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

by Lenore Skenazy

  This educational obsession can take an ordinary toy—like a little battery-operated light-up drum I saw the other day—and instead of labeling it, “Loud, annoying thing,” insist that it is actually a developmental showstopper: “Promotes hand-eye coordination!”

  That it does. Promotes finger-in-ear coordination, too.

  A package of foam rubber letters to play with in the tub said, “Inspires imagination”—as if the kid were going to start composing Moby-Dick above the soap dish.

  Meantime, an article in one of the parenting magazines, “Why Music Boosts Brainpower,” begs the question: If music didn’t boost brainpower, would it be worthless? In the eyes of a society bent on producing wunderkinds, maybe so. (Another article said cuddling may boost babies’ IQs. That’s good, because otherwise we certainly wouldn’t bother cuddling the helpless blobs, right?)

  The music article went on to give all sorts of suggestions as to how to make your child more musical, while cheerily noting, “Raising a music lover is easy. If you start early and keep it fun, your child won’t miss a beat.”

  God help those who don’t start early. (Never mind that George Gershwin didn’t even have a piano in his house till he was twelve—one of my favorite anecdotes.)

  So we sign our kids up for Gymboree or Kindermusik, or maybe we take them to the local class on “sound and movement” like I did with my older son—a class so boring that the other nannies and moms looked ready to cry. The kids already were. After one of the sessions, I bolted out with another mom, and we bonded by confessing, “God I hate going there!” But go we did, because we didn’t want our children to end up nonmusical. (Even though mine did. And last year we gave him private electric guitar lessons he didn’t really like, either.)

  There is nothing wrong with exposing your children to all sorts of opportunities and toys, of course. But there’s nothing wrong with scaling back a little, either, even on the educational and safety product front. I know the catalogs keep coming, and other parents show up with all the latest inventions, but now is the time to try resisting some of that “You need this thing to make your kid safe, smart, and happy” drumbeat. The one beaten on that oh-so-educational, battery-operated drum.

  Enrichment is all around us. Danger is not. Keep those two straight, and your family will be richer in every sense of the word.

  REAL WORLD

  “Baby Whatever” Videos—What a Freaking Scam!

  A Massachusetts mom writes:I remember when my kids were babies, I had never really heard of the Baby Whatever videos. One of my friends raved and raved about them. I happened to see one at this friend’s house once and thought, “This? That’s it? This is the most boring useless drivel I have ever seen. What a freaking scam!” So I never ever purchased one. Instead, I let my kids play with toys, pull pots and pans out of the cabinet, bounce in their Exersaucer, and other such things.

  My favorite Baby Einstein video story was at a playgroup once. The playgroup met at another mom’s house. She was another Baby video junkie. She put on a video, and the babies, who were about 9-11 months old, stopped playing with their toys and crawling around and just sat and stared. Except for my son. He first tried to crawl behind the TV to see what was there. Then he went over to one of the mesmerized kids, looked at the kid, looked at the TV, and took the other kid’s toy.

  That’s my boy!

  Going Free Range

  Free-Range Baby Step: Walk through the baby safety department of a store with your oldest living relative asking, “Which of these things did you need?”

  Free-Range Brave Step: Your choice: try a day without baby videos or a day without table bumpers. See if your child has learned something new (perhaps the hard way) by day’s end.

  One Giant Leap for Free-Range Kind: Do something that will truly make your child safer and does not involve any new, dumb doodads: test your smoke alarm. Make sure it has working batteries. Make a deal with yourself to change them twice a year, when you change your clocks.

  Commandment 5

  Don’t Think Like a Lawyer

  Some Risks Are Worth It

  Every year, the fifth graders at my sons’ grammar school go on an overnight to a nature preserve. A few weeks beforehand, the parents gather in the school’s lunchroom to hear details of what to pack and what the kids will be doing.

