FreeRangeKids

That’s what they think in England, as you shall see. Our guest blogger today is Sarah Ebner. She edits School Gate ( www.timesonline.co.uk/schoolgate ), a blog about all aspects of education for the London Times. She’s always interested to hear from other parents. Contact her at  sarah.ebner@timesonline.co.uk

By Sarah Ebner  

When I was gently persuaded to become co-chair of my son’s pre-school, I didn’t expect a police check. The position wouldn’t mean working with the 3- and 4-year-olds, but liaising with the head teacher, treasurer and other staff about issues such as budgets and salaries.

It sounded so easy, but became surprisingly complicated early on due to the vast number of forms apologetically passed on to me by the head teacher. She said that even though I wasn’t ever going to be alone in the nursery with the children (or generally there at all), I still had to pass an “enhanced disclosure” check by the police. OFSTED — England’s Office for Standards in Education — saw my agreement to be co-chair as meaning that I was “to be working with children.” Except, of course, that I wasn’t.

When I saw that the form was the size of a  small book, I was almost put off the whole thing. But duty called, and I filled it all  in, even ringing a couple of people up to ask them for references (to say what – that they knew me and I wasn’t a pedophile?). I heard nothing for a while, but eventually I was told that OFSTED had “established my suitability” to “provide childcare.” Then I  received a quite scary looking certificate that stated I had no police record.

My experience has, sadly become quite common in the UK. Parents are being told not to volunteer at schools unless they have a CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) certificate, and this is the same for other voluntary groups working with children. The historic reasons for this are understandable – the rule change was introduced after the dreadful murder of two schoolgirls in 2002 – but it has since been expanded. There is now a sense that all adults are guilty until proven innocent with one of these pieces of paper. Is that what we really want in our society?

Sociologist Frank Furedi recently co-authored a study, “Licensed to Hug,”  (http://www.frankfuredi.com/index.php/site/article/221/)  which argues, “child protection policies in Britain are poisoning the relationship between the generations.” Furedi, who is known for his strong views on how we over-protect our children these days, says it is putting people off volunteering, and making all adults suspicious of each other.

In the past few weeks, his view has been bolstered by the case of Jayne Jones, mother of 14-year-old Alex, from Wales. Alex has cerebral palsy and epilepsy and Jayne has always accompanied him to school in a taxi. Now Alex has been told that he has to travel alone until his mother passes a CRB check.

If we could just learn to trust each other again it might make a better society for our children and for ourselves.  — Sarah

One of the many joys of watching “Mad Men” is seeing how worried — not — the parents were about their kids, at least in this fictional portrayal of the early ’60s.

The kids are told to run off and play in another room so mom can have coffee with a friend. They’re put in a playpen…so mom can have coffee with a friend. Maybe I just like the show because I love having coffee with a friend (and think the kids can pretty much take care of themselves while I do).  Anyway, in the best scene, a girl of about 6 or 7 twirls into the room announcing she’s a fairy, or space monster, or something, dressed head to toe in a costume that consists of a dry cleaning bag.

The mother is horrified! “If I find those clean clothes on the floor, young lady, you are in big trouble.”

Visions of crumpled clothes, not imminent death, dance in her head.

So I looked up the stats on plastic bags. Are they really so bad or are we just paranoid? Must we really keep them away from our kids?

Yes and no.

Yes, about 25 children do die each year, suffocated by bags. Horrible. But according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, most of these have been children under the age of 1.  They rolled into a bag and couldn’t roll out, or a plastic bag of clothes fell on them and they couldn’t get out from underneath and suffocated.

These are terrible stories. But they have nothing to do with a 6-year-old twirling around in a dry cleaning bag she can yank off whenever she wants. They are really stories of babies suffocated by baby-hood — by not being able to crawl away yet, or even lift a head.

We have a tendency these days to lump all children together as totally incompetent and vulnerable. At the risk of, well, risk, we don’t give them any credit for figuring out how to handle themselves, even as they start growing up. We even forget that that’s the way a child does grow up: by handling situations that are a little tough.

