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

by Lenore Skenazy

  In the end, the vet wrote a page of doggie dos and don’ts and handed it to Emma. “Oh wait!” The vet snatched the letter back. “Can you read?”

  It’s a kids-are-considered-dumb-as-dirt world out there, as Emma and some of the other students learned. But that’s part of what happens when you barrel into the adult world head-on.

  “Why do you think we did this?” Ms. Drusin asked her class. “Have I just gone completely crazy? Why did we do this?”

  Hands shot up in the air. (NEST is a school you have to test to get into. These kids are achievers.) The teacher pointed to a young man. “Yes?”

  “Well, our lives aren’t that exciting. Maybe we have a few after-school hobbies, but mostly we go home and do our homework. You wanted us to do something exciting.”

  Another hand went up. “You wanted us to see what we could achieve—do something that might be a little scary at first.”

  “The whole idea was to see we don’t always need help doing something,” said another student.

  And all of those were absolutely right. (More prosaic but also absolutely right was the boy who said, “To get better grades?”)

  But it was more than all that, too. As Drusin explained to her students, the school’s theme this year is exploration—a word you don’t hear much in childhood anymore, except when it’s, “Let’s explore why you think the colonists rebelled.” The explorations are all intellectual. But because sixth grade is the first year of middle school, Drusin felt it was time for her kids to try the other kind of exploring. The kind that got the colonists to America in the first place. And if you’re wondering how it felt for some of the other kids to do it, read on.

  “For the very first time in my life, I decided to go shopping by myself to make a cake to surprise my parents,” begins the Independence Cake baker, Natalie. But “without my mom next to me, being further than three blocks from my house, I started to feel strange. I even jumped when some older woman asked me, ‘Where is your mommy, young lady?’ ” The store was half a mile from Natalie’s home, and on the way, she says, “I saw all these people and they looked angry to me—like everyone was about to reach out and snatch me.” This first solo walk of hers was “no laughing matter at all.”

  Neither, as it turns out, was paying for the ingredients: “Spending your own allowance is not easy!” (Tell me about it.) But she did it anyway, to make sure the cake was truly, even financially, independent. Then she gathered her bags, started home, and discovered something startling: “The way back home seemed much shorter and more pleasant. Everything bad just flew away because I was already used to the walk.”

  That same experience—terror on the way to a place and euphoria on the way back—echoed through several of the kids’ stories. Over and over they were shocked and delighted to find themselves more capable than they had ever imagined. It’s like one of those dreams: suddenly, you’re flying.

  The other dreamlike part of the adventure was how everything familiar became a little less familiar once the kids were on their own.

  “I knew where I was going,” wrote Megan Mullaney of her walk to a grocery store. “But it was sort of like a different experience. Even though you’ve been there before, you’re more aware of your surroundings.”

  We forget that one of the great joys of childhood is exactly that feeling: how the world that you drifted through holding on to your mother’s hand becomes your world when you start to navigate it on your own. And that’s as true of experiences as it is of landscapes. A girl who cooked all her own meals for a day declared, “Even though I knew what I had achieved was not that special, it still felt special.” Of course it did. Like a first kiss or first car, a whole new part of life had just begun.

  Though most of the parents had not expected it this soon, a whole new part of life was beginning for them, too. The part where you start to let go.

  This was not easy for all of them. One mom was not going to let her daughter do the project she proposed—knocking on neighbors’ doors in their apartment building to say hello—until the daughter came up with a compelling argument: “But mom, if there’s ever a fire, they could help us!”

  Her door knocking netted her two new friends the same age who go to a different school. “And now we say hi to these people all around us.”

  So what happens to the kids with parents—and there were several in Ms. Drusin’s class—who forbid them to try any kind of independent adventure? Well, I’m pretty sure most of them will end up just fine. Just because parents won’t let their eleven-year-old walk the dog doesn’t mean they won’t let their fifteen-year-old start taking driving lessons or their seventeen-year-old leave for college. And also, just because people complain about their overprotective parents doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t find something else to complain about if their parents had let them join the circus at age eight and unicycle up the interstate to get there. That being said, there is nonetheless a lot of resentment out there among grown children who feel that their parents instilled in them too much fear.

  “I’m twenty-six years old and grew up with an extremely overprotective parent who convinced me (unintentionally, unknowingly) that eventually I would be abducted by someone and, most likely, killed,” begins a fairly typical letter to the Free-Range Kids Web site. “It took me YEARS (and therapy) to overcome the fear she unintentionally instilled in me. I am still afraid of the dark, of dogs, of strange men. I live in a gated community and I am always looking over my shoulder.”

  Another Free-Range visitor recalls the abrupt end to her freedom. “I was a Free-Range kid up until nine years old,” she wrote. After school she’d spend an hour or so each day just walking around her small town, thinking about things, singing to herself, and enjoying the fact that she wasn’t home with her four siblings. But in 1998, all that changed—a fact she blames on ratcheted-up abduction mania on TV.

