Free-Range Kids

When I was 5 in Bulgaria when it was part of the Soviet Bloc and my parents would just drop me off at the kindergarten in the morning and then I would leave and walk on my own to a painting class at 2-3 kilometers alone crossing busy roads without traffic lights, then walk to the park and play and then go home when it got dark. Kids my age was staying home alone all day. Girls were taught to cook at very early age. Also, my father would just send me to the store to buy him beer, cigaretters - it wasn't a problem at the time. During the Communist regime, the country was pretty safe. Crime rates were low, no abductions, theft was almost non-exstent. Nowadays in the same city - it's a totally different picture! Anyway, overprotecting kids does not do them a favor! I highly recommend Free-Range Kids [0]! [0]: https://www.freerangekids.com/

I've seen stories like this many times, sometimes accompanied by comments from police warning parents not to abandon their children. The problem is so bad that there's a whole movement dedicated to trying to stop or reverse this trend that is making (or has already made) it culturally unacceptable to let kids go anywhere or do anything https://www.freerangekids.com/

"I didn't know kids are that smart." Yes!! I wish more people recognized this. There's a "Free Range Kids"[0] movement growing out of this fact. A lot of people have ended up in a place where unstructured/unsupervised time is seen as a "waste" for kids, but I think this is the wrong direction. I think Khan Academy's new experimental high school[1] is also built around this fact (that kids are smart & just need access to resources & meaningful work) [0] https://www.freerangekids.com/ [1] https://khanlabschool.org/About-Khan-Lab-School

Balancing safety against freedom and responsibility. Let’s hope the pendulum swings like free-range parenting (freedom, responsibility) is having a moment over helicopter parenting (safety): https://www.freerangekids.com/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_parenting

I wish http://www.freerangekids.com/ were a better website. Plenty of good ideas though. See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_parenting

I think Lenore Skenazy [0] is forming a national group dedicated to facilitating unsupervised play for children, which if you want your kids to not have phones would certainly help them. I've heard anecdotally that one of the reasons phones are appealing is it's a way to break free of being constantly monitored by modern day helicopter parents. Another program I've heard of but don't know much about is wait until 8th [1], which is people promising to not give their children a smartphone until at the earliest 8th grade. [0] http://www.freerangekids.com/ [1] https://www.waituntil8th.org/

No not that. Do anything to me, anything but being ridiculed by social media! This has helped me become a better parent. http://www.freerangekids.com/

I'm surprised they made no mention of http://www.freerangekids.com/ or (owner/blogger) Lenore Skenazy, both of which typically come up in such discussions.

Your description of life for kids in Poland reminds me a lot of my own childhood in Finland -- except that I was on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and there were no bread lines. (Quite few grey blocks of flats though...) I also remember driving through East Germany and visiting East Berlin in the mid-1980s and getting thoroughly freaked out by what a even child could recognize as a monochrome totalitarian dystopia. It's the US, with its pervasive fear that kids must be supervised at all times or they'll immediately be kidnapped and sold into sex slavery or something, that's the real outlier here. See http://www.freerangekids.com/ for a movement that's trying to roll this back, with some success.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/decision-in-free-range-c… You can indulge yourself on more cases here: http://www.freerangekids.com/

I'm not sure if it was already around, but the first time I heard the term "Free-range kids" was from Lenore Skenazy[1], who was called "America's worst mom" after she wrote an article about letting her son ride the subway by himself[2]. I remember thinking the issue would go away, that everyone would come to their senses soon and that people would realize it made no sense to worry about everything. Instead, I learned a new term: "helicopter parents"[3]. [1] http://www.freerangekids.com/ [2] http://www.nysun.com/opinion/americas-worst-mom/74347/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent

Free Range Kids is a good resource for helping parents feel like good parents when they fight the urge to hover and over-protect. http://www.freerangekids.com/

A useful counter blog about ignoring the perceived dangers of the environment is Lenore Skenanzy blog "Free-range Kids - How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)". http://www.freerangekids.com/ Why wait for planning to change and consequent environment change which will take years when you can send the kids to the playground/school/shops now!