  “. . . rain poncho, hat, water bottle, bug repellent . . .” Gary, the assistant principal, is reading from a list. He has been reading for a while. “. . . sun block, flashlight, antibacterial wipes . . .”

  “I know you’re CPR certified,” says a mom, raising her hand, “but are there other teachers who are?”

  Another mom raises her hand. “Do the kids have to go on both hikes?”

  And a dad: “Are we going to get a contact number?”

  Gary answers yes to all three, though when pressed he admits that the contact number only rings the front office of the nature preserve. This upsets the dad who wants all the chaperones to carry cell phones he can reach at any moment. Another parent asks about the proximity of an emergency room. Finally Gary steers the discussion back to the trip and unveils the most exciting part of all: “At night, there’s going to be a campfire!”

  A room’s worth of eyebrows shoot straight up.

  “I just want to assure everybody that the kids sit twenty-five feet away,” he says quickly.

  Eyebrows wiggle uncertainly.

  “There will be a row of benches in front of them,” Gary adds. “Between the kids and the fire.”

  He gives a pleading smile, and most of the eyebrows back hesitantly down, as parents try to erase their mental pictures of little Jenna or Jayden going the way of Joan of Arc. Deftly, Gary changes the subject to what food will be served. Wisely, he does not mention anything flambé.

  And so it goes, in an era when any time children are about to venture outside the home or classroom, adult minds fly straight to thoughts of What terrible thing could possibly happen? to If it does, are we prepared? to Watch out or we’ll see you in court. No wonder The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook is such a best-seller. We are “worst case” parents, worrying all the time, right down to picturing the legal battle we’ll pitch if we don’t get what we want or if our kids don’t, or even if, heaven forbid, a tongue tip gets scorched by a smoldering s’more.

  Sure it makes sense to think ahead, and some activities really are dangerous. That’s why whenever you go sailing, you wear a life vest. When you go skydiving, you wear a parachute. When you go for a motorcycle ride, you wear a helmet. (And if you are my child and reading this: you never ride a motorcycle. Hear that? NEVER.)

  What has changed over the past generation or so is that now people worry like that about every activity, even ones that used to be considered simple and pleasant. Sitting around a campfire. Playing a game of ball. Even walking home from school has joined the list. Parents feel they must be super prepared for the worst of the worst, or else they’re being irresponsible. Let’s go to the suburbs to see how this plays out.

  My friend’s husband—we’ll call him Hank—used to be a high-powered lawyer in the city. Now he’s a stay-at-home dad in the ‘burbs. Think of the implications. Law. Kids. Time. Naturally, Hank is on the School Bus Safety Committee at his eight-year-old daughters’ school. And naturally, they’re twins.

  So what does Hank teach the tots in his safety program? In fact, what does he reteach them every year they are in grammar school?

  “Get on the bus, sit down fast, buckle your seat belts, and pipe down,” he says. Which sounds perfectly cool, if slightly urgent. “And we tell them to make sure their backpacks aren’t fastened at the waist.”

  What?

  “You know how some backpacks have those belts around the waist that you can fasten? We want to make sure theirs aren’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, just in case they’re getting off the bus and the bus driver isn’t paying attention and he closes the door too fast and their backpack gets caught in
side and they’re outside and they can’t unfasten their belt and he doesn’t hear their screams, so they get dragged down the highway a mile or two before anybody notices.”

  “My God!” I stare slack-jawed at Hank. “Has that ever happened?”

  “Well, not that I know of. But . . .”

  Just. In. Case.

  Now, the hard thing about arguing against the Just in Case mentality is that once you can picture an eight-year-old (or her twin) being dragged down the street by her Hannah Montana backpack while the bus driver digs Zeppelin on his cranked-up, off-brand iPod, it certainly seems worth warning the kids to undo their backpack belts. It’s so simple. And then—whew! That’s one worry off the checklist.

