Australian Police Chide Parents Who Let their Children Walk Outside

Hi Readers! Down in Australia I’m sort of happy to say a tempest is brewing over whether it is up to parents or police to decide when a child is “old enough” to walk around outside. According to this story  on the home page of the Sydney Morning Herald:

Officers told a Hornsby mother it was ”inappropriate” for her 10-year-old daughter to catch a bus unaccompanied, and warned a Manly father whose seven-year-old son walked alone to a local shop that while they would not alert DOCS [Dept. of Community Services], they would file a report.

Really? File a report to say a child was suspiciously…fine? Tell another parent that her  child is doing something “inappropriate” by…being competent?

Are these officers doing anyone an ounce of good? Don’t they realize that if they have nothing to do but warn parents about their perfectly poised offspring,  there probably isn’t a whole lot of crime going on for anyone to worry about?

And of course the bigger issue is, as always: Who decides what is “safe enough” when it comes to our kids? Free-Range Kids would rather not leave it up to   power-drunk, horror-hallucinating, infantilizing  busybodies with badges. – L.

A Hovering Mother Reconsiders

Hi Readers: I really enjoyed this Boston Magazine story, by Katherine Ozment. Here’s a snippet from this mom of 2:

In my nine years as a parent, I’ve followed the rules, protocols, and cultural cues that have promised to churn out well-rounded, happy, successful children. I’ve psychoanalyzed my kids’ behavior, supervised an avalanche of activities, and photo-documented their day-to-day existence as if I were a wildlife photographer on the Serengeti. I do my utmost to develop their minds and build up their confidence, while at the same time living with the constant low-level fear that bad things will happen to them. But lately, I’ve begun to wonder if, by becoming so attuned to their every need and so controlling of their every move, I’ve somehow played a small part in changing the very nature of their childhood.

The rest of the article is her talking to people who believe in the value of independence and play (a lot of the folks I like talking to, too), and realizing that unsupervised time is at least as valuable to kids as the super-saturated parent time she had been bathing them in. Not that the answer is to neglect our kids. (Well, maybe a little.) But anyway: giving them space is not neglect.

My favorite anecdote came from her chat with Harvard psychologist Richard Weissbourd who —

… tells a story about how, years ago, his 11-year-old daughter and several of her friends were planning an overnight campout with some younger neighborhood kids in his backyard. Before the big night, the parents of the younger kids began scouring his lawn for nails and shards of glass. “It just seemed like, Whoa, what is going on with this anxiety?” Weissbourd recalls. The problem wasn’t just the parental anxiety itself — it was how it was actually reshaping the experience for those kids: “I felt like these 10- and 11-year-old girls were so conscientious and these parents came and undermined them.”

Shards of glass they were looking for? What a perfect example of Worst-First thinking: Gee, it’s a suburban lawn. What terror could lurk there?

Great article, great stories, great revelation. In short: Great reading! — L.

Cops Collar 12 y.o. for “Walking Alone” in Downtown Toronto

Hi Folks — Now that the notion, “How could anyone let their kids walk alone outside?” is back in heavy rotation,  here is the blog post of a mom whose 12 year old son was brought home to her by the cops. He wasn’t  in any trouble. He was simply scooped up because the cops didn’t think a middle schooler should be walking, by daylight, in an urban area. It freaked them out.

I always worry when people in power are scared of non-scary, formerly normal childhood activities.

As this boy was picked up in pretty much the same area that I’ve been staying in while I film my “Free-Range” reality show in Toronto, I can attest that it is not a scary nabe. It is bustling. But even if it weren’t, since when do police pick up boys who are doing just fine, walking home? From the blog post:

“I just wanted to walk home” he said dejectedly. “He’s not in any kind of trouble” the first officer said cheerfully. But then more sternly added “but he was walking on the downtown streets”. “We live downtown” I said, becoming confused. “Where is his school?” asked the second officer. “He’s in a camp this week, at the Jewish Community Centre – it’s at Spadina and Bloor”, I said wondering why two policemen would think a kid was in school in the middle of July. “Well ma’am, we picked him up at Yonge and Adelaide” he says, looking all strong and concerned. “Yes, I said, he was walking home, is that a problem?”. “He was walking…. alone…… downtown……….!!!” the officer gritted his teeth at my stupidity and spat out. “He’s 12”, he added as if this would make it all clear. “Do you not see the issue” he spurted? “So are you trying to tell me that because my child was getting exercise, being environmental and increasing his geographical skills, rather than sitting in the basement playing a video game, or hanging out in a mall, or sitting in a fast food restaurant filling his gutty wuts with hydrogenated trans sugar chemical slop, you were worried about him? Do you realize that at 12 he is old enough to babysit?” I asked.

