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

by Lenore Skenazy

  “As a former TV news producer,” a dad confessed in an e-mail to Free-Range Kids, “I can tell you that news is all about fear. Sometimes, the first criteria we used when judging a story involving children or families was, ‘Is it scary enough?’ ”

  When the answer was “no,” that didn’t necessarily kill the story. It just changed the way it was reported—and teased.

  “A tease has to hit people in their heartstrings, where you know your words are going to have some impact: their personal safety, or the safety of their family,” said another former TV news producer, Thomas Dodson. “It has to grab the viewers’ attention, and you have a very short time to do it.”

  So instead of saying, “If your child is under age three and you happen to have shopped at that little toy store on Elm Street where the proprietor bought some funky wooden blocks from Finland, please note that these could pose a choking hazard if your kid put several of them in his mouth at once, which he probably wouldn’t, since they taste bad,” you would say (according to Dodson): “A massive recall of toys! Is something in your child’s toy box on the list?”

  (To which, by the way, a friend once remarked: “If something that terrible is out there, threatening my children, why the hell are they making me wait till eleven to find out?”)

  TV stations love those toy recalls because that way their news-cast gets to scare people (good for ratings) while also doing a public service (good for the soul). It’s like exposing OSHA violations at a strip club.

  Now maybe there is some point to telling us the most anguishing stories of our day, every day. But I’ve been a reporter for twenty years, and I’m still not quite sure what that point is. Is it to warn us about a dangerous neighborhood? That’s helpful, I guess. Or to remind people to look both ways when crossing the street or to drive safely? Can’t overemphasize those. Is there an exploding rattle out there that we shouldn’t buy? Tell all! But, as former Tucson anchorwoman Tina Naughton Powers says, “On local news, it’s, ‘Good evening and welcome to death, doom, and destruction. Here’s what didn’t happen to you today, but it could so we’ll keep you in fear!’ ”

  So when Anderson Cooper hosts an hour-long special on missing children, as he did in 2007, he never says, “First off, remember: this will probably never, ever, ever happen to you. In fact, it’s almost ridiculous that I’m even here talking about it.” No, he turns to the camera with those devastatingly earnest eyes and says, “It is every parent’s nightmare.”

  Then he interviews the parents who lived that nightmare—their boy rode off on his bike, never to be seen again. Then he talks to a “safety expert” who talks about kids getting snatched from their bikes and calls it “a common scenario.”

  Common? It is so not common that it almost never happens. About twenty times more kids are killed by drowning—is that common? Forty times more are killed by car accidents. Forty for every kidnapped kid. But would you call a fatal car accident common? Tragic, yes. Common, no.

  “Not a word about probability has been spoken,” notes The Science of Fear author Gardner. “Having just seen a string of horrifying examples, [one might] conclude that the chances of this crime happening are high.”

  And, in fact, that’s exactly what people do. “Aren’t kids always getting pulled off their bicycles in the suburbs?” a city friend asked me last year. She was serious. And scared.

  Night after night, a vision of the world comes into our living rooms and our lives that is sad, sadistic, and totally at odds with the odds. Turn it off and you’ll probably be a little more at peace. A little less worried about your kids’ safety.

  That may sound like I’m saying, “Ignore the awful truth and go live in La-La Land.” But I’m trying to say that that horror concentrated on the tube is a fake land of its own—Agh! Agh! Land. It’s a soul-freezing, hope-crushing place. If you lived there, you’d be dead now.

  Or at least impaled on a towel hook.

  REAL WORLD

  The First Thing I Did Was Disconnect the Cable

  Writes a Free-Ranger:I have to say that I am an overprotective mother and have tried to loosen up a bit lately. I do not want my children to grow up in fear of everything. I am taking baby steps—just allowing my children, one being a teen, to go to the park across the street unsupervised—but I am getting there. The first thing I did was disconnect the cable. Not because of what the kids were watching but because of what I was watching. Just like the Internet. If something catches my eye, I read it. But if it is about another child abduction or another school shooting, I do not read it. I am trying to let go of those fears that the media has generated.

