November 3, 2025 • 50 mins
Today on Your Child Is Normal, I’m thrilled to re-air one of our most important conversations with Lenore Skenazy — author of Free‑Range Kids and president of the nonprofit Let Grow, which is leading a national movement to restore childhood independence.
Lenore explains why when we trust kids to do more on their own, they grow stronger, more confident, and less anxious. She upends the “hover-parenting” norm and invites us to rethink what real childhood looks like.
In this episode you’ll hear:
•How childhood became over-scheduled, over-monitored, and under-trusted.
•Why giving kids more freedom isn’t neglect—it’s empowerment.
•Practical steps you can take this week to let your child take the reins (just a little).
•Lenore’s latest work including her brand-new TED Talk, “Why You Should Spend Less Time With Your Kids.” (Watch it here ➜ https://www.ted.com/talks/lenore_skenazy_why_you_should_spend_less_time_with_your_kids?language=en)
Your Child is Normal is the trusted podcast for parents, pediatricians, and child health experts who want smart, nuanced conversations about raising healthy, resilient kids. Hosted by Dr. Jessica Hochman — a board-certified practicing pediatrician — the show combines evidence-based medicine, expert interviews, and real-world parenting advice to help listeners navigate everything from sleep struggles to mental health, nutrition, screen time, and more.
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YouTube channel: Ask Dr Jessica
If you are interested in placing an ad on Your Child Is Normal click here or fill out our interest form.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:06):
Hi everyone, and welcome back to your child is
normal. I'm your host. DrJessica Hochman, today I'm re
airing one of my favoriteepisodes, because it's such an
important message, and I thinkit's one worth hearing again. My
guest is Lenore skinnesi, authorof free range kids, and
President of let grow thenonprofit leading a national
movement to give kids back someindependence. Now if you've read
Jonathan heights book theanxious generation, you'll
(00:28):
recognize her name. He thanksLenore in his acknowledgements
and credits her with helpingwrite several chapters of the
book. He even called her quotehis parenting muse. Lenore's
work has been deeply influentialin changing how we think about
childhood safety and freedom.
Her message is simple butpowerful. Kids grow stronger,
more confident and less anxiouswhen we trust them to do more on
their own. And a bigcongratulations to Lenore. Since
(00:49):
we've recorded this episode, shehas a brand new TED talk. I'll
link it in the show notes below.
Thank you again, Lenore, forcoming on my podcast. I'm so
grateful to have had thisopportunity to record your wise
words of wisdom. I'm also goingto nickname you my parenting
muse. So as you give thisepisode A Listen, my hope is
that it leaves you with someinspiration to let your kids
have a little more freedom.
(01:11):
Lenore, scan easy. It is such apleasure to have you on the
podcast. Thank you so much forbeing here. Well, thank you,
Jessica. So tell me aboutyourself. Tell me Wednesday
after that, thank you. It's sucha pleasure to be here in
cyberspace with you. I haven'tmet before, but I bet it's going
to be fun. That's really what Ithink.
Can I tell you after readingyour book, I can tell you are
(01:31):
very funny. Thank you. Well, Iso appreciated reading your
book, because humor is one of myfavorite qualities in somebody.
So thank you for shining yourhumor throughout the pages of
your book, which I am highlyrecommending to anybody
listening right now. Do yourselfa favor and get this book right
away, because the themes of yourbook, I wish I could sing it
from the rooftop, so thateverybody could hear and think
(01:51):
about the messages that youconvey, so that people can
implement it into their ownlives. I think it's so
important. Sing it out. Sing itout. I will you have a song. We
have a song. We have a themesong for let grow, which is the
nonprofit that grew out of freerange kids. And I will give it
to you to put in the notes.
It's, I'll just go outside to Iwill survive. I love it. Oh, I
love it. I love that song, too.
(02:14):
So tell me about yourself. Tellme how you ended up being the
face of the free range kidsmovement. I wrote the book free
range kids. He started the book.
So what happened is, years ago,when our younger son, who's now
25 was nine, he had asked me andmy husband to take him someplace
he'd never been before, here inNew York City, where we live,
and let him find his own wayhome by the subway. Long story
(02:36):
short, I did that. I took him toBloomingdale's. I left him
there. He knew it was that day.
It wasn't like he feltabandoned. It was exciting.
