Aside from Daylight Savings Time it feels like there is almost NOTHING both parties agree on anymore. Except for Free-Range Parenting! Last week the Colorado State Senate joined the Colorado House in UNANIMOUSLY voting for what is now called the “Reasonable Childhood Independence” bill. It had two Republicans and two Democrats officially sponsoring it, but in the House, TWENTY SEVEN representatives asked to please be listed as CO-SPONSORS. Yes, yes, it still has to be signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis, and we won’t count our chickens, etc., etc. (Even though there are at least 27 of them.) BUT…
Author: lskenazy
In other cultures, the idea of parents getting on the floor to play with their kids is as strange as the idea of parents getting on the floor to slurp their water from a bowl. It simply isn’t done. Anthropologist David Lancy has studied childhood the world over, and in most of the places — other than the Utah city where he lives — kids ran around in a mixed-age group, playing, helping out, watching adults and copying their skills. But they did not expect adults to play with them. When I was raising my kids, however, I thought that…
Imagine going to a party and no one shows up. That’s childhood in a lot of towns today. Even kids who’d love to walk down the block won’t, if there’s no one outside to play with. Vanessa Elias, a parenting coach and mom of three in Westport, CT., realized that her town needed to make an actual COMMITMENT to getting kids to go outside and do things, unsupervised — especially going outside to play. She felt that re-activating kids would be one way to combat the tide of anxiety and depression plaguing so many young people. So she and several…
Dan Emery’s three kids are 21, 18, and 15. They live in a suburb outside of New York and grew up being allowed to go places on their own, make their own money from odd jobs, and deal with their own minor issues at school. In a piece over at Let Grow Dan (owner of the NY Guitar School) interviews them about how these Free-Range experiences forged them. The answers should give us all some support for loosening the leash. For instance, one of his kids said she was glad she got to be out and about on her own,…
In the dystopian (and un-put-downable) novel, “The School for Good Mothers,” parents who don’t helicopter get sent to a state re-education school. There, each interaction they have with their child is graded to see if it is kind enough, warm enough, educational enough, safe enough (obviously!) and selfless enough. Yes, this is a parody of the standards some social service agencies demand from parents — especially moms. But how much truth is embedded in “Good Mothers”? Can you really get your kids taken away from you for trusting them to walk home from school, or not getting them to quiet…
A researcher who spent 10 years following 3000 kids who applied to get free pre-school in Tennessee discovered the opposite of what she’d expected: The ones who got in — demographically identical to the ones who didn’t — were doing worse all around by 6th grade. Worse on tests. Worse on discipline. Worse when it came to being diagnosed with learning difficulties — that is, the pre-k kids had developed more of them. Over at Let Grow (here) I talk about what the researcher herself believes may be the problem with a pre-k program deliberately designed to boost underprivileged kids,…
Maybe you have heard the story about the Georgia mom arrested for trusting her 14-year-old to look after her four younger siblings. I originally wrote about it at Reason.com — here’s the link. My story has since gone ’round the world. The basics: Mom Melissa Henderson had to go to work the day COVID-19 shut down the daycare center she’d normally take her little ones too. So she asked her daughter Linley, 14, to babysit, and went off to her job. Henderson’s 4-year-old somehow got out of the house and went across the way to play with his friend.…
“F**king amazing!” in fact, is how bestselling author and TED Talk favorite Johann Hari describes The Let Grow Project. We met when he came to New York to research his new book, “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention — And How to Think Deeply Again.” Together we visited two schools — one well-off, the other a Title 1 / high poverty school — where kids were doing The Project. That is, they’d been given the homework assignment, “Go home and do something new, on your own, without your parents!” You can watch the middle schoolers here (a 2-minute video),…
My poll of over 1500 folks — albeit on Twitter — discovered something heartening: The majority of both those born BEFORE and AFTER 1982 say they were allowed outside on their own by age 7. BUT, the percent of kids given freedom by age 7 is sinking. And I didn’t specifically ask anyone born after 1992, or 2002 to answer, and I wonder what the response would be. Heck — I think I’ll go ask on Twitter now! Meantime — check out my analysis of these before/after 1982 results over at Let Grow by clicking here. One thing is sure:…
There’s a good first-person story over at Let Grow. Robin Phillips (pictured) was on her way to visit her dad in Hawaii when she got bumped from a plane at Los Angeles Airport about 50 years ago, when she was 13. The next plane was the following day. Robin spent the night eating, reading — even met a celebrity. What did she not do? Panic. She remembers the night as a turning point that showed her who she was. Here it is, half a century later and she is still grateful for it. I’m betting you have a story…