Drew Perkins is a thought leader in the world of education. He’s also the dad of two girls, 12 and 14. After I was on his TeachThought podcast discussing The Let Grow Project (a “homework assignment” where students have to go home and do something new, on their own, preferably outside the house), he got really excited about doing it with his own kids. And what they had never done was go to the supermarket, together, without a parent. Last week’s simple Kroger run shifted the family dynamics. I just saw a tweet from Drew saying now his younger…
Author: lskenazy
Get your Let Grow Independence Kit by clicking here. It’s an at-home version of our popular Let Grow Project — a whole bunch of ideas of things that kids might want to start doing on their own, as well as a little explanation of how fortifying it can be when we let them do just that: take the reins and even leave their comfort zone. In a society that keeps trying to undermine trust in our kids and their capabilities, the Independence Kit is a way to say, “Enough already! Let me see what my kids can do without me…
As more states start to pass what we used to call “Free-Range Parenting” laws (and now call “Reasonable Childhood Independence” laws), some lawmakers are willing to go along, or even sponsor such legislation — with a caveat. They want the laws to include an age limit, like, “A child of 9 or above can ride their bike, play outside, stay home alone for a while….” These lawmakers are well-intentioned, but they miss a basic fact of parenting: Sometimes a 9-year-old is playing outside with his 4-year-old sister. Is that okay, or not? Under a law with age limits it isn’t…
“When kids are trusted with free time to figure things out on their own, they start working on their very first job: making something happen,” North Dakota State Business Prof. Clay Routledge and I write in a USA Today column: But what happens when they don’t? What happens when, from birth through post-college ‘adulting’ classes, there’s always a well-meaning parent or professional standing right next to them, coaching, teaching, high-fiving, helping them get a leg up — sometimes literally? American entrepreneurship has been declining over the same decades overprotection has increased — from the 1970s till now — and Clay…
Izzy Kalman is a long-time school psychologist with iconoclastic ideas about how to help kids deal with bullying. Often, he says, kids can actually deflect the meanness by using what I would call psychological jujitsu. For instance, Kalman suggests that when someone says, “Hey Fatso!”, the insulted child can respond, “I wish I was skinny like you. What is your secret?” The idea is that in some cases, treating a bully like a friend is so disarming, that the bully is left without ammo. Here’s an article by a mom who, at her wits end, urged her bullied child to…
It’s been 12 years since Free-Range Kids was published. In honor of the new edition, which just came out, I look at how childhood has changed, for the worse but also the better, in the years since it came out. What did I find? Check out my piece at Let Grow, by clicking here. But basically it boils down to: Getting Worse: The micromanagement of kids, in all sorts of spheres. Their anxiety. Parental anxiety. And the idea that kids spending any time unsupervised or undirected is reason enough to worry, and perhaps call 911. Getting Better: New laws that…
The updated and expanded second edition of Free-Range Kids: How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow will be released on Wednesday with all-new insights for parents and educators, including new chapters on anxiety, technology, free play, and how what kids do just for fun can often point them (sometimes unconsciously!) toward their careers. Author Lenore Skenazy (yep, me –but this is the press release) shot to notoriety in 2008 when she wrote a column about letting her 9-year-old ride the subway alone. She started her Free-Range Kids blog two days later, which grew into a book and…
A small, totally unscientific poll I ran on Twitter found that, of about 350 parents, 55% said that at some point they had WANTED their kids to do something independently, but decided against it, for fear of legal repercussions. You know, the authorities are supposed to protect us, so we need not live in fear. But sometimes…it’s Opposite Day. Obviously, we WANT the government to look out for kids in true danger. The fact that sometimes our public servants misinterpret parents who TRUST their kids as parents who NEGLECT their kids is the problem. I talk about this at Let…
Metaphors are the topic at Let Grow today. I just learned that the trees planted in Biosphere 2, the kinda kooky human snowglobe in Arizona, grew at an extremely fast rate. And then they died. Why? Life was just a little too sheltered — literally. Click here for the strange details of what trees (and kids) need. Photo by Eric Muhr on Unsplash
A dad wrote to Let Grow to vent: He’d been eating at the Costco food court with his 4-year-old daughter when he got up to go get ketchup and napkins. A concerned bystander tapped him on the back to chide him for this — he said it was an irresponsible “no-no.” In addition to the dad’s letter at Let Grow I’ve got a short discussion of how our new laws in Texas and Oklahoma will prevent incidents like this from becoming…well…actual incidents. Reasonable Childhood Independence bills allow parents to make reasonable decisions. Helicopter parenting cannot be the law of the…