  Going Free Range

  Free-Range Baby Step: Don’t touch that dial! Get today’s bad news from a newspaper instead. Maybe it’ll have comics, too.

  Free-Range Brave Step: No more keeping CNN on as background noise. I know, it’s nice to hear a voice. But the fear seeps in even when you think it doesn’t. Switch to music.

  One Giant Leap for Free-Range Kind: Get up and go out. Spend that hour you were going to watch Law and Order on a walk with the kids instead. Look around at all the unspeakable crimes not being committed. This is called the Real World. (Not to be confused with MTV’s version, which is a crime all its own.)

  Commandment 3

  Avoid Experts

  Who Knew You Were Doing Everything Wrong? . . . Them!

  Did you read What to Expect When You’re Expecting? Of course you did. Or your spouse did. Everyone did. I did. I found it very helpful.

  And horrible.

  Like most advice out there for parents.

  Helpful because when you’re wondering if those gas pains are really contractions, it’s there to give you a clue. (If a baby’s head is emerging, it’s not gas.) But even though at times the newest edition bends over backward to reassure moms-to-be that they should “lose the guilt,” the basic premise of this book is that there’s a right way and a wrong way to act when you’re pregnant, and a whole lot of dilemmas and potential pitfalls along the way. Or, as the introduction to the fourth edition cheerfully proclaims, “More symptoms and more solutions than ever before.”

  That’s good, because moms just weren’t worried enough. Let’s take a glance at the twenty-nine pages on “eating well.” (Not to be confused with the brand extension, What to Eat When You’re Expecting—a whole book. By the time you’re done reading it, the baby’s in law school.) Naturally, the authors tell moms to try to eat a balanced diet. Fine. But then they go on to say that this isn’t just a question of trying to eat a few more spinach salads and a little less Kahlúa cream pie. No, the writers ask moms to kindly remember that “Each bite during the day is an opportunity to feed that growing baby of yours healthy nutrients.”

  Not each meal. Not each day. Each bite has to be carefully considered if you’re going to be doing the right thing by your child. So “Open wide, but think first.”

  What are the consequences of a single bite you don’t “think first” about? Oh . . . maybe the slow class at school for junior. Maybe weight problems for life. Or worse. After all, eating the precise number of calories and nutrients suggested by the book offers “impressive benefits,” including “better birthweight, improved brain development, reduced risk for certain birth defects. . . .”

  Aieee!! If that doesn’t make mama throw her baloney sandwich out the window, what will? On the other hand, if that mama cannot resist the fatty meat and gobbles that darn sandwich right down to the crust, she is left to feel that she’s a horrible person. A lax, no-good, baby-damning baloney addict—at least compared to the will-of-steel baby mamas the What to Expect authors applaud. Even in the food chapter’s little box about not feeling guilty, they jauntily say, “Lose the guilt, hold the deprivation, and allow yourself a treat every once in a while.” A treat that will make “your tastebuds jump for joy.” And what exactly would that fantastic treat be?

  “A blueberry muffin.”

  Not even a cupcake. I guess frosting is the Wha
t to Expect equivalent of crack.

  Now listen: on the one hand, it’s hard to argue with a book that says pregnant women should be eating well. On the other hand, it’s hard not to argue with a book that drives pregnant women crazy. “It tortures them and it tortures me,” says Dr. Craig Bissinger of the book he dreads seeing his patients waddle in with. As an obstetrician who teaches at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, this is the sum total of his dietary advice for expectant moms: “Just eat like you have your whole life, but eat a little more.”

  So much for the “each bite” advice—advice so picky and so extreme, it’s bound to make any mom self-conscious. (Aren’t the people who think about the consequences of each bite generally referred to as anorexics?) It is exactly that hyperconsciousness—the worry that at any second we could be doing something terribly wrong that will hurt our children forever or, alternatively, that any second is another opportunity to produce the perfect child if only we don’t blow it—that is one of the reasons we’re so worried about our parenting capabilities. Even before our kid is born!