Bloomingdale sits on top of asubway stop. So he went down to
the subway. He took the subwayto 34th Street, which is the
street where miracles occur. Andthen he took the bus home, and
(02:56):
he came home so proud, excited,you know, sort of exuberant that
he had done something that hewas ready for, and that we had
trusted him to do in the realworld. And I was a newspaper
columnist back then, and so Iwrote a column, why I let my
nine year old ride the subwayalone? And two days later, I was
on the Today Show, MSNBC, FoxNews and NPR. And so I wrote, I
(03:19):
started the blog that weekend tosay, You know what, I actually
love my son. I love safety. Ilove my other son too, who never
gets mentioned, calls himselfthe control group. And I just, I
just don't understand, didn'tunderstand how I understand more
how we've come to not trust ourkids to do anything on their own
without us ever, even thoughmost of us grew up either
(03:42):
walking to school or playingoutside on the weekends or, you
know, after school in theafternoon and and we cherished
that, and we loved it, and we'regrateful for that, and it's the
one thing that we can't give ourown kids, is independence. And
it turns out that independenceis really key for for for kids,
for their parents, for bustinganxiety, for a sense of
(04:05):
adventure, and just for the goodof all of us, we got to step
back a little bit. So that'swhat I've dedicated my life to.
How do we get parents to stepback and and let their kids step
up? I'm so curious when that allhappened, when you blogged about
it, and you got a lot of mediapress about letting your son
ride the subway. Were yousurprised at the backlash that
you received? Surprised is sortof a mild way of putting it. I
(04:28):
mean, I'm a newspaper columnist,right? I must have written two
or 3000 columns over the courseof my life. Name another one.
How about that one last week?
Lenoir, that was so interesting,so fun. What about that time you
wrote about bioterrorism? Whatabout all your columns on
Barbie? Nobody cares. Just onecolumn like exploded. So yes, I
was quite surprised. That's sointeresting. I mean, I just, I'm
just so curious, from yourperspective, how did it feel
(04:48):
when people called you America'sworst mom? I mean, did part of
that inspire the work thatyou've continued to do? You
know, maybe that's true. I havethought about it that way. But
if you feel.
Feel like you're sayingsomething that's sort of
thoughtful and reality based,and there's hysteria against
you. Yeah, that does, that doesmotivate me to say, Wait a
(05:11):
minute. Wait a minute. I mean,the reason I started the free
range kids blog the weekendafter the column was so that I
could say my side of things,which is that, like you think I
don't care if my kid lives ordies. You think I don't have any
notion of what goes on in thesubway. I live in New York City.
I take the subway every day.
You're writing to me fromMontana saying you would never
let your kid ride the subway. Iwould never let my kid ride a
(05:33):
horse. I mean, we're just indifferent worlds, and you get to
know your kid. You get to knowyour city. Most of us parents
are making decisions to the bestof our knowledge, knowing our
kids, knowing what we loveddoing and what's important, and
also listening to them. I mean,our older son had not asked if
we would take him someplace andlet him find his own way home by
(05:54):
the subway. He's two years olderand never come up, so we didn't
think about it until our youngerson wanted to do it and and low
back as if somebody else knew mykid better than me. It's kind of
nuts. It's so true. That'ssomething that I talk about all
the time with parents, is that alot of parents want to look to
others for guidance on how toraise their children. But I
(06:15):
think there's so much thatparents know intuitively that I
wish they would trust more,because it's true, they know
their kids better than anybodyelse, hands down, right, just by
virtue of that. So you're withall the time, you know, Dr
Spock, back when there weren't amillion parenting experts and
there was just him, basicallyhis first line in, you know, Dr
Spock's baby in child care istrust yourself you know more
(06:37):
than you think you know, whichis interesting, because it
implies that there you go,Doctor, I keep his book right by
myself. Is that the new version,or is that an old version? That
is an old version? Okay? Becausethe new versions are by Robert
Needleman, who was my collegeroommates boyfriend way back
when. So I feel sorry onehandshake away from Dr Spock,
(06:58):
but anyways, the even, the eventhe info you know, the
exhortation to trust yourselfyou know more than you think you
know, implies that back then,people were also worried, like,
do I know? It's like, yeah, youactually do. So I think that a
certain amount of you know,confusion and worry are just
automatic when you're a parent,but nowadays, rather than being
(07:21):
told you're going to be fine, orI trust you, or everybody's