It’s not that I’m not advocating plastic bag face masks. I’m just wondering about how, in trying to prevent any childhood trauma, we have forgotten that children and babies are not the same thing. It’s something moms in the ‘60s — at least the ones on TV — understood, even as they sipped their Chase & Sandborn coffee. — Lenore

Readers – I’m excited to introduce a new blogger on this site, Denise Gonzalez-Walker. Denise lives in Seattle with her husband and two kids. She regularly blogs about education at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Chalkboard blog and is a member of Seattle Mom Blogs. Here are her thoughts on childhood safety – and she is real expert, as you’ll see. Enjoy! — Lenore

SAFETY FIRST?

BY DENISE GONZALEZ-WALKER

My life is one of contrasts. On one hand, I’m the mother of two bright, active kids — a 4 year-old daughter and 10-year-old son. Both kids love to run, jump, climb and roughhouse. My son, in particular, gravitates toward “extreme” sports like BMX and skateboarding, and yearns to spend time outdoors on his own. 

On the other hand, I’ve worked for the past five years as a “child injury prevention specialist,” a.k.a. child safety expert, in a field populated with some of the most risk-averse people you’ll find.  While there’s definitely value to the work being done by these folks, I’ve sometimes found my own worldview at odds with my profession.

For example, constant supervision will always win out over unsupervised time for kids, from keeping toddlers within arm’s reach to always knowing where your teen is at.  Walking to school, or walking anywhere for that matter, will always be “unpredictable and dangerous”—the words a colleague recently used when describing her school pedestrian program. Swing sets will be yanked out of school playgrounds. Trees will be made off-limits to climbing. Etc., etc.

For parents like me, who believe in the Free Range philosophy promoted here, this can be a slippery slope. Sure, we all want our kids to be healthy, happy and successful. But how far should we go in protecting them? That is where both the research and opinions sometimes diverge.

I agree with Lenore—helmets, car seats, and seat belts are all simple to use and incredibly effective. But being scared to death every time your kid walks out the door is not as useful.  

Prompted by my own instincts as a mom and tired of viewing the world through the lens of risk, I’m leaving the field of injury prevention at the end of the month. As I approach this transition, I’m encouraged by the great ideas shared here on the Free Range Kids blog.

I’ve also started questioning how the Free Range philosophy fits elsewhere in kids’ lives. How much latitude do you give your son to choose his own path in school or on the playfield? My hunch is that those same anxieties driving parents to wrap their coffee tables with foam bumpers (full disclosure—I did it once, too!), later are reflected in the compulsion to manage our kids’ school and sports careers.

How much safety is too much — or too little? How much parental control? I look forward to contributing to this blog, sharing my ideas and learning from you.

Yours — Denise

   The overhead train schedule in that French town said the 8:05 was going where I was going.

   I thought.

   But if you’re a college kid backpacking through Europe and you don’t realize Geneva is not spelled “Geneva” in French (it’s Geneve), you just might hop on the 8:05 to “Genoa” and find yourself in Italy, alone, instead of in Switzerland, meeting up with a bunch of friends. And suddenly you have a whole new adventure, and a new set of friends and if you never eat that famous Swiss chocolate, who cares? You’re in Italy !

  Getting lost is not just a privilege, it’s a right – a right that is being eroded by GPS and parents. The GPS devices in cars help us adults get where we’re going and maybe that makes life less aggravating. But now there are devices that make sure kids never veer off on their own, and those makes life less, period. There is less to life if you always end up exactly where you’re supposed to be.

  That’s why it’s too bad some parents are now equipping their children with tracking devices that immediately alert the parents if their kids wander off the prescribed path home. A panicked call from parent to child’s cell phone follows: Do not chase that squirrel to the park!

   Or parents are attaching little alarms on their kids’ clothing, so that if the child wanders more than 15 feet away at, say, the mall, the parental device starts beeping madly.  The parent looks up and snatches her kid back before he goes to, say, the water fountain.

