Free-Range Kids, How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)

by Lenore Skenazy

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Part 1 - The Fourteen Free-Range Commandments

  Commandment 1 - Know When to Worry

  Commandment 2 - Turn Off the News

  Commandment 3 - Avoid Experts

  Commandment 4 - Boycott Baby Knee Pads

  Commandment 5 - Don’t Think Like a Lawyer

  Commandment 6 - Ignore the Blamers

  Commandment 7 - Eat Chocolate

  Commandment 8 - Study History

  Commandment 9 - Be Worldly

  Commandment 10 - Get Braver

  Commandment 11 - Relax

  Commandment 12 - Fail!

  Commandment 13 - Lock Them Out

  Commandment 14 - Listen to Your Kids

  Part 2 - The Free -Range Guide to Life

  Safe or Not? - The A-to-Z Review of Everything You Might Be Worried About

  Animals, Being Eaten By

  Bats (Metal)

  Bats ( Vampire)

  Bottle Feeding: Formula for Disaster?

  BPA Poisoning in Baby Bottles, Sippy Cups . . . and Everything Else

  Cell Phones and Brain Cancer (but Not, Alas, “Cell Phones and How Come Your ...

  Choking on Food and All the Other Little Things Around the House

  Cough and Cold Medicinitis

  Death by Stroller

  Eating Snow

  Germs, Antigerms, and Shopping Cart Liners

  Halloween Candy: Hershey’s Kiss of Death?

  Internet Predators and Other Skeeves Online

  Lead Paint, Lead Toys, and Lead Everything from China

  Licking the Batter off Beaters While They Are Still Plugged In

  Plastic Bags and Why There Are Warnings All over Them

  Playground Perils

  Pools and Water and Kids and Toilets (Not the Fun Part)

  Raw Dough’s Raw Deal

  School Shootings

  Spoilage (of Children)

  Spoilage (of Lunch)

  Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

  Sunscreen, Vitamin D, Skin Cancer, You Name It

  Teen Sex (Yes, Kids, We Know You’re Reading This. Now Come and Ask Us All About Contraception)

  The Woods, Playing In

  Walking to School (or at Least the Bus Stop)

  Zoo Animals (in Cracker Form and Otherwise)

  Strangers with Candy - Even the Folks Who Put the Faces on the Milk Cartons ...

  Conclusion

  Sources

  Helpful Books, Blogs, Web Sites, and Some Inspiring Family Movies

  About the Author

  Index

  FREE-RANGE KIDS

  Copyright © 2009 by Lenore Skenazy. All rights reserved.

  Published by Jossey-Bass

  A Wiley Imprint

  989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com

  No part of this publication, except for the last two pages of the book, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

  The two pages at the end of this book contain forms that are designed for you to photocopy and complete. You may make photocopies of these pages for your personal use.

  Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

  Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Skenazy, Lenore.

  Free-range kids : giving our children the freedom we had without going nuts with worry / by Lenore Skenazy.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  eISBN : 978-0-470-49796-8

  1. Child rearing. 2. Parent and child. I. Title.

  HQ769.S5519 2009

  649’.1—dc22

  2009004210

  In memory of Genevieve MacDougall

  All kids should have a Ms. Mac in their life

  Acknowledgments

  Since this book grew out of a column I wrote for the New York Sun, first thanks go to my editors at that late, great paper: Seth Lipsky, Amity Shlaes, and Katharine Herrup.

  Amazing agent Mollie Glick saw the potential for a full-length book and shepherded it all the way through with bravado and encouragement. Let her be a role model to us all.

  Beyond felicitously, I was snapped up by Jossey-Bass editor Alan Rinzler, who immediately felt like a long-lost cousin: same sense of humor, same outlook on life. We even look a little alike. He provided not only structure and wisdom but also laughs and chocolate. Hard to beat an editor like that.

  The rest of the gang at Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons provided the same exuberant support: Erin Beam, Paul Foster, Susan Geraghty, Carol Hartland, Debra Hunter, Michele Jones, Keira Kordowski, Mike Onorato, Erik Thrasher, Nana Twumasi, Karen Warner, Jennifer Wenzel, Carrie Wright, and everyone else there including—especially! —the sales staff.

  For the speedy, meticulous research that made this book even possible, a huge thanks goes to Carey King. Time for her to write her own book now.

  For inspiration, help, and kindness all around, more thanks go to Melanie Bradley, Trevor Butterworth, Dale Cendali, Gigi Cohen, Carl Honoré, Hannah King, Barbie Levin, Hedi Levine, Marla Sherman, and all the folks who wrote to Free-Range Kids with their stories, suggestions, and support.