different. And so, you know, allthe kids are different, all the
parents are different, andthat's the way it goes. It's
like, here is the perfectrecipe. Follow it to the T by
the way, you'd need Madagascarvanilla, you know, that was
harvested at the three monthpeak of its perfection to make
this recipe. I mean, there's somany specific things that you're
(07:41):
supposed to do, to say to yourchild, to do for your child,
that are part of thiscomplicated recipe. And it turns
out, no, you don't have to doall that. I'm so fascinated to
think about how this currentculture of fear has manifested,
because I agree with you. It'sinnate in all of us to worry to
some degree. But I love how youtalk about how the fear has
(08:04):
become out of proportion to thereality of what we really have
to worry about with our kids. SoI'm curious, why do you think,
and you talk about this in yourbook very beautifully, but why
do you think this culture offear has manifested to the
degree that it has. There's alot of strands running through
the culture that have sort ofamped it up. But then there's
(08:25):
one overarching, crazy idea,which I'll get to after I talk
about the strands in my book. Italk about four reasons that I
think we're much more afraid foreverything our kids do, see,
wear, hear, lick, than ourparents. And the first is that
the media is it keeps gettingmore intense. You know, when I
was growing up, there were, youknow, three channels or
something like that. And then inthe 80s, along came
(08:49):
two things. One is cabletelevision, which meant a 24
hour news cycle, which had neverbeen the case before. And also,
in the 80s, we got the kids onthe milk cartons with the word
missing above them and noasterisk that says last seen
being taken by non custodialparent in a contentious divorce
case, which would have madethings a lot clearer, but it
(09:12):
wasn't there. And so it startedseeming like, you know, between
the news and the milk cartonsthat children were being
snatched constantly, and thenthose the media recognizes that,
you know, if you can get peopleto watch more, you make more
money. That's all TV does.
That's all the media does. It'sthat's what Facebook does. The
more attention you get, the moremoney you get from advertisers.
(09:32):
And so the scariest nightmaresof parents became something that
was always cycling through themedia, and then when we got the
internet, I can get pinged whenthere's a scary story. So it
really just started sort ofwashing us in fear. And there's
something called mean worldsyndrome. Maybe you've heard of
(09:53):
it? Have you heard of it? No, itsort of explains itself in the
same but was invented by a guynamed George.
Something. And I think the 60s,and the idea is that, you know,
you watch TV and all you see isthe mean stuff, right? It's a
mean world out there. You know,you don't turn on the news. And
here, you know, 1 millionchildren got to school safely
again today, you know, let'shear more details. Yes,
(10:16):
everybody was at their bus stop,and it was fine. Okay, so
that's, that's the world seemsmean when you watch TV, and so
you start becoming afraid of it.
And so you stay inside, whereyou watch more TV, and you
become more and more afraid. Sothe mean world syndrome is just
sort of the feedback loop ofbelieving the media and not
having the counterfactualinformation, which is reality.
(10:38):
Media is one of the reasons thatwe're so much more afraid. We
live in a litigious society, andsomehow we've sort of imbibed
that, and we start thinking likelawyers, what could be
dangerous, what could be whatcould we be liable for? And
school districts, I just gotthis amazing document, a four
page rule list from a MarylandPublic School District. Of all
(11:01):
the things that you're notallowed to have happen during
recess, like, if there'schildren who are organizing a
game, be especially vigilant,because they might argue, yeah,
they might imagine that, or achild might be left out, yeah,
that's true. And then they haveto either get better the game or
become a nicer person, and theneverybody want to play with him
(11:21):
or her again. Children are notallowed to skip rungs when they
climb on a, you know, one ofthose hanging things. They're
supposed to use their opposingopposing digits when climbing.
It's like who I'm trying toimagine a kid just climbing with
their ring finger. You know,these are things that don't even
happen, and you have to be awareof anything dangerous on the
(11:44):
ground, any tripping hazards,including, wait for it, gravel.
You start, I mean, like youstart living in this weird world
that maybe was written bylawyers, was written by lawyers,
but has no connection tochildren's actual activities, or
what they are capable of, or,and what they're capable of
dealing with, whether it's, youknow, a playground dispute or
(12:06):
gravel underfoot, right, right?
So that just sort of likedistances us from real life and,
and, and puts this scrim ofweird, bizarre, constant danger.