  I know how horrible it is to look up and not see your child. In Midtown Manhattan a year ago, our then-9-year-old disappeared from the street and didn’t come back for 20 minutes. He’d gone into a three-story, subterranean KMart, looking for us in there, even as we were looking for him outside. He checked each floor thoroughly before finding his way back to 34^th Street . When he suddenly reappeared after I’d been shouting his name like a madwoman, it was our own miracle on that street.     

  I’d have appreciated a beeping device back then, or a GPS sewn into his shorts — or ESP, for God’s sake — but the upshot was: He had an adventure. Not a great one, but a memorable one. He’d gotten lost, been on his own, and found his way back out. If things had gotten really hairy, he knew to talk to a police officer.

  This was hardly the defining act of his childhood, but it is part of his life’s relief map – a little dip beside the twin shores of parental protection. Without adventures, even some less than pleasant ones, a kid’s life is as flat as a placemat.

  I once was lost but now am found – so goes the song. Let’s let our kids sing it.

  In the meantime, for a book I hope to be writing about Free Range Kids, I would like to hear your stories of getting lost. Scary, thrilling or just plain ridiculous, let’s hear the most memorable thing that happened to you as a child when you got lost.

  Here’s to the winding road.  – Lenore

So, after dithering for a mere five years or so (and blogging about it, below), I finally got my boys — 10 and 12 — a skateboard.

I didn’t dither out of laziness. Well, not just laziness. I really avoided it out of fear. The idea of a kid upside down in the air, no matter what the centrifugal force at work, sounded pretty bad. (And those posters of Tony Hawk!)

But anyway – the whole point of this site is that if we don’t start examining our fears and whether they really make any sense, we’ll just keep cutting “dangerous” activities out of our kids’ lives without even thinking twice.

It’s like being on a diet that restricts any foods you have ever heard may be harmful, no matter what the source — actual scientist, quack, morning news show — or how it applies to you. So you cut out all salt, all fat, all carbs, all dairy, all eggs, all peanuts, all wheat, all meat, all tap water (in case it’s carcinogenic), all bottled water (in case it’s carcinogenic), coffee (because it’s so wonderful, something must be wrong with it) and pretty soon you are eating unsalted popcorn three times a day with nothing to wash it down with.

Meanwhile, think of how we’ve restricted our kids:  they’re not allowed to walk to school (cars!), bike to a friend’s house (perverts on the way), play in the park (those perverts again), the woods (scary), the creek (drowning) the lawn (ticks), the tree (gravity) or dirt (dirt).  All they are left with is a selection of supervised, sanitized, often pricey activities that allow zero room for creativity. And at the end – I know because I’ve been there – they get a trophy.

So I got my boys the skateboard which, it turns out, if you’re not Tony Hawk, really does not go very fast and has yet to make any kind of airborne loop. The kids love it, they wear their helmets and it gets them out of the house a little.

Then they come back in and whine that they’re bored.

Rome was not built in a day. 

– Lenore

It’s nice to push for this whole Free Range movement, but the fact is, sometimes I’m about as free and fun as a frozen chicken nugget.

That’s because we all have certain things that push our buttons — especially the buttons marked, “IRRATIONAL” and “FEAR.” We are so sure these things are going to hurt our kids, we can’t even think straight. And that’s a fear we pass on.

“Look mom! Shrek is stupid!” said my 10-year-old as we were walking down a city street the other day.

“What?”

Who on earth had taken this fun-loving boy and filled him with skateboard terror? Good ol’ Mrs. “Give Our Children the Carefree Childhood We Had!” Me.

Part of Free Range Parenting means nudging yourself to do something that you have been afraid to try. Or, really, afraid to let your kids try.

Not something  crazy —  like skateboarding without a helmet. But maybe,  letting your kid try skateboarding with a helmet. Or letting your 4^th grader cross a street by herself. Or letting your 12-year-old bike to the Dunkin Donuts. These are things they can do if we just let them. So let’s.