  This book would not exist without my family—and not just because I send the younger members out on public transportation. Thanks and love to my boys, Morry and Izzy, and to my truly better half, Joe, who is in the living room with them right now, teaching them how to do the taxes. It’s never too soon.

  Introduction

  Welcome to—Yikes!

  In less time tha
n it takes to unlock a babyproofed toilet seat (which, admittedly, can be an awfully long time when you’re at a dinner party, and everyone’s wondering where you are, and you cannot get that lid up), we moms and dads have changed. Somehow, even those of us who looked forward to parenting without too much paranoia have become anxious about every possible weird, scary, awful thing that could ever, just maybe, God forbid!, happen to our kids—from death by toilet drowning to stranger abduction to electrical outlet cover ingestion. Yes, I just read that those little plastic things you stick in the outlets to prevent baby electrocution turn out to be potential choking hazards. Just try not to worry.

  The list of potential threats just keeps growing, and of course we pay attention because we want to keep our kids safe. That’s our job, right? But it’s getting harder and harder—and, for the record, pricier and pricier, and pickier and pickier—as new safety doodads and dire warnings keep flying at us. And sometimes, like when you have to strap your kid into the stroller as if he’s about to blast off to Pluto, it’s driving us nuts.

  Now there are all sorts of reasons for being super protective, and for the most part, they’re totally legit. Maybe you yourself were hurt as a child. Maybe your parents just barely survived the Holocaust. Maybe you’re African American and worried about the world treating your child like a criminal. Or maybe, like my friend Gigi, you are so addicted to anxiety that worrying actually feels good. Like going to the gym. No pain, no gain.

  Or maybe you just watch too much Nancy Grace.

  But it’s also possible you don’t want to be that way anymore. It’s possible you picked up this book because you have a sneaking suspicion that you don’t have to be quite as worried about quite as much. After all, our moms sent us outside and said, “Come home when the street lights turn on.” Their moms sent them out on street-cars and buses. And their grandmas sent their sweet children out on slow, rusty steamers to the New World with only a couple of rubles and a hard salami.

  Those were all responsible parents! Yet here in the nice, safe, scurvy-free twenty-first century, we worry about our kids riding their bikes to the library, or walking to school. We worry when we can’t reach them on their cells. In fact, cell phones—though I love them dearly—are a great example of how everything has gotten so mixed up. We give them to our kids because we don’t want to worry. We say, “They’re for emergencies.” And yet now, if you expected to hear from your daughter after her Mandarin lesson and you can’t reach her immediately, you may well start to think: What happened?! Lost, dead, or white slavery? (Which, for our purposes, includes Hispanic, Asian American, African American, Native American, and Inuit slavery, too.)

  So now the phone—the very device that was supposed to reassure you—is making you freak out when you never would have freaked before. Back in the good ol’ 1990s, you’d at least have waited for your kid to be a few minutes late before the heart-stopping scenarios kicked in. Now anxiety is on speed dial.

  And so we worry all the time: Is he safe? Is she OK? Did he eat all his baby carrots? (Answer: no.) And what happens when we don’t worry?

  We’re happy. So are our kids. When we go wild one day and decide to actually trust our children to go out alone and have some fun and get home safely, the way we did when we were kids, it’s quite a high. But as I learned in front of several million people, it’s also not without controversy. Here’s what happened to me.

  About a year ago, I let my nine-year-old ride the subway alone for the first time. I didn’t do it because I was brave or reckless or seeking a book contract. (But look!) I did it because I know my son the way you know your kids. I knew he was ready, so I let him go. Then I wrote a column about it for the New York Sun. Big deal, right?

  Well, the night the column ran, someone from the Today Show called me at home to ask, Did I really let my son take the subway by himself?

  Yes.

  Just abandoned him in the middle of the city and told him to find his way home?

  Well, abandoned is kind of a strong word, but . . . yes, I did leave him at Bloomingdale’s.

  In this day and age?

  No, in Ladies’ Handbags.

  Oh, she loved that. Would I be willing to come on the air and talk about it?

  Sure, why not?

  I had no idea what was about to hit me.

  A day later, there across from me was Ann Curry looking outrageously pretty and slightly alarmed, because her next guest (the one right before George Clooney) just might be criminally insane. By way of introduction, she turned to the camera and asked, “Is she an enlightened mom or a really bad one?”

  The shot widened to reveal . . . me. And my son Izzy. And some “parenting expert” perched on that famous couch right next to us, who, I soon learned, was there to TEACH US A LESSON.