Her fight is our fight: The fight against irrational fear, and a Worst-First mentality that assumes if a child is outside, he is likely to get in terrible trouble. When, in fact, the opposite is true. A child outside is a great thing for a city, a family, a kid. — Lenore

Take Our Children to the Jungle…And Have Them Catch Tarantulas Day

Hi Readers!  As “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day” approaches on Saturday, May 21st, I find myself doing one of my favorite Free-Range things. That is, I remind myself that our hyper-fears for our children are out of whack with what many children face — and overcome — on a daily basis in the rest of the world.

After all, I’m only suggesting that we let our kids play for a little while at the local playground, unsupervised, starting at about the same age as these kids:

P.S. If you ARE planning to participate in Take Our Children to the Park…and Leave Them There Day, please leave a comment. The media want to know whether anyone would really do such a thing “in this day and age.”

Letting the Kids Stay Home Alone. For a Week.

Hi Readers! You’ll love this! — L

Dear Free-Range Kids:  This isn’t so much a camp story as it is an “independence” story.  My son was by nature very timid and could have easily have been crippled by this nature had I allowed it.  Instead, I kicked my kids out of the house on every nice day and made them find something to do rather than sit inside.  Many a summer night saw my backyard filled with up to a dozen neighborhood kids in sleeping bags under the stars and unsupervised.  Shockingly, they were never once kidnapped or molested.  In spite of this, my son never wanted to go to camp and rarely stayed at a friend or relative’s house overnight.

When he was fourteen and his sister sixteen, my husband had to go to New Orleans for work and I decided to tag along.  We chose to leave the kids home alone to fend for themselves; we had many neighbors they could call on in an emergency and they were trustworthy kids.

The week before, we took them to the grocery store and let them shop for the meals they wanted to eat while we were gone.  Did you know there are seven different brands of frozen pizza, so they wouldn’t have to once eat the same thing during the week?  Neither did I until after that shopping trip.  Though I was not terribly happy with their choices, this was their independence week and I was determined to let them be in charge.

Armed with pizza, a $100 bill and my daughter’s driver’s license, they faced the week alone.  As my husband and I said our goodbyes, I could see the concern in my son’s eyes, but we knew they could take care of each other.  During the week, they checked in before school, when they got home, and to say goodnight.  We heard tales of burnt pizzas, trips to the market for milk and getting along and taking care of each other.  That alone made the trip a success. But never did I expect what my son did when we got home.

He thanked us.

Always one to worry, he had apparently been thinking about college and had been concerned he would not be able to go because he had a fear of being away from us.  He said his experience during the week had made him realize he could take care of himself.

I could have very easily made him a mama’s boy, but instead I constantly pushed him to do something scary.  Our trust in him gave him trust in himself. — Janelle Cawley Kennedy.

What happens to teens taking care of themselves for a week?

P.S. Today, my son Stan is 24 and sharing a house with some of those same friends he played with as a boy.  My daughter is 26 and has moved to St Louis where she lives with her husband and my grandson.

Stealing from Kids, Part II

Hi Readers — I thought this was an interesting comment on the post about doing “everything” for our kids (and taking away the opportunity for them to learn how to do stuff themselves). “NT” is shorthand for “neurotypical” — i.e., a child without neurological difficulties. — L.

Dear Free-Range Kids: I see moms like this at my daughter’s school, where the lockers for the special-needs preschool kids are right across from the NT second-graders.

While the preschooler’s parents and TAs diligently work with our kids to
remind them of how to take off boots,  jackets, put mittens in pockets
themselves, there’s another group of moms doing all this stuff for their
much-older children while they stand there like lumps of wax, arms out
expectantly. It’s amazing to me that we have higher expectations of our
three-year-old kids with special needs (mostly autism) than many mothers of
second-graders do.

I’m hoping that one of these days, one of those mothers will glance over
towards us and maybe wonder why we’re working so hard to teach our kids to
be independent, and decide that maybe it’s time for her children to do the
same. To me, it looks like they’re working just as hard to handicap their NT
kids as we are to teach our autistic kids to learn basic skills. — Michelle

(Public) Bathroom Humor

Or really, just public bathroom stories. That’s what I’m looking for, readers. As I start pondering the idea of writing another book (and, more to the point, FILLING it), I’m going to be asking for anecdotes from the real world, from YOU. And what I need first, believe it or not, is bathroom lore!