  After birth, of course, it never ends. Go to the parenting section of your library or bookstore—or maybe you’re there right now (so buy this book already!). In front of you awaits a wall of “expert” advice so daunting, you may want to cry. Then again, maybe you’re there because you’re already crying because you think you’re such a bad parent.

  This is not the place to look for reassurance. It’s not that there’s no good advice to be found here. Dr. Spock is still calm and good. Baby 411 seems nonalarmist—it does things like remind moms that even if they don’t breastfeed, “your baby will be fine if he is formula fed.” The books on child development can tune you in to why your toddler isn’t taking your every helpful suggestion yet. (“Sweetheart, let’s not climb on the eighteenth-century porcelain elephant.”) And of course if your child has been given a diagnosis of something you want to read up on, it’s great that these books are here.

  But . . .

  I went flipping randomly through a whole bunch of these books, and I guarantee that if you tried to follow the advice in even a chapter or two of some of them, you would fail or at least forget the million particulars that you’re supposed to do. And then you’ll feel bad. Examples?

  The Happiest Toddler on the Block—ah yes, let’s compete for whose kid is happier—teaches parents how to talk to their tantrumming tots. It is not enough to tell a child who is freaked out by a broken cracker in her snack, “It’s OK! It’s OK!” No, you must “Save your reassurance for after you respectfully reflect your child’s feelings.”

  That’s right, folks. There is a wrong way to calm your children down, and it’s by reassuring them. So next time you’re talking to your kid, don’t do what comes naturally. Think hard about what an expert told you to do and then talk. Otherwise, you’ll be doing it wrong.

  What if you want to encourage good behavior in your child? Saying “Yay!” is no longer enough. Happiest Toddler suggests rewarding moppets “with a pen check mark on the back of their hands when they have done something good.” At night, “count the checks and recall what he did to earn each one. He’ll end his day feeling like a winner!”

  I’m not quite sure why this activates my gag reflex, but it has something to do with the fact that we are hereby expected to notice, cheer, and physically record every wonderful little deed our kid does that day, and then repeat it back, like the king’s vizier. “First, my Lord, you woke up and did proceed not to throw your binky across the room. Huzzah, huzzah. Then, my Lord, when it was time for the day’s morning repast, you did splendidly wield your spoon like a big boy . . .”

  Without that litany, would the king end his day feeling like a winner? Perhaps not. Do you want to raise a kid who needs to hear his accomplishments reiterated every night as he gazes at the physical record of his wonderfulness?

  Just asking.

  Then there are books telling us how to communicate with our kids—and not just basic advice like “Try not to yell very much.” No, they tell you the exact words, like you’re a bumbling amateur who needs a script to say the right thing. Some of these books read like they’re giving advice on how to navigate a tricky job interview. So in a book with the really promising title Am I a Normal Parent? there’s a whole section on how not to quash your child’s will to live when he asks if you like the picture he drew.

  “How do you respond?” asks the book. “One way to help your child trust your response would be to take a minute or so to really look at the drawing and then, instead of commenting on the final product, say something about the process. For example, you might say, ‘I like the way you drew a black circle around the sun to make it stand out. I also like the red shirt on the boy in the picture. It reminds me of the shirt you wore to your last birthday party.’ This will help your child feel like your response was not a lie or a brush-off, but an honest reflection of what you have seen.”

  So I guess “That’s beautiful, hon!” makes them think we’re total liars and the world is a stinking cesspool of phonies? Really—I can see where the author wants to help parents relate to kids, but it seems to me that the more worried we are about the ramifications of every remark we make, the more stilted we become. We are not relating to our kids as kids. We are relating to them as complicated cakes we have been given to make, and if we don’t follow the recipe exactly—a recipe given to us in painstaking detail by an expert chef angling for a TV baking show—the whole thing will collapse.

