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Free range kids

My wife and I subscribe to Funny Times, which is indeed funny. However, the current issue (not on line) has a not terribly funny, but entertaining interview with sometime Funny Times contributor Lenore Skenazy, who has lately earned the sobriquet: “America’s Worst Mom”. Her crime? She let her 9 year old son take the subway by himself, after he proved to her that he was man enough to handle the trek on his own. She wrote a column about it, and all hell apparently descended upon her.

I’m in perfect agreement with her basic thesis, which is that we have allowed ourselves to be terrified into believing that the world is a far more dangerous place than it is, and as a result many of us have wrapped our kids in cocoons that destroy their childhoods and stifle their ability to act independently.

This little interchange brought me up somewhat short, however:

Q: Why were our parents different from today’s parents?

A. Our parents were watching Dallas and Dynasty, where the biggest crime was big hair. Today’s parents are drowning in bad news …

Hold on a minute! That was me. I actually did watch Dallas, which is a story for another day. But in my recollection, the parents of my day were already far down the road toward overprotection. Is it possible that things have gotten even worse for our poor kids?

Maybe it has always been thus. When my kids were small I used to tell them that when I was young I used to have to put cardboard in my shoes to plug the holes. It wasn’t true, but I got the story from my father, about whom I suspect that it was. But it is a fact that when I was young, I walked to school (about a mile each way) every day from first grade on, rain or shine (I have a distinct recollection of the exception to the rule, when my mother actually picked us up when it was slamming down rain. ). When I felt like going somewhere I hopped on a bus, something I was certainly doing when I was nine, since I used to go to Korvette’s in downtown Hartford to waste my hard earned newspaper delivery money. If we felt like playing baseball, we went to Elizabeth Park, by ourselves, and played with whoever happened to be there. Not only did I go by myself, I don’t think I regularly bothered to inform my mother about where I was going. There were six of us, so she couldn’t keep track anyway. If Mark Twain is to be believed, the life of a kid in Hannibal was even more detached from parental oversight. If this pattern of ever increasing parental oversight holds true, what a constricted life the children of today’s children will be living.

I don’t think my experience was unusual, and I do think that it helped us become capable of living and acting independently. So hurrah for Ms. Skenazy for striking a blow for kiddie liberation. You can’t read the interview on-line, but she has a blog (who doesn’t?) you can visit here at freerangekids.com. It’s chock full of examples of the absurd lengths to which we have gone to “protect” our children.


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