Hi - glad you're interested! My email's in my bio if you want to drop me a line. Yes, kids are effectively prisoners until they can drive. Can I ask where you grew up (what country, or region, etc)? That's really cool re: forest. We're near a nature preserve but I don't yet feel comfortable with my kids going on their own. When the 6 year old is 8 or 9 I might though. I see kids around 9 years old biking to school on their own here, but I live in Hilversum, which is on the crappier end of bike infra for the Netherlands. And yes, it's an exhausting, soul destroying full time job (on top of your other full time job). It can be mom or dad playing taxi but usually it's mom. I've known wealthier parents who just got their kids Ubers too. Stranger things is great, and one of the things that is remarked upon is how different the 80's were from now. This is discussed at https://www.freerangekids.com/why-its-hard-to-raise-your-kids-like-the… for instance. Single parents (ones without a coparent, specifically) have it really, really, really hard. Anyway you basically just described why having kids is so hard.

Relevant: http://www.freerangekids.com/

hy·per·bo·le: exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally. My example is not in any way exaggerated and it is meant to be taken literary. >The reason you know about the one or two instances of cops being called because a ten year old is walking on their own is because it is rare and hence newsworthy. People have been convicted of crimes for leaving their 8 year olds "unsupervised" because of busy bodies with cell phones. Not charged, convicted! The reason its rare to hear about a case is because its a socially unacceptable for children to be left alone now. [1] Its a rare thing to do so its a rare thing to get in trouble for doing. >a child of seven or eight is quite capable of navigating city streets to walk to school, and has been for a very long time. Absolutely! I sure did when I was a kid! I couldn't imagine being so suffocated by my parents that I wasn't allowed to be away from them to walk to the corner store by myself or ride my bike to the park. My dad sent me to the hardware store on my bike to buy propane, nobody batted an eye. Now if an unaccompanied 10 year old showed up trying to buy propane the parents would be arrested. This is madness, I agree, but the "protect the kids" mantra is terrible, but it is also the reality. [1] http://www.freerangekids.com/eureka-breakthrough-study-explains-why-we…

According to free-range child advocate Lenore Skenazy, there are a little over 100 stranger abductions per year in the US. [1]. Therefore, abductions are a not a big deal. According to Wikipedia, 100 years ago, there were about 100 lynchings per year in the US. [2] Therefore, lynching is a big deal. I love this meme about the media. Quick question: for you, personally, when was the last time you saw a media story about an abducted child? When was the last time you saw a media story about paranoid helicopter parents, etc, repeating the ideas you see above? In my experience, the ratio is 1:10 if not 1:20. There's a very straightforward reason why parents keep their kids indoors: the same parents, while outdoors, regularly encounter human beings that they wouldn't trust their kids around. Deinstitutionalization anyone? Free-range mental patients or free-range children: pick one. [3] [1] http://www.freerangekids.com/over-700-children-are-abducted-a-day-says… [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychiatric_institutions#Dein…

The CPS boogeyman was hyperbole, yes. Few freerange parents get charged with anything, but a few do still have to deal with investigations or charges by local police. Is it isolated? Yes. But it happens. Even if police don't get involved, you get flak/judgement from neighbors and nosy busy bodies butting into your business and trying to parent your kid(s). That happens a lot more and is something most any free range parent in a suburb knows the feeling of. The fear is there and my father had plenty of issues with busy body neighbors and the police being called because of an "unattended child" (me). The shit happens and my own mother is one of the judgmental busy bodies herself; looking down on her neighbor for letting their 11 year old child to play jump rope with her friend in the front yard of their house. Has my mother called CPS on the neighbor? No. But she treats them like shit and refuses to let my sisters' visit their house in fear they'll do something "unattended". Yes - those two examples were very personal anecdotes. But it's not like I'm the only person to ever deal with this stuff. A great thing about the internet is you get to meet countless other people who have the same issues you have: http://www.freerangekids.com/why-do-i-keep-scaring-people-with-stories… If the US didn't have a culture of fear and nosy busy-bodies butting into other peoples' business at every turn, this wouldn't even be a discussion and "free…

