On Monday, New York’s favorite radio host, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, interviewed Let Grow Co-founder Peter Gray. Listen here and you will probably cheer every single word. Lehrer invited Gray on to discuss his piece in The Journal of Pediatrics: Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Wellbeing. It describes how kids’ free time and free play have been declining since the 1970s, replaced by adult-supervised activities…and childhood anxiety. The understandable goal was to keep kids ever safer, by watching, assisting, and instructing them ever more. To which Lehrer asked a very basic question: Wouldn’t conventional wisdom suggest that…
Author: lskenazy
“How many of you have closed your email and then immediately reopened it because you might have just gotten an email?” Laughter rippled through the audience members — including me — as we listened to Emily Cherkin give a talk at The Brearley School in Manhattan about tech and kids and us: parents, students, educators, email addicts. Cherkin, aka The Screentime Consultant, was a seventh-grade teacher in Seattle from 2003 to 2013. In 2003 almost none of her students had phones. By 2013, 95% did. She’s spent the 10 years since leaving the classroom studying what happens to kids and families…
The Let Grow Project is so simple it’s almost laughable. Almost. But its impact is so profound, it changes the lives of most people who try it. Which people? Students. Parents, Teachers. Counselors. Even the producer of the 7-minute film below, Justin Toops. It features kids doing remarkable — and not remarkable — things, once set a bit free. And if you feel like seeing me after all these years, I’m in it too, busy promoting ye olde Project! The Let Grow Project is actually a homework assignment: Go home and do something new, on your own, without your parents. That straightforward directive ignites…
Try not to start shaking. May 1-7 is SCREEN-FREE WEEK! I caught up with Jen Kane, Screen-Free week’s coordinator. Jen spent the first half of her career in tech, and still sees its promise, not just its peril: Our interview has been edited for length and clarity. I Screen, You Screen, We All Screen. LS: When did Screen-Free Week begin? JK: It’s been around since it was “Turn off your TV.” LS: “No Ed Sullivan this week, kids!” JK: But now, coming out of the pandemic, some people say, “Oh, I can’t go screen free!” LS: I may be one of…
“Peter Gray says…” “Peter Gray writes…” “Well, Peter Gray says… ” I don’t begin ALL my sentences that way — I don’t think. Only maybe half. Here’s why: Peter Gray, the evolutionary psychologist who wrote “Free to Learn,” my favorite book about childhood development, is onto something huge. His thesis is that we evolved, as a species, to think, work, create, fight, cooperate, tinker, explore, take risks, solve problems, and succeed together. And the way we get all that underway, in every generation, is… We start out playing. To play is to learn how to be a human being. To…
A mom writes: Dear Let Grow: First of all, thank you so much for the work you have been doing! I just finished reading Free-Range Kids and it was such an eye-opener. Since I am unsure whether I am overreacting, I would like to ask you for your opinion on this situation: My son is turning two at the end of this month and has been going to daycare here in Australia for three weeks now. Yesterday, they had a lockdown simulation at the childcare center, pretending a perpetrator had entered the premises. The educators gathered all children in a small…
Just in case you thought you were living someplace sane, I am here to report that two Colorado child care workers will go on trial this June for presiding over a day care center where a 5-year-old pulled down a 3-year-old’s pants. Twice. Amy Lovato and Roberta Rodriguez of The Schoolhouse day care center in Poncha Springs face criminal charges for not reporting this to the authorities quickly enough, and for putting the children in danger. WE ARE HERE BECAUSE A PRESCHOOLER ACTED LIKE A PRESCHOOLER “Let this fact not be obscured: We are here because one preschooler pulled down…
Children in Virginia can now play outside without their parents getting investigated for neglect. Imagine that! (Connecticut readers — see bottom for action you can take TODAY.) Sunday night, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed what is colloquially called the “Reasonable Childhood Independence” bill — and was formerly known as the Free-Range Parenting bill. It passed both houses unanimously. (Democrats and Republicans AGREED on a PARENTING issue in Virginia? YES.) The bill narrows the state’s neglect laws, which had been so vague and broad that parents were getting investigated simply for letting their kids walk or play outside. “FOUR COPS FOLLOWED ME…
Let Grow is working to pass a Reasonable Childhood Independence bill in Connecticut. We asked citizens there to write letters in support of it. Your jaw will drop as you read the one below. TO SUPPORT THE CONNECTICUT LAW, PLEASE WRITE YOUR OWN LEGISLATOR A LETTER. Find their names and contact info here. DEADLINE IS MARCH 29. The letter-writer asked for anonymity. Granted! We added headlines because that’s what blogs do. Dear Senator, I am writing to you in support of Bill 1048/1133. It clarifies that being unsupervised by an adult does not, by itself, constitute “substantial risk” to a child’s health or well-being.…
An article about to be published in the the Journal of Pediatrics is titled, “Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Wellbeing: Summary of the Evidence.” If that sounds like what we’ve been saying here forever — it is. But AT LAST is it being said in a PRESTIGIOUS JOURNAL read by thousands of pediatricians. The authors are three big names in child development: David Lancy from the Dept. of Anthropology at Utah State, David Bjorklund at the Dept. of Psychology, Fla. State, and our own Peter Gray, a professor in the Dept. of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College…