  The problem is, the checklist just keeps growing. It’s like those brooms in the story of the sorcerer’s apprentice. Chop one in half, and it comes back as two. Two become four.

  Worries multiply because we are an imaginative species, and parents are more imaginative than anyone else, at least when it comes to envisioning the wide-screen, Dolby-sound worst. But our worries also get a big boost from professionals: lawyers, principals, and politicians who get a lot of bang for the buck by appearing extremely concerned about our children’s welfare. They’re all imagining the worst-case scenario, too. And the result is a lot of people so busy preparing for the hideous and unpredictable future that they think nothing of trampling the safe and happy present.

  Thus nature centers make kids sit so far from the bonfire that they might as well be home watching that six-minute Yule log video loop that local TV stations play for hours every Christmas. Meanwhile, schools ban activities. Parks ban games. The Chicago suburb where my sister-in-law lives doesn’t allow anyone to play baseball on the local ball fields unless they obtain a permit. So, legally, kids cannot just drop by and play ball.

  As the school year began in another suburb of Chicago, one grammar school’s teachers were required to sit their students down and impress upon them the dangers of . . . hula hoops. The kids were told not to swing the hoops around their necks or arms or roll them around the playground.

  I am trying really hard to imagine how a rolling plastic hoop could possibly hurt anyone except, perhaps, an ant in the wrong place at the wrong time. But for ants, a playground is always the wrong place, and recess is always the wrong time.

  Apparently it’s always the wrong place and time for kids now, too.

  “Something like 40 percent of schools have gotten rid of recess,” says Philip Howard, chairman of the bipartisan legal reform group, Common Good. “Part of the reason is the obsession with testing and that every minute should be spent drilling for the test. But another reason is that you have to monitor recess, and there’s liability.” Schools are so afraid of being sued, they feel they have no choice but to protect themselves from lawyered-up parents, and the most efficient way to do that is to make sure students don’t do anything where they could possibly injure themselves. Like roll a hoop. Or play.

  That’s why so few schools have those ropes we used to climb in gym. (Personal aside: yay. I never could get off the knot.) Some have cut out shop class, dances, and after-school sports. Plenty have outlawed dodgeball. (Personal aside: double yay! Who wants to get slammed with a ball? But my kids miss it.) An elementary school in Attleboro, Massachusetts, has gone so far as to outlaw the game of tag because, as the principal said, “accidents can happen.” And in England, where for generations the kids played a game called “conkers”—you tie a horse chestnut to a string and try to break your friends’ nuts (that really does sound bad)—that game has been all but outlawed, too. Or wait—that’s not totally right. At some schools you can play it—if you wear goggles.

  It’s easy to laugh at those schools missing the big picture: most kids not only survive recess, they need it to survive the rest of the day. But the seemingly paranoid principals have a point, too: lose one lawsuit and, instead of buying pencils and paper, the whole school system could end up paying for someone’s château in Provence. Besides, it’s not as if the principals like being spoil-sports (though it sure looks as if some of those playground monitors do). A nationwide survey of five thousand principals found that 20 percent of them spend five to ten hours a week writing reports or having meetings just in order to avoid litigation. Can you imagine what a drag that is? But they don’t have much choice: half of all principals say they’ve already been threatened with a lawsuit. So hasta la vista, hula hoop. I’m sure the jump rope (don’t strangle yourself!) is next.

  This fear of lawsuits is having the same effect beyond the schoolyard. Normal childhood has become just too risky to permit. So while a Connecticut park district considers a ban on sledding, a parent sues Little League for not teaching her son the ins and outs of sliding. He broke his leg. Another parent sued an American Legion baseball team because the sun was in her child’s eyes. Another mom sued a baseball league when she got hit by a ball that she said the coaches should have taught the player to catch. (The butterfingers was her own daughter.)