  Suddenly, “to my dismay, my young mom (who was only trying to be a ‘good’ parent) told me that I was not allowed to take walks by myself anymore, because someone ‘can just come and take you.’ Why did my parent start to think this way, even though she knew before that I’d always been safe? Why did she suddenly decide that other people could not be trusted to detect anything suspicious involving a child and an adult in the middle of the day, on the sidewalk? It’s because the TV news is louder than the truth you see outside.”

  Most of the children of very fearful parents seemed to understand—at least in adulthood—that their parents were protecting them only out of love. But still, resentment brewed: “There are so many things I don’t know how to do because they were so protective of me.” “To this day I rue not being less afraid.” “I always wished I was pushed more to do things on my own.” Those are just a few of the many Free-Range posts by people who’d longed for their parents to show more faith in them.

  “My grade school was half a mile away; I was NEVER allowed to walk there or back,” wrote another. “My high school was a city bus ride away, but I was never allowed to ride it, and I was not allowed to drive. I asked [my mom] if it was because she didn’t trust me.” The mom replied: Of course not! She just didn’t trust everyone else.

  As it turns out, that is an extremely common thing for parents to say, and most likely they even believe it. But because the end result is exactly the same—no freedom, constant surveillance—the children end up feeling belittled and distrusted. Ever been in love with someone who takes you out for coffee, then drops the bomb: “It’s not you, it’s me”? Of course you have. Ever believe it? Of course you didn’t. Kids don’t believe it either. When parents don’t trust them to cross the street or go where they say they’re going or buy groceries by themselves because “everyone else” out there is so untrustworthy, kids hear the simultaneous translation: we don’t trust you.

  Parents, teachers, relatives, mentors—the grown-ups in our lives who do believe in us have an impact beyond measure. There’s a Dr. Phil exercise where he asks you to write down the five people who
have had the most effect on your life, good or bad. If you do this (call me a lightweight—I did, and it was utterly illuminating), you will probably find that all the shining stars are the people who believed in you.

  I still thank Mrs. MacDougall, a salty, grey-haired seventh-grade social studies teacher who tapped me to accompany her on a trip to southern Illinois in the late seventies. She wanted to go check out a decrepit one-room schoolhouse she was thinking of buying. Her idea was to restore it and take her suburban Chicago students down there for a week every year to really feel what life was like in the olden days. She was going to make them use an outhouse and write on slates. Their history books would stop at the Civil War. Cool, right? I’d been her teacher’s pet in junior high and stayed very much in touch, so she called to ask me to share the four-hour drive, and we’d stay overnight in the small town’s hotel.

  “But Ms. Mac, I have school,” I told her.

  She said this would be educational.

  “But Ms. Mac, I’m not sure my mom will let me.”

  Mom did.

  “Ms. Mac,” I finally broke it to her. “I don’t have a license.”

  “Do you have your learner’s permit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go!”

  That’s why this book is dedicated to her.

  The people who show us they believe in us are the wind beneath our wings. The black holes are the people who don’t. If you think back on the big turning points in your life, good and bad, you will find all those people standing there, directing traffic.

  At some point, the ones who believe in us trust us to cross the street. And to drive with just a learner’s permit.

  REAL WORLD

  Every Time I See a Kid with a Sucker or a Scarf,

  My Sympathetic Nervous System Goes Crazy

  A Free-Range visitor writes:At 20, I am part of the generation that has grown up with “helicopter” parents. Although I am grateful to my parents for the amount of care and attention they gave me, I definitely feel they went too far in attempting to assure my safety by instilling fear.

  I was not allowed to venture out alone pretty much at all until my teens, and even now, warnings from my mother ring in my ears when crossing a busy street or heading out at night. Although this has encouraged me to make safe choices, every time I see a kid with a sucker or a scarf, my sympathetic nervous system goes crazy as I am sure a tragedy is about to occur.

  I think it must be hard to find an appropriate balance as to how much freedom to give a child, but based on my own level of paranoia, I would tend to think that more freedom is beneficial as long as it is given with the appropriate information and safety reminders.

  Going Free Range

  Free-Range Baby Step: Even grade-school children can come up with a Free-Range project that will make them feel more independent, such as learning how to fry an egg or fetching you something from the neighbors. Or baking an Independence Cake!

  Free-Range Brave Step: This one guarantees that you will change along with your child. Have your middle schooler start doing a task that you would normally do, like taking the dog to the vet or buying the groceries for dinner. Once your children are old enough to drive, have them take Grandma to the doctor or return things to the store. You’ll be a little more free, and so will they.

  Giant Leap for Free-Range Kind: Mrs. MacDougall took junior high students on two-week archeological digs in the blistering-hot soybean fields of southern Illinois. This was the kind of thing only done by college students back then—the seventies—but Ms. Mac believed that tweens were just as capable of digging and sifting and sweltering and living in an abandoned house-turned-dorm as anyone else. Once we junior diggers got back home to suburbia, she had us give slide shows to civics groups. She invited us to dinner at her Victorian home, in twos or threes, and even to her grown-up Christmas party, teeming with journalists (which is, I think, why I became one). All of which is a long way of saying that mentors can change a child’s life as surely as any parent. If you want to take a giant leap for Free-Range Kind, look out for some kids you relate to and bring them into your circle. Give them opportunities to work with you, or for you, and have them be a part of some grown-up experiences. Most adults remember someone besides their parents who played a great role in their youth. That person can be you.