In the next week, my Free Range goal is to get my son (and maybe even his brother) onto a skateboard without any of us having a breakdown. 

Want to set a Free Range goal, too? Let’s hear all about it — the goal, the execution, the results.

I wish you luck!

You better wish me the same.

Remember the “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” that used to run in Mad?

That’s what we need here at Free Range Kids. As a recent email from “Skyscraper” put it: “This site needs a seperate idea page for what to say when others question the ‘free-range’ parenting approach.”

So true.  What do you say when someone thinks you’re nuts for letting your 8-year-old jump rope by herself on your driveway, or for letting your pre-teen walk to school?

I’ve been doing a lot of radio interviews and I turn into a self-righteous bore when the host inevitably asks, “How could you let your son take the subway alone?”

I quote crime stats that show a child is 40 times more likely to die in a car accident than by being abducted. I appeal to common sense. I remind people that a couple of generations back, a 9-year-old probably would have had a part-time job. And then I ask the interviewer, “Didn’t you get to run around and do things by yourself when you were a kid?”

“Sure!” comes the answer, but “times have changed.” Once they get that out of the way, they go in for the kill: “How would you have felt if something DID happen to your son?”

“Uh…bad?”

So much for my years of media training.

What I really want to say is: “Terrible! Earth-shaken! I’d be cursing God — and especially the radio hosts who asked Him to zap my son just to teach me a lesson! But, Mr. Fulminator, sir, don’t you see there’s something sick about immediately and endlessly envisioning the very worst? Isn’t that the very definition of paranoia? And isn’t it wrong to teach kids that they are incapable of taking care of themselves, that they can’t trust their community, and that it is better for them to live a virtual life inside, where life is programmed, than a real life, outside, where they can glory in the wonders of the world? Are you ever going to let your kid GROW UP?”

That’s what I’d like to be able to get out, but it sounds a little hysterial and it’s not exactly pithy. So if you have any amazing zingers that really seem to open people’s eyes (or shut their mouths), we are all eager to hear them.

And even more eager to start using them.

– Lenore

What seems clear and wonderful from most of the e-mail response is that Free Range parents are eager to raise Free Range kids. But they often come up against a couple of barriers.

First and foremost is the fact that other parents (and, sometimes, spouses) think there is no difference between “Free Range” and “criminally negligent” parenting.  I’m wondering how to start bringing those folks around. Devote a PTA meeting to the issue? (Which could, of course, horribly backfire. People LOVE to worry and sound self-righteous.) So, maybe we should all carry around child safety statistics that prove most kids aren’t being snatched and killed? Or organize an all-neighborhood walk-to-school week? Or have a big “Bring Your Kids to The Park Day” –

And then leave them there?

That would get some local press, I’d bet.

Anyway, have any of you tried anything like this? Or do you have any other ideas? If so, please post them on the newest Free Range tab we’ve added: IDEAS.

The other obstacle seems to be suburbia itself: It is hard to let kids get places on their own when the distances require a car. (Or maybe we just think they require a car.)  Any thoughts on how to deal with this biggie would also be appreciated.

I do worry that principals, school organizations and even police departments are so focused on uber-safety (and not getting sued), that it might not hard, in most places, to “work within the system.”

Love to hear your thoughts, ideas and experiences. — Lenore  

Free Rangers: I’m so glad about the conversation - and possibly new movement — going on below. Here are two letters that particularly struck me. I’ll highlight more as the weeks go by.

The first is from a 13-year-old who pleas - snarkily — for a little independence and parental perspective. Her friend’s dad is thinking of trailing the class field trip (for four days!) to make sure his daughter is safe.

If it’s getting to the point where a responsible adult cannot even trust other responsible adults - the ones at his kid’s school - I think we can agree that nothing outside of having his daughter sit in the living room will strike this dad as an acceptable risk.

The second letter might serve as a sobering reminder to him — and the rest of us: There is no place that is absolutely safe. Not even a living room. The letter speaks for itself in its poignancy and refusal to retreat from the world. Read more »