Specifically: Can you tell me about the time you let your kid use a public bathroom WITHOUT you? Was it a big deal? A small one? Scary? Surprising? Wonderful? (Or at least as wonderful as something like that can be?) What age?

Moreover: Kid reaction? Onlooker reaction? Spouse reaction — if any (and printable)?

That’s it. Thanks for any and all stories — we’re on a roll! (Ha ha.) — L.

Artifact from the Free-Range Past: A Circuit City Ad

Hey Readers! Got this cool letter today from a guy named Mike:

Hello Free-Rangers:  Remember that Circuit City commercial in the ’90’s where the young boy buys a Walkman, and goes to Circuit City to get his price match? Here it is:

There are a number of points that this commercial highlights for me that show how far we have fallen.

1. The father tells the son: “You bought it, you take care of it.”

2. The boy walks to Circuit City completely on his own, taking what seems to be the long way while he gathers the courage to ask for his price match.

3. The boy is talks to the man behind the counter and gets his price match

Today:

1. The parent likely wouldn’t let their child take care of the return, nor allow them to purchase it on their own in the first place.

2. They would drive to the Circuit City.

3. The boy would never be allowed to speak to a strange MAN (because all men are potential molesters of course)

And so it goes — Mike

Lenore here: I actually think the parents might allow the kid to talk to a clerk, no matter what gender. But I agree: It would be a family affair, and they’d get there by car.

How Can We Give Our Kids Freedom When It’s Supposedly “Dangerous?”

Hi Readers! I was reading this lovely link one of you sent in,  nodding along with the whole gestalt, and then suddenly found myself quoted. Nice feeling! Here’s the beginning of the piece, which appears in SFGate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle’s web site:

How Do We Teach Kids Independence in a Fear-Driven World? by Amy Graff

My 7-year-old daughter, Paris, spent a week with her grandparents this summer in the tiny coastal town of Gearhart, Ore.

If you ask Paris what her favorite thing was about the trip, she won’t tell you the about the root beer floats she and her grandfather enjoyed nightly, nor about the festive parade that passed through town on the Fourth of July. She won’t tell you about getting her first-ever pair of Crocs (something I refused to buy her), nor about learning to ride a bike without training wheels.

Rather she’ll tell you about going to the store with her 7-year-old friend Annabelle. She’ll tell you that she and her friend walked six blocks all by themselves to the corner grocery store where they spent their pocket change on candy.

When my daughter returned from her vacation and told me this, her eyes grew big and excited and she started jumping up and down and flapping her hands. This was the sort of sheer joy a parent almost only witnesses on Christmas morning. And it wasn’t the candy that made her so happy. It was the fact that she had done something without an adult standing on the sidelines watching.

…. I practically cried when my daughter told me this–not because I disapproved of her walking to the store with a girl named Annabelle who I’ve never even met. I nearly cried because I realized my daughter is deprived of freedom. She’s growing up in a fear-driven world where an adult has to watch every move she makes. She’s rarely allowed to step outside an adult’s eyesight unless she’s locked up inside her own house. If I had been there in Gearhart with my daughter, I probably wouldn’t have allowed her to walk those six blocks….

Read it (and weep) here! And maybe come up with some good ideas for all of us on how to loosen the reins AND deal with busybodies, all while keeping our kids pretty darn safe. Thanks! — Lenore

More News of Tide Turning! Two Girls Make Own Playdate!

Hi Readers! This just in! Yes, it is the tale of an extremely normal childhood moment, but in this day and age it counts as Big News!  Ring the bells, hoist a juice box and read on!

Dear Free-Range Kids: I had a Free-Range victory yesterday as well! My 8-year-old daughter (third grade) has a girl in her class this year who lives in the same little section of our neighborhood as we do. It takes about five minutes to walk to her house.

The girls have played together several times throughout the school year. Usually they all (the mom and her two daughters) come by our house on the way to the park or something or we (moms) arrange something by phone. The last couple of times that they have invited my daughter over, my daughter has walked down to their house without me.

Yesterday their daughter came to our house all by herself, knocked on the door, and asked if our daughter could go to her house to play. The two of them walked together back to the girl’s house.

I was so excited! We have three kids ages 5, 6, and 8 and we have children the same ages all over our neighborhood. This is the first time any child has ever come over by themselves and asked to play.

I go back and forth between being ecstatic and being slightly depressed that I would be so happy about something that was so commonplace when I was growing up. Baby steps… — Susan