This is the second of my two-part “series” (does two essays = a series?) highlighting the bi-partisan nature of the Free-Range Kids movement. I spoke with Jennifer Newsom and Abby Cox who are married to governors of two very different states: California and Utah. Where they overlap is in the desire to give kids a wonderful, real-world childhood.
My Newsom interview ran last week. This is my interview with Utah First Lady Abby Cox.
Cox is a champion for educators, foster kids, special ed, and the Special Olympics. She is also the wife of Gov. Spencer Cox. Born and raised in small-town Mt. Pleasant, Utah, she and Spencer were high school sweethearts. They returned home after school to raise their four kids. For seven years, Spencer commuted two hours to Salt Lake City as Lieutenant Governor. Now that he’s Governor, he and Abby live in the capital.
Utah was the first state to pass a Free-Range Kids law. It has since passed in 11 more states and is called the Reasonable Childhood Independence Law. Cox and I spoke by Zoom. Our conversation has been edited for length.
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LS: I read that at age 14 you took over the family’s ranch? Did I get that right?
AC: I grew up on a 600-acre ranch. My dad was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease when I was in about 8th grade, and my two older brothers had left home. So I was kind of my dad’s right-hand person. But also his legs didn’t work.
LS: You were like 3 out of four limbs.
AC: I have seven sisters, so we all pitched in.
LS: Give me an example of something that you suddenly had to do.
AC: It depended on the time of year. In the summertime, you’re growing alfalfa, barley, grain, so you have to move [irrigation] pipe morning and night. And then I was cutting, baling, hauling hay. It’s hot and you’re lifting between 80 and 100-pound bales.
But January through about March or April, that’s when the sheep are lambing. So at 5:30 every morning before you go to school, you’re out there gathering lambs and putting them in pens with the ewes.
LS: Every night there’d be a new little baby lamb?
AC: We had about we had about 300 head of sheep, so there were between 10 and 20 lambs born in the night. And when you’d get home after school, there’d be more born, so you’d do that again.
LS: What did you love doing as a kid?
AC: We’d love to escape.
LS: Not surprising!
AC: We had these old barns where my sisters and I would play house. We had an old car that was in the corral. We gathered up the little broken windshield pieces — that was our “money.” We put that in our little purses.
There were also lots of dolls and lots of reading. Monday nights, that was our time to sing and play the guitar.
LS: What would you guys sing?
John Denver, a lot of Simon and Garfunkle, church hymns, things like that.
LS: It sounds like Little House on the Prairie.
AC: My kids do say, “Mom, it feels like you grew up in the 1880s not the 1980s.”
LS: What age were you allowed to ride your bike?
AC: Probably from the time I was 8-and-a-half or 9 I rode my bike the six miles round trip into our little town.
LS: And how’d you get to school?
AC: There was a bus. And when I was in high school, I drove the farm truck.
LS: With your sisters?
AC: Yes. We fought all the way.
LS: What do you like seeing today’s kids do on their own?
AC: I love to see kids working, kids out there weeding. I also love that my son could ride his bike down to the creek and play with his friends in the creek.
LS: So what disturbs you about today’s childhood?
AC: At one point my son said, “I literally just want to play summer ball with my friends, have a great experience, a little competition.” But he couldn’t. I mean it sounds weird, but I’m telling you, in every little town and big city here in Utah, for every kid, it’s either all or nothing: You have to commit as a four-year-old that you’re going to play soccer or whatever for the rest of your life —
LS: Or not play at all. Yes, I’ve seen that. The kids sports world is very intense, and there’s almost no time left for plain old free play. What do you think is lost?
AC: My background is in early childhood special education. We know that playing is learning. You can’t learn empathy if you’re not really having those moments of real connection, of real play. My sisters and I, playing house — we got in plenty of fights and we had to work it out. I learned that I could fight with them and not have anybody to play with. Or, I could figure out how to be empathetic, see their point of view, see what I did wrong. Empathy really is cultivated by free play. How do we make sure that these kiddos today have that opportunity? It’s critical to brain development.
LS: Well, at Let Grow we recommend all schools stay open for exactly what you’re talking about – mixed-age, no-phones, free play. We call it a Let Grow Play Club. An adult supervises, but like a lifeguard. They don’t organize the games or solve the spats. All our materials are free. Our other free program is The Let Grow Experience: Kids get the monthly homework assignment: “Do something new, without your parents.” Kids start running errands, climbing trees, making lunch.
AC: Yes, kids need to be able to take those risks, have those experiences, and as parents, we do have to normalize that. I love to see kids walking to school. We want them to have these very organic, real experiences of being independent.
I have a friend who has a middle schooler, an 8th grader that has Down Syndrome. And she’s a big influencer, you know, on Instagram. And he loves Slurpees.
LS: Wait! I’ve seen that video! It is so terrific and so is he and so is she! Her son goes into the 7-Eleven and gets his own Slurpee for the very first time and comes out a foot taller!
AC: It’s really fun to celebrate that.