  I quickly told the story about how Izzy, the nine-year-old (who has since had the temerity to turn ten), had been begging me to let him try to find his way home on his own from someplace, anyplace, by subway.

  I know that may sound a little scary, but it’s not. Here in New York, families are on the subway all the time. It’s extremely, even statistically, safe. Whatever subterranean terror you see Will Smith battling in the movies goes home when the filming stops—probably to New Jersey. Our city’s murder rate is back to where it was in 1963. And, by the way, it’s probably down wherever you live, too. Nationally the violent crime rate has been plummeting—by almost 50 percent—since it peaked in 1992.

  That’s why letting Izzy find his way home alone seemed like a fine idea. Not dangerous. Not crazy. Not even very hard. My husband and I talked about it and agreed that our boy was ready. So on that sunny Sunday when I took him to that big, bright store, I said those words we parents don’t say much anymore.

  “Bye-bye! Have fun!”

  I didn’t leave him defenseless, of course. I gave him a subway map, a transit card, $20 in case of emergencies, and some quarters to make a call. But, no, I did not give him a cell phone. Because although I very much trusted him to get himself home, I was a lot less sure he’d get the phone there.

  And remember: he had quarters.

  Anyway, it all turned out fine. One subway ride, one bus ride, and one hour or so later, my son was back home, proud as a peacock (who happens to take public transportation). I only wrote about his little adventure because when I told the other fourth-grade moms at the schoolyard about it, they all said the same thing.

  You let him WHAT?

  The more polite said things like, “Well that’s fine, and I’ll let my son do that, too . . . when he’s in college.”

  So—back to the Today Show. After Izzy tells Ann (our new best friend) how easy the whole thing was, she turns to the Parenting Expert—a term I have grown to loathe because this breed seems to exist only to tell us parents what we’re doing wrong and why this will warp our kids forever.

  This one is appalled at what I’ve done. She looks like I just asked her to smell my socks. She says that I could have given my son the exact same experience of independence, but in a much “safer” way—if only I had followed him or insisted he ride with a group of friends.

  “Well, how is that the ‘exact same experience’ if it’s different?” I demanded. “Besides, he was safe! That’s why I let him go, you fear-mongering hypocrite, preaching independence while warning against it! And why do TV shows automatically put you guys on anyway, lecturing us like two-year-olds? And where are your kids, by the way? Hiding under the bed at home?”

  Well, I didn’t get all of that out, exactly, but I did get out a very cogent, “Gee, um . . .” Anyway, it didn’t even matter, because as soon as we left the set, the phone rang. (I do allow myself to carry a cell. My beloved cell!) It was MSNBC. Could I be there in an hour?

  Yep.

  Then FoxNews called. Could I be there with Izzy that afternoon? MSNBC called back: If I did the show today, would I still promise to come back with Izzy to do it again over the weekend, same place, same story?

  And sudde
nly, weirdly, I found myself at that place you always hear about: the center of a media storm. It was kind of fun, but also kind of terrifying—because everyone was weighing in on my parenting skills. Reporters queried from China, Israel, Australia, Malta. (Malta! An island! Who’s stalking the kids there? Pirates?) TV stations across Canada threw together specials. Radio shows across America ate it up, as did parenting groups and PTAs. Newspapers, blogs, magazines from Newsweek to Funny Times—even the BBC had me on.

  The English wanted to know, “Are we wrapping our children in cotton wool?” To which I boldly replied, “What the heck is cotton wool?” (Turns out to be the kind of cotton in cotton balls.) And here’s a badge of honor: the ladies on The View devoted a whole segment to agreeing—perhaps for the first time on anything—about what a terrible, crazy, horrible, heartless, and fill-in-the-disapproving-adjective-here mother I was.

  The media dubbed me “America’s Worst Mom.” (Go ahead—Google it.) But that’s not what I am.

  I really think I’m someone like you: a parent who is afraid of some things (bears, cars) and less afraid of others (subways, strangers). But mostly I’m afraid that I, too, have been swept up in the impossible obsession of our era: total safety for our children every second of every day. The idea that we should provide it, and actually could provide it. It’s as if we don’t believe in fate anymore, or good luck or bad luck. No, it’s all up to us.

  Simply by questioning whether it really makes sense never to let our kids out of our sight, always to protect them from germs, jerks, sports injuries, sports disappointments, stress, sunburn, salmonella, skinned shins, and every other possible if teeny-tiny risk, I became, to my shock, the face of a new movement: the Free-Range Movement. At least, that’s the name I gave it. It’s a movement dedicated to fighting the other big movement of our time, helicopter parenting.