  The people who run these activities have understandably become so fearful of financial ruin that they keep curtailing what’s allowed. That’s why I’ll bet that even if your children were taught to swim somewhere, they were not taught how to dive. You may also live in a school district where students are no longer taught how to drive. And here’s a little waiver you have to sign in California: “I fully understand my minor’s participation may involve risk of serious injury or death.”

  That’s to participate in a piano recital.

  I could go on and on about how this fear of lawsuits results in even crazier stuff, like the warnings collected by Bob Dorigo Jones, president of the Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch. His organization runs the annual Wacky Warning Label Contest, which has produced such winners as “Remove child before folding.” That was on a baby stroller. On a scooter: “This product moves when used.” On an iron: “Never iron clothes while being worn.” On a snowblower: “Do not use on roof.” And on a box of birthday candles: “Do not use soft wax as ear plugs or for any other function that involves insertion into a body cavity.”

  Happy birthday to . . . ewww.

  Anyway, you get the idea. I’ll stop. (OK. One last label: “The Vanishing Fabric Marker should not be used as a writing instrument for signing checks or any legal documents.”)

  When companies feel compelled to issue warnings like these, it’s not because they want to win some contest. It’s because they actually do have to protect themselves from being sued for the weirdest, most ridiculous reasons. Reasons that you’d think would get tossed right out of court. “Your honor, I was simply trying to blow the snow off my roof . . .”

  But sometimes a court does agree to hear a case like that, which is what drives Common Good’s Howard crazy: “Allow lawsuits against reasonable behavior and pretty soon people no longer feel free to act reasonably.” In other words, once a court allows a parent to sue Little League because her kid broke his leg sliding into second, Little League has no choice but to start thinking up ways to prevent all future sliding suits. Which means they just may decide to outlaw a time-honored, crucial part of baseball—the very sport they’re trying to teach. It’s nuts! But it’s rational, too.

  What’s worst about this kind of defensive thinking is that eventually it seeps into our own parenting decisions. We start to wonder if it’s OK to let our kids do anything, because . . . what if? What if they fall off their bike or the trampoline? What if they stay home alone and accidentally trip on a toy ? What if they walk home from the school bus stop and get hurt on the way? Is it our fault? The school’s fault? The bus driver’s fault?

  Back in the ’burbs, Hank the bus safety dad has been thinking about that very issue. Although his town is so safe that the Clintons lived there when Hillary was a senator, school bus drivers are not allowed to drop kids off at the bus stop unless there is a responsible adult waiting to pick them up. (In other words: not Bubba.) If there’s no responsible adult there? The driv
er has to turn around and drive the kid back to school. Someone there calls home, and someone from home has to come pick up the child.

  Of course, school bus stops used to be considered a safe enough place to let off a kid. They were close enough to the kids’ homes for them to walk—that was the whole point of a bus stop. But now even a two- or three-block walk is considered way too dangerous. An adult must be there, because . . . what if?

  But here’s another what if. What if we just let kids do the things we did as kids, like walk home from school or wait at the bus stop alone? Most of them would be perfectly fine. A few would get banged up. A very, very, very, very few might end up badly hurt—just as they did in our day.

  That very, very, very, very small chance is one we’re not willing to take anymore, in part because we know that in a court of law, a jury would probably find someone or something guilty. Schools don’t want it to be them. Towns don’t want it to be them. Companies don’t want it to be them. And we parents don’t want it to be us, either. So—thinking like lawyers—we cut out the dodgeball, the hula hoops, the sliding, the sledding, the walking, and, while we’re at it, the warmth of the campfire, too.

  The TV Yule log is still there if a kid really wants to watch. Provided he’s properly supervised, of course.

  REAL WORLD

  Three Bumps in Two Years

  Is Not a Rash of Injuries

  A Free-Ranger writes:One mom sent an e-mail around to a bunch of other parents, saying that, “We need to get the school to remove the parallel bars in the playground. They are right at head level. In the past two years I have seen three kids run into them, and one needed stitches. This is too dangerous . . .” And on and on.