.” That satisfied her. 🙂

The psychotherapist lady says young kids are not aware enough to watch out for themselves. My 7yo is very observant – more so than I am. She is also pretty good at gauging other people’s motives (ulterior and otherwise). Both of my kids have a pretty good survival instinct. Certainly not less than kids in my generation, most of whom were aware enough to remain alive to adulthood.

I suppose that lady would gag and die if she knew I sent my kids alone to various public bathrooms etc. in foreign countries (where we were only visiting for a day). Oddly enough, the kids always came back. I guess they are scarred for life.

To sum it all up, have a look in “Stranger Danger” (Pen & Teller, Bullshit!) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv7TWT_sKPc&index=40&list=PLu7ib8D6dYeFhaONq4uqnB3uOsH4vJ0hc

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276063/

If you saw the “deep web”, you wouldn’t even let your kids sleep un their own room at night.

I guess not so surprising that this is the ‘expert’ that Fox News gets. When did the news become about terrifying everyone for ratings instead of delivering facts. This lady should not be a therapist. Did you know that the average idiot with credentials after their names will molest over one hundred children and adults with unsubstantiated claims before they are set right? That’s a scary ‘fact’ right there.

Re bears – there was a black bear sighting in a nearby neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. And my wooded backyard gets a lot of wildlife from the nearby national forest. I told my girls what to do if they ever see a bear. Other than that I do not plan to change anything.

I get the impression this “expert” is fond of seeing herself on television and would love to be the center of controversy, so I’m reluctant to give her any more attention. This is not the first time she has spoken against “free range parenting.” It frightens me, though, to think that people will take her advice.

My husband often has to deal with young coworkers and interns and says it seems like they are taking longer and longer to stop acting like spoiled, partying college kids and start acting like adults. Perhaps their parents raised them to be children instead of adults?

Is Dr. Ruskin going to speak out against the Red Cross, that offers babysitting courses for children 11 and older?

Forget asking Dr. Ruskin, I’m going to call Fox Boston and ask them to get this helicopter alarmist off the air and give them a piece of my mind!

What is really stupid is her saying that a child allowed to roam is thinking that their parent doesn’t care enough to helicopter them, and other experts are saying this attitude is harming them no wonder so meany pRents are being arrested for nothing

W the comment I think I made that pissed you off here was directed in response to anonymous mom, who posted a bogus lets get angry at this link about two 17 and 18 year olds who are in trouble for sexting a kid who just graduated from 7th grade.

I was going to pick up my daughter from her grandparent’s house this weekend (she’s 3 so she needs a bit of supervision) when I passed four girls (maybe 10 or so) out walking on the side of the road. I had to smile and do an inner “horray for free-range kids” as I drove past becuase we live in the country and the road is usually empty. They were watching for cars, got very far off the road when i passed, and were happily entertaining and exploring by themselves. Living in the country, my husband is always telling me that it’s not safe to walk on the roads because of how remote they are and there are bad people everywhere…we will continue to disagree on this point as my daughter gets older! However I’m glad that these girl’s parents didn’t hover and let them explore on a nice saturday afternoon.

Warren,

To respond to your post from Ruskin…

http://www.crime-safety-security.com/Free-Range-Kids.html

The link she provided there does make valid arguments against Lenore and what she sells. However, all the examples she offers are cherry picked themselves and all of the examples offered there are of negative things that happened to children 5 years old and younger who should not have been unsupervised, I don’t think Lenore or anyone here would have agree with leaving those children unsupervised for a length of time. The one example of a 10 year old being abducted is sad, but random. 10 year olds walk to school everyday.

Dirk,
That is your malfunction. Lenore and Free Range Kids is not an extreme, or at one end of the spectrum. Never has been.

Now as for that lunatic Ruskin, she took her information from a blog by a victim of abuse, by family members that has become an extremist herself. With no data, no research other than people sending her their horror stories.

Ruskin herself is to blind to see that as a therapist she sees only the bad. Nobody goes to a therapist to tell them “Yeah, had a great childhood, and love my life.”.

Reminds me of the “experts” that create and update the DSL handbook: “LWY” disorder (living while young.)
And lollopop – no driving, ever? Imagine. The crapstorm that would accompany that directive.

