Lenore Skenazy, a journalist and mother of two sons, believes that while crime in the city has decreased over the years, children are still overprotected—so much so that it’s inhibiting their development. Instead of allowing kids the independence they need to grow into selfsufficient adults, she maintains, parents clutch and coddle.
In April 2008, Skenazy let her fourth-grader ride the subway by himself, then wrote an editorial about it in the “New York Sun.” Responses from shocked and angry readers poured in, and before she knew it, Skenazy had been labeled “America’s Worst Mom.” But she stood her ground, championing a kind of child-rearing she calls “free range” parenting, which encourages parents to let kids figure things out for themselves, make mistakes, and grow. Skenazy took the time to speak with “New York Family” about her controversial philosophy, which she discusses in her book, “Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry.”
What are the benefits of “free range” parenting?
When you let your kids have some free range experience, you get defining moments. It’s like when your dad lets go of the handle bars on your bike and you’re riding by yourself. If we’re always holding on to keep kids from falling, they never get to say, “I did it myself.” You want your kids to be exposed to little disappointments and little defeats as children to inoculate them to ever larger disappointments and challenges they’ll face as they grow up.
What are the dangers of “helicopter” parenting?
We’re treating our kids almost as if they’re invalids. The greatest thing you can tell your kid is, “I believe in you, you can do it.” “Helicoptering” has the opposite effect. You’re telling them, “I don’t think you can do it. I think the world is too scary. I think that you’re too weak, too unformed, too incompetent to take care of yourself.”
People tell me that they trust their children, they just don’t trust the world. But you have to trust your child in the world. You don’t want them to think they can’t possibly survive without you.
Is free range parenting safe for families in the city?
According to FBI’s 2008 crime report, New York City is the safest large city in America. I encourage people to refamiliarize themselves with their neighborhood. Instead of that hour you were going to watch “CSI,” go out with your kid. See who’s out there and how it feels to you.
Why should kids figure things out the “hard way” if we’ve already discovered solutions we can give them?
If I thought that it was so dangerous out there that my son was going to discover the hard way what it means to be held at gunpoint, I wouldn’t be letting him out. There’s a big disconnect between the terrifying things shown on television and reality. Even if the chances of something terrible happening are one in a million, parents still see that one anomaly, and it looks like their child. Put risk into perspective. Statistically speaking, if you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped by a stranger and held overnight, you would have to leave him or her unattended for 750,000 years. If you think that’s a tiny enough risk to take, why not try giving your child the chance to experience the childhood you had?
Is refusing to use the technologies available to us for communication and safety—like cell phones—putting our kids at a disadvantage?
I’ve come around to believing in cell phones. Now, both my sons carry them. I get a call from them when they get out of school. I like knowing where they are. But sometimes, what they’re
selling us implies that our children are the most vulnerable generation
ever born. A car is faster than we were ever meant to go, so needing a
seatbelt is understandable. But baby knee pads? We’ve been crawling for
hundreds of years.
Why
do you think the current generation of parents is more fearful than
those of generations past?
All this information is coming at you—scary
stories on TV, warnings from experts. The idea that anybody in any other
country at any other time successfully raised a child seems impossible.
Yet we’re the anomaly. In the rest of the world, children walk to
school in the first grade, and parents want their children to start
taking on adult responsibilities.
These days, we think of
ourselves as being able to determine everything in our child’s
lives—from whether they’re going to be a good reader to whether they’re
going to be a good person, whether they’re going to be alive or dead or
ever in an accident. A lot is up to us. But kids aren’t Play- Doh, and
the world isn’t something you can control. When you believe you can
provide complete and utter safety from any discomfort and any danger, if
your child experiences any of those, you’ll think it was a lapse on
your part.
Have
you received any feedback from parents who have experienced rare
tragedies?
No,
but I have heard from people who have lived through terrible
experiences as kids. The survivors are the kids who stood up for
themselves. They screamed, ran and kicked. They were assertive.
September 11 was hard
for many city families. Do you think recent unexpected calamities—the
troubled economy, recent pandemics, and terrorist attacks— make it
harder to let go?
No. I think there’s always going to be something scary going on.
You can focus on that, or you can focus on the fact that even in my
lifetime, the infant mortality rate has gone down four times. The crime
rate is down. We have a safe food and water supply. Rather than focusing
on the very remote chance of something bad happening, it’s too bad that
we’re not appreciating the fact that we live in a country that is in a
war but not here at home. We have doctors and breathable air. They’re
not taking 9-year-olds and turning them into boy soldiers. And our
daughters don’t have to go get water knowing that they might be raped on
the way to the well. We live in very good times to be a parent or a
child.
What
advice do you have for parents who want to go free range?
Just look back and think
about what you were doing at your kids’ age. Assume that if they’re as
smart as you, they can probably be doing the same things. Each chapter
of the book has a “baby free range step,” a “brave step,” and a “giant
leap.” They really are just little tasks you can set for yourself to try
to let go.
