[ENCORE] Ep. 128: "America's Worst Mom" Lenore Skenazy talks about Letting our Kids Grow

Show notes & links available here.

In this episode, I'm talking to Lenore Skenazy about how letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone in New York City led to her being labeled the "World's Worst Mom" and sparked the Free-Range Kids movement. Her book, Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children Without Going Nuts with Worry, along with the programs developed and promoted by Let Grow, counter the culture of overprotection.

Big Ideas

• Over the last decade, Lenore has been fighting the societal belief that our children are "in constant danger from creeps, kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers and/or the perils of a non-organic grape."
• People feel so much fear for their kids' safety, even when there's no reason to be afraid.
• A free-range childhood means kids can go outside after school and play with their friends without it being a structured, supervised activity.
• There are 5 reasons why parents today are so much more afraid for their kids:
  1. Media -- news, films, and crime shows.
  2. Laws and fear of litigation.
  3. Experts in books and magazines that produce anxiety.
  4. Marketplace and safety products that capitalize on our fears.
  5. Technology that allows parents to monitor kids at all times.
• The Let Grow organization promotes two school initiatives:
  • Let grow Project: Kids get a homework assignment to do something on their own, without their parents' help. This promotes independence, a sense of pride, competence, and confidence."
  • Let Grow Play Club: Kids stay after school or arrive early for extended, unstructured playtime with other kids.
• The Let Grow movement is promoting Free-Range parenting laws in states around the country. The bills define 'neglect' as a blatant disregard for a child's safety and wellbeing. It's not letting a kid walk to school, come home with a latch key, or play outside.

Quotes

Lenore: "It's not like parents are crazy, it's that we are being fed so much fear from so many corners of our life and culture that it's almost impossible not to breathe it in. It's like pollution. You're just breathing it in and it gets into your body."

Audrey: "I look to you as a hero because you were at the forefront when this crazy overparenting came into play."

Lenore: "It feels so much less safe, even though statistically the crime rate is lower now than it has been in 25 years."

Lenore: "Your brain works like Google. It takes in all this information and then when you ask, 'Is it safe for my kids to walk to the bus stop today?' up pops the pictures or stories you've heard about, whether it was from 30 years ago or a Law & Order episode yesterday. Those stories are so easy to recall but they're not the most relevant results...so we start making our decisions based not on any kind of statistical reality, not on any kind of reality at all, but on the basis of all these terrible stories that have been shoved into us as we've been growing up."

Lenore: "The media is certainly an enormous reason that we are so much more afraid than our parents who weren't as saturated with these fears as we were."

Lenore: "We live in a litigious society. When you start thinking like a lawyer, which we all do, nothing seems safe enough...So you take something that is extremely safe and it is rewritten through the lawyer brain as potentially dangerous and you see everything through the lens of risk."

Audrey: "People perceive camp or especially letting your child go to camp as being so risky and dangerous. But what's amazing is that statistically, summer camps are far safer than people's backyards."

Audrey: "I think parents feel like when someone's not under their exact, very close supervision, there's this fear. You really want to trust other people with your kids, but there is always a risk."

Lenore: "(Technology) gives us this level of omniscience that is actually very oppressive to parents because it feels like you have to know literally every breath your child is taking."