Says a lot: raising children…..to be children. An eternally infantalized society. The slaughter of the innocents (slaughter of independent and free-thinking is what I mean.)
Children know quite well how to be children, actually. In fact, they’re experts at it. We don’t really have to belabor that point. Guidance toward happy, healthy adulthood is the ticket.

Strange to think that as we ramp up the over academic, pedantic, educational and intellectualized social codification, we become enthralled with the professionalization of life: as humans become the livestock processed through vertically integrated systems, much as the way Cargill and Tyson process cattle, pigs and chickens…the corporate model, following a fundamental entrepreneurial and profit-based motif.

Except it is human beings, that happen to be the base resource for all this economic activity. Somehow, we missed that vital little detail.

So when Ms. Expert brightly bounces in to bestow upon us her profoundly archaic and astonishingly mundane little McNuggets of wisdom, we must ponder a moment from whence she came. She is but a small cog in a very large and grinding wheel.
Fundamentally, we know she’s wrong.
(I think I could have told her that at the age of 8.)
I wouldn’t have known why then – but I still would have been right.

Sometimes, I think we don’t really listen to kids. We do their talking for them. Dangerous ground when we do their thinking for them, too. How else are they to learn how to think on their own?
(And if they do happen to manage that feat – what would come back at us?)

The world is as it is:
As if this in itself ends the argument.
Yet it didn’t wind up that way as an immaculate conception. We created it. Which means we can un-create, too. Improve upon the model. For the sake of beloved children – who are after all, the future we hold so dear. The continuation of ourselves. A public act of will works wonders. So we used to believe. That act of moral outrage, rising with contempt against stupidity and wrong thinking. We haven’t really forgotten how to do this.
But as long as the bullies keep picking on individual families, isolated and set against each other – it makes it tough for a unified push back.
Parentification: the boogey man in every child’s closet.

Dirk, get over yourself. The name of this blog is the name of Lenore’s book. Everyone knows that, she’s not being sneaky about it. She promotes her book just like every other author. (And her TV show, speeches, whatever.) If you went to a website entitled “Harry Potter,” would you get angry that it promotes HP hype and even HP products? No, you would not.

You are probably the only person who goes to websites created by authors about their books, and repeatedly protests the marketing aspect of the website. If you don’t like to see marketing / self promotion, don’t go to a site involving marketing. If you want a site about free range principles that doesn’t talk about the blog owner’s book / show / etc, why don’t you go find such a blog or start your own? Lenore is under no obligation to create a blog that meets your personal expectations.

We all notice that Lenore promotes herself on this blog and you seem to be the only person upset about it.

Donna,
Thanks for the response to Dirk. Maybe he should write a book…..but who would buy a book that on every page would make you stop, find another book, look up that passage, come back, read a little, and repeat numerous times.

It is easier for him just to keep posting links online I guess.

I’m wondering why they chose this particular “expert” for this segment. I don’t know statistics, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she were far outside the mainstream.

The idea that we are overdoing it in the “safety first” arena and thereby HURTING children seems to be gaining modest momentum if Slate is anything to go by (and the Atlantic, oh and I just read an article in the WaPo that says you should let your middle-schooler take risks).

I recently spent some vacation time with one of my sisters — she was horrified at a story I told regarding my 15 year old driving WITH his dad, but WITHOUT his permit. (the story was hilarious imo, but I should have quit as soon as I saw the look of horror on her face. But I digres….) At a different time during the vacation she mentioned how much more adventurous my kids were than hers. Hm, I wonder why. Or maybe that is not seen as a positive. ?

Pap,
She is probably hoping I drink the Lenore Skenazy Kool Aid and croak.

Yesterday I was chatting with some other parents and I mentioned my kid told me she expected me to always be at home when she gets off the bus. (I shared it because I thought it was cute the way she said it.) I said I’d told her not to worry, and that when I decide she’s old enough to come home alone I would give her a key.

To which all the other parents said, “oh no, you don’t want to give her a key!” Also it seems (according to these folks) the age for being allowed to go home alone after school is now high school age. If that. Sigh.

Then there was the guy who was wondering how his 6yo KG’er was going to go all afternoon (3 hours) without a snack.