  That same book has a whole page about whether to tell your child the tooth fairy is hooey—a topic parents have grappled with ever since winged ladies roamed the earth. Why do we suddenly need an expert telling us how to broach this touchy subject? Or any subject? Or every subject? Including—let me rant for another paragraph or two—a whole tome on potty training?

  The Potty Training Answer Book asks many of the questions you may or may not have been wondering about, including, “What books and videos should I choose for my child’s potty library?”

  Her what?

  You know—a how-to library filled with picture books like I Want My Potty, It’s Potty Time, and even, I kid you not, What to Expect When You Use the Potty. (Thankfully, not for pregnant women.) The Potty Training Answer Book lists a full twenty books you might want to get your child about the issue.

  And six videos.

  Is your child studying for an advanced degree in Potty Studies? Has she been invited to present the “Scatological Preschooler” lecture at Oxford? I got through a college course on twentieth-century Russian history with less reading. But the Answer Book then suggests some “favorite potty training resources.” Because twenty books and six videos are just not enough.

  Simply bringing the kid into the bathroom and plopping her on the toilet is not an option anymore. And simply asking your friends, “What worked for you?” is now considered about as sensible as asking them, “How would you perform a triple bypass?” It’s not that potty training is such a breeze—I know it’s fraught with frustration, and, for the record, I did give my kids Everyone Poops and some picture book my sister sent me, so it’s not like I braved it alone. But when an author starts telling you not only to read potty books aloud to your child but to “extend your child’s favorite potty stories and songs into everyday play situations” and to “use hand puppets, finger puppets or spoon puppets to have a conversation about potty training” and also to “retell stories from books and videos while you are driving in the car or walking to the store” and then to make your kid his own “personal potty book” complete with PHOTOS OF HIM to “increase his self-awareness” so he can “reflect on the images,” and on and on, and this whole one-hundred-plus-page volume is considered a sane and helpful reference book rather than the feverish ravings of a bibliophilic, paid-by-the-word, bathroom-crazed, puppet-pushing potty brain—clearly, we are depending way too much on experts who make us think we have to do way more than necessary to help and understand and ultimately save our
kids.

  Where did this bizarre reliance on these folks come from? And can we wean ourselves off of it?

  Jillian Swartz, editor in chief of the online magazine Family Groove, believes it all started the same way the Food Network did, sort of.

  “Every ten years or so,” says Swartz, “a new, once-mundane job becomes deified. Think: Chefs in the nineties and handymen and home decorators in the two thousands.” About twenty years or so ago, another lowly job suddenly became chic: motherhood. (And, to a lesser extent, fatherhood.) “With this,” says Swartz, “came the fetishization of every last mother-loving detail of parenthood, and an ever-burgeoning breed of experts to propagate this often mind-numbing minutiae. Pile on top of that the rise of Citizen Media and all the (mis)information online and we’re all just swimming aimlessly in the murky waters of child-rearing do’s, don’ts, who’s, what’s, how’s, when’s, and why’s.”

  The avalanche of expert advice—and nonexpert advice on nonetheless very enticing Web sites—undermines our belief that we are equipped with enough common sense to deal with most child-rearing issues. That battered confidence, in turn, leads us to look ever more desperately to the experts wherever we find them. At the library. In parenting magazines. On TV. Online. But a lot of those experts give advice so daunting and detailed and frankly nondoable (does anyone really want to spend the day retelling potty stories with the aid of a spoon puppet?) that we feel like failures.

  Then when—surprise—our kids turn out not to be perfect, we know who’s to blame. We are! If only we’d made one more pretend forest out of broccoli spears, our kid would be a veggie fiend. If only we’d put aside that deep-fried Oreo in our second trimester, she’d be in the gifted program at school. And if our child is cranky? Uncommunicative? Headed for five to ten years’ hard labor? That just might be because we told her, “Look, sweetie, a broken cracker is not the end of the world!” instead of saying, “Oooh, your cracker broke. Sad sad sad sad sad!” and respectfully relating.