You know, kids feelings aregoing to hurt, they're going to
drip and they're going to skin aknee. These four pages are so
(12:27):
weird. You know, of course, norunning and of course no tag and
this and that. But one of thethings is, and if children are
organizing a game of threesquare, and I thought, my God,
that's the most lawyerly thingI've ever heard, because there
is no three square, there's twosquare and there's four squared,
and clearly they just averagedit, because they have no idea
what reality is like on Earth,right? And so, so we start
(12:49):
thinking like lawyers. Lenore, Iwant to tell you the the
elementary school that I wentto, I actually work down the
street from the elementaryschool that I attended as a kid,
and I heard from a patientrecently that they they stopped
allowing tag, and I just can'tbelieve it. I loved playing tag
as a kid. I love that game. Andwhy? Why on earth are we telling
kids they can't play tag? Itjust boggles my mind. Are we
(13:11):
afraid they're going to trip andfall? I don't understand. Oh,
there's, there's so manypotential dangers. Oh, my God,
Jessica, first of all, a kidcould get tagged, and then
they'll feel bad because they'velost. A kid, could get not
tagged, and then they feel leftout because nobody cared about
them. A kid could be it. Theyare single, they are they are
different from everyone else.
They are ostracized. They mustgo and chase people and, oh my
(13:31):
goodness, the running. And thenthere's the the tension of, am I
going to be caught or notcaught? And then let's just flip
it for a second, because now I'mconvinced, now I understand,
yeah, right, right, right, anddon't forget, there's gravel,
right and there's exercise. Ipsofacto, you don't want to do
that, yeah? So, yeah. So, solet's think about what you do
get from tag a, yes, Exercise B.
(13:55):
What is executive function? Soexecutive function is figuring
out how to do something, how youwill do something, and then
proceeding to execute that plan,and also to be wise enough and
sort of aware enough to pivot asnew information comes in. So
that's what you want to bedoing. Right? You want your
brain to be planning doing andrecalibrating when need be, and
(14:19):
coming up with an even betterplan and then dealing with some
problems, should they arise? Oh,my God, there's a power line
down the street. I guess I'lljust keep driving. No, go around
it, right? And so what is tag,other than a master class in
executive planning, okay? Youknow Jessica, is it? She always
goes towards the tree first I'mgoing to go towards the school
(14:41):
wait. She surprised me. She'scoming here. I'm going to go and
hide behind the, you know, theslide, or, you know, or maybe I
want to get caught, because thenthe two of us together will
play. It's just every step ofthat game is dealing with
anxiety, dealing with newinformation coming at you,
dealing.
With previous things that youstored and thought about,
(15:04):
assessing the situation, problemsolving, using your body, using
your brain. It is. It's afantastic exercise in every
sense of the word, and theymight even experience the F word
fun. Don't know. Why should theydo that when they could be
studying. Did you go and talk tothem at all like, Excuse me,
taking out tag. Are we takingaway lunch too? Should they not
(15:26):
eat? They could joke. Sorry,that's
so, yeah, it's getting it'sgetting preposterous. That's,
that's the truth. Maybe I shouldcall. I haven't called because
my kids don't go to that school,and I, you know, sometimes I
(15:48):
maybe I'm conflict avoidant, butI think you're right that you
have to start somewhere, or elseit's just gonna take a hold of
our society and we'll and ourkids will just be left in their
rooms. I guess that's what we'releft with.
That's what we hear. That kidsare basically in an adult,
supervised, structured activity,which would be the equivalent of
recess with no tag, right or orsomebody hovering over the three
(16:12):
square game that doesn't existto make sure nobody's feelings
get hurt and nobody pushes theball too hard. And then, if
they're not in an adult runactivity, they're generally on a
device. And if you want yourkids to succeed in the real
world and thrive in the realworld, you have to give it back
to them. And that's what youknow, I keep coming up with new
(16:32):
slogans. What is a new slogan?
And Jonathan Haidt, who I workwith, who has a book coming out
called the anxious generation,it's going to be a big deal.
Maybe it's out by the time thiscomes out. But you know what's a
slogan for this? Okay? It's likeokay to save the anxious
generation, which is oftenonline and often depressed, just
say this,be home by supper. It's that
(16:53):
simple.
