I’m thrilled to have co-written this post with Esther Wojcicki, author of “How to Raise Successful People.”
We think that some of the most thankful people in America this year might be the moms you see on Instagram who let their kids do something new on their own—and that their kids are super thankful too!
This independence-sharing moment started in the spring when Utah mom Stephanie Read’s video of letting her 7-year-old son go into Chick-Fil-A by himself garnered 1.3 million views. She recorded it while she waited in the car for him, growing teary. (That’s her in the photo above.)
A few minutes later when he came bounding out with their dinner, she and her son were both so thrilled they couldn’t wait to do it again.
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Then came other moms doing the same sort of thing, including one who sent her son with Down Syndrome into a 7-Eleven to order a Slurpee by himself. “He walked out like he had just conquered the world,” his mom wrote on Insta.
That’s the Slurpee guy! The Instagram account at TheKimberlyDowdell.
As two moms who have done some similar things, we are grateful to see other trusting parents starting to let go.
One of us – Esther – did this all the time her three girls were growing up. She let them walk to school starting in kindergarten. Soon they were making dinner once a week. And then those girls went on to change the world: Susan (former CEO of YouTube, who unfortunately passed away in 2024), Janet (a Fulbright-winning anthropologist, and Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and researcher at UCSF Medical School), and Anne (founder of 23andMe).
But they were growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s when things were different, right? Fast forward a generation. One Saturday, Esther had three grandkids to look after: two girls who needed school supplies, and one boy who needed a haircut. So Esther dropped the girls (both age 9) off at Target, and the boy, 8, at the barber.
When her daughter called to ask how the kids were, there was an explosion.
WHAT??? They’re WHERE? ALONE?!!
Susan could not believe her mom had taken her eyes off the kids, much less left them at Target by themselves!
But Esther reminded Susan of her philosophy – kids need Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration and Kindness (yes, that spells TRICK). After all, that’s how she’d raised her own brood. That is explained in her book and her app.
Calm was eventually restored. But when word got out about the excellent adventure the older grandkids had, all the others wanted to do the same thing. The unaccompanied Target run became a family rite of passage.
My story, as most of you know, is similar: I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone and wrote a column about it. The ensuing media firestorm inspired me to start this blog, and write the book Free-Range Kids. Now I helm Let Grow, the nonprofit promoting childhood independence.
Both of us believe that when parents get a chance to see how much their kids can do, it breaks the cycle of anxiety in both generations. After all, that’s what exposure therapy is: Fearing something but approaching it anyway, only to realize it’s not so bad!
Trusting our kids to do things we find mildly scary when they’re young allows us to keep doing that as they reach adolescence and beyond. The opposite – not letting kids to do almost anything on their own – ingrains the impulse to keep hovering. We’ve heard of parents who track their kids’ whereabouts in college and call them to make sure they wake up in time for class!
On the other hand, parents’ hearts fill to the brim when they see their kids start doing something new on their own, from crawling to toddling to heading off into the world.
At last, some parents have started reclaiming the right to trust their kids and let go. The two of us are thankful for so many things this Thanksgiving, including those brave parents.
You know who I am. Wojcicki is CEO of globalmoonshots.org, author of How to Raise Successful People, and founder of the Parenting TRICK app at Apple and Android stores. She lives in Palo Alto.