  Part 2

  The Free -Range Guide to Life

  Safe or Not?

  The A-to-Z Review of Everything You Might Be Worried About

  Reader advisory: in truth, this section might not address your every worry because you probably have some worries I’ve never even thought of. For instance, if you have moved to a neighborhood plagued by deadly spiders, all I can say is:

  Deadly spiders? My god. Deadly? Spiders? Deadly spiders?

  Which may not be a whole lot of help.

  Likewise, if you are worried about a huge issue like global warming and how it will affect your child, I don’t get into that here either, even though I’m sure its long-term effects are a lot scarier than whatever might happen if your kid takes a swig of Children’s NyQuil before age four. (See “Cough and Cold Medicinitis,” below.) Giant, societal issues are not ones that you can choose or not choose for your children. Whether or not to give them kiddie cough medicine is.

  So maybe “everything you might be worried about” is a bit too broad. Still, I hope this section will prove a handy reference many of the times you hear about something else to add to your Worry List, and wonder if you really have to. Here’s what this reporterskeptic-worrier-mom found out about fears from A to Z, starting with . . .

  Animals, Being Eaten By

  This is a prospect no parent likes to contemplate. Even nonparents don’t like to contemplate it. In fact, it’s hard to find anyone who really likes to contemplate the idea of someone they love being eaten by a wild animal. Fortunately, you really don’t have to.

  Although a tiger did escape its cage at the San Francisco Zoo in 2007, killing one young man and mauling two others, this kind of thing is so rare that you have to go back to Siegfried and Roy’s fateful Vegas performance of October 3, 2003, for another instance of severe, all-body mauling. That night, Roy was bitten in the neck and dragged off stage by his ferocious costar. (The tiger one.) Amazingly, he survived.

  The few other instances of ferocious animals attacking humans usually occurred when those humans worked at the zoo and forgot to properly close a cage door or two. Teach your children to pay attention to details, and doors, and even if they grow up to be zookeepers, they should be fine.

  Bats (Metal)

  Are metal bats more dangerous than wooden ones, if and when a kid actually manages to hit the ball?

  Little League issued a statement in 2007 that basically boiled down to this: further research must be done. The fact that they haven’t thrown metal bats into the recycling heap means, to me, that they aren’t exceedingly worried about them. So neither am I.

  No matter what bat you’re using, baseball is a pretty safe game. The largest study of high school baseball injuries to date found that baseball had lower injury rates than other high school sports. (And need I remind a certain young reader: that is why some mothers insist on flag football no matter how “cool” it would be to wear padding.)

  Metal bats do seem to make it easier for players to hit the ball a little harder and faster, which in turn may make it tougher for youngsters to catch that ball (or to duck). But still, the chances of being killed by any ball hit by any young person turn out to be three million to one. It is hard to lower a number like that without replacing the bats with paper towel tubes. (Something I’d be willing to do. But I’m not a big sports fan.)

  Simply banning metal bats may not make a difference at all. The best study of metal versus wood was conducted in 2007 by researchers at the Illinois State University’s School of Kinesiology and Recreation. In five conferences, players were instructed to use wood bats in conference play and metal bats in nonconference games. After mo
re than five hundred games and twenty thousand at-bats involving about fifty teams, the researchers found “no statistically significant evidence that non-wood bats result in an increased incidence or severity of injury.”

  It’s hard to believe anything as ugly as a metal bat is as safe as a beautiful wooden one, but that seems to be the case. In any event, paper towel tubes are still an option.

  Bats ( Vampire)

  Avoid these.

  Bottle Feeding: Formula for Disaster?

  I try not to bear grudges, but this is one I do. Hey, it’s only been twelve years. I was out with my firstborn son; he was about three months old, and he was crying. A vague acquaintance of mine inquired, “Oh, are you breastfeeding him?”

  Of course it was none of her business, but stupidly I answered her. “Yes.”

  “Exclusively breastfeeding him?”

  “No. Sometimes I give him a bottle in the middle of the night.”

  “A-ha!” she said. “That’s why he’s crying.”

  That kind of conversation is why this is such a difficult issue to discuss. There are many breastfeeding advocates who believe that bottle feeding is tantamount to child abuse—something only a negligent, selfish, or at least clueless mother would do to her baby.

  But the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that 87 percent of mothers are not exclusively breastfeeding by six months. So if you are bottle feeding, you are hardly alone. Is it possible that 87 percent of all moms are bad? Please. Formula is not rat poison. It’s something that millions and millions of babies have grown up on, even from their first sip (including me). Is it every bit as perfect as breast milk?