Schools would impose severe punishments on a child that took that gun to the school. (http://www.freerangekids.com/suspended-for-a-keychain/) (http://www.clickorlando.com/news/boy-suspended-after-using-finger-as-p… etc etc. There are real guns around that size, firing 2.34 mm rimfire cartriges. (apologies if I get any of this terminology wrong.) They do have the potential to be lethal weapons. But then so does the pencil I'm allowed to take on, and the glass and cutlery they give me when I'm on the plane. But they confiscate airline cutlery from people going through security. Even if that cutlery was presented to the person flying. Even if that person is a pilot. The pilot, for the plane that they're boarding, and they're in full uniform, trying to get on the plane to fly it but being delayed while their airline issued cutlery is removed. http://www.cracked.com/article_16849_the-7-dumbest-things-ever-done-by…

Not sure how these might be causally related to this: https://www.freerangekids.com/short-sweet-how-we-got-to-helicopter-par… I.e., decline of deviance might be causing helicopter parenting; or helicopter parenting might be causing the decline of deviance; or they may be reinforcing each other.

Had to dig around for this but it is quite illuminating: https://www.freerangekids.com/how-children-lost-the-right-to-roam-in-j…

> This is a news story and a controversy because it's a weird thing that happened. This kind of thing has been going on for decades now, e.g. Florida mom arrested after allowing 7-year-old son to walk to park alone (2014): https://fox4kc.com/news/florida-mom-arrested-after-allowing-7-year-old… Maryland family under investigation for letting their kids walk home alone (2015): https://www.fox43.com/article/news/local/contests/maryland-family-unde… 11-Year-Old Boy Played in His Yard. CPS Took Him, Felony Charge for Parents (2015): https://reason.com/2015/06/11/11-year-old-boy-played-in-his-yard-cps-t… Mom Arrested for Letting Child, 10, Shop Alone at Lego Store (2017): https://www.freerangekids.com/mom-arrested-for-letting-child-10-shop-a…

Parts of the U.S. are providing parents protection against this sort of thing. Texas became the third state after Oklahoma and Utah to pass a free-range parenting bill [1] called the Reasonable Childhood Independence act. So far this movement seems to be led by traditionally "conservative" states, while the most egregious abuses seem to be reported in traditionally "blue" states, like New York and California. It'll be interesting to see if the trend continues, and how the issue influences politics. [1] https://www.freerangekids.com/texas-goes-free-range-reasonable-indepen…

It's a rare thing, but it is a thing: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arrested-for-lett… https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12031790/M… https://geekdad.com/2015/01/kids-play-arrested/ https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrested-son-park/in… https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/13/parents-investig… I didn't even have to dig to find these, they're from the first page of results of a single Google search. Counterpointing myself though, in the third link you can see reference to active pushback against this whole thing: http://www.freerangekids.com/

You could be arrested or your children could be taken away from you. http://www.freerangekids.com/category/child-protective-services/

The laws vary a lot so check what applies for you http://www.freerangekids.com/laws/

Well, to begin with, find a state where laws are more relaxed: http://www.freerangekids.com/laws/ Moral judgements from people in your community can be bad enough, but it's a whole different ball game when you run the risk of getting arrested!

You joke, but parents that do let their kids walk down to the park[0] or play outside[1] get a social services investigation. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/free-range-family-again-in-spotli… [1] http://www.freerangekids.com/kids-play-in-backyard-while-mom-does-dish…

Sure. Just so we are clear though, there is a huge difference between being regarded and treated as a potential pedophile/kidnapper (father at a playground) vs. simply an outsider. http://www.freerangekids.com/thanks-for-assuming-im-a-pedophile-just-b…

Lenore Skenazy (Free Range Kids) blogged about this. [1] A commenter linked to a podcast with the school Principal. [2] [1] http://www.freerangekids.com/unsafe-playground-happier-safer-kids/ [2] http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20140127-0909-free_play_at_school…