Be home by supper. And I talk tomy husband about this all the
time, because we bothexperienced childhoods where we
were able to play outside withfriends, and we would come home
by supper,and we have such beautiful
memories of those times. And Ifeel bad. Yeah, so you were
saying, Okay, so the first twothings you said, I was gonna
(17:14):
segue immediately, but I'll gothrough that. Alright, so the
media, litigious society andexpert culture, they're always
telling you, you're doing itwrong. Here's a new way to do
it. Here's exactly what to saywhen you're looking at the kids
drawing, you can't say that'sgood picture. You did a good
job. It's always, I see you puteffort into your drawing skills.
You know, let's, let's have agrowth mindset. Tomorrow, you
(17:36):
could do it again, and the kidwill have two arms instead of
the three that you gave them,something like that. Anyways,
there's experts telling youyou're doing it wrong, and
here's better ways to do it. Andit starts when you're pregnant,
and you have to eat every singlebite correctly. And if Woe be
tied she who eats, you know, abologna sandwich or a piece of
brie, you know, the All,everything bad that happens to
(17:58):
your kid, you know until youdie, is because of that
sandwich. And then there's themarketplace, which knows that
the easiest dollar to get fromany human being is the dollar of
a worried parent. So you worrythe parent so that you can get
their dollar. Oh, are theirknees gonna hurt you? No.
Children crawl 137,000miles before they stand. That
sounds like too much. It's like,well, it's apparently not,
(18:19):
because they all do it, but no,it sounds like a lot. Well, it
does sound like a lot. Iwouldn't want to crawl 137,000
miles. Well, then here's a kneepad. You can put the knee pads
on your child, and their kneeswon't hurt, and it's like, but
don't you want their knees tohurt so they stand because they
can't stand to do so there'sjust all these products out
there that exist that nobody hasneeded since the beginning of
(18:42):
time, and nobody will need untilthe end of time. But they're out
there and they they create aworry. And of course, tech is
the one that does it best,because, Oh, you better be
watching your kid every singlesecond, and you better know
every everything that they youknow every place that they've
been, and you better know theirgrades every second. And so you
start feeling the bigoverarching change, I'd say, is
(19:05):
that the assumption is that if,if you have every single data
point about everything yourchild does, sees, eats, reads,
licks, watches, hears, you canoptimize them, second by second,
heartbeat by heartbeat. Thereare, there are monitors that
will, you know, measure yourchild's blood oxygen level from
moment to moment. And then youcan fix it, and then they'll be
(19:29):
perfect, and then you can relax.
But of course, you'll neverrelax, because getting a
trillion data points per secondis not going to relax you. And
by the way, you aren't God, andyou cannot make everything
perfect. And in fact, she'llcome into the world ready to be
wired by an imperfect world. Andthat's what they're expecting.
That's what their entire brainand gut biome, they're all
(19:50):
expecting, you know, some somemouthfuls of sand and and those
things will end up making them.
Stronger in the long run, nothorrible, horrible traumas. I'm
not talking about that. I'mtalking about some everyday
frustration, dirt, confusion anda couple of B minuses. You know,
when parents ask me aboutparticular recommendations on
(20:12):
baby safety products, generally,my line is, save your money for
a date night. You know, saveyour money and do something that
you can enjoy it with, becauseyou can literally spend all of
your money, all of your hardearned money, on ways to baby
proof your home and, quote,unquote, make them safer.
There's toilet seat lock.
There's Have you ever been aninside house with a toilet seat
lock? That's just the worst.
(20:33):
It's like, I gotta pee and Ican't figure this thing out.
It's literally endless. Onething I've learned as I talk to
parents about fears. A bigexample is the fear of a kid
falling out of the crib andhurting themselves. And
oftentimes they'll have a kidthat crawls, you know, learns to
crawl, and somehow, as Houdinigets out of the crib, and
parents are petrified, oh mygoodness, my kid can get
(20:55):
themselves out of the crib. AndI have to say, of all the times
that I've heard the story, whichI've heard multiple, multiple
times. I've never had a kid. No,I don't want to maybe knock on
wood, but have a have a problemfrom that fall. Yes, they get
out of the crib, but somehowthey're okay. And, you know, I
just think there's a saying thatkids are made of rubber, like
they're they can fall, butthey're a lot more resilient
(21:18):
than I think parents give themcredit for and so that's just
something I try to, I really tryto reinforce, when I talk to
parents, that they're a lottheir bodies are a lot more
forgiving than we realize. Andand it's not just physically
resilient. I mean, the otherthing is that they are
emotionally resilient. And Idon't I hate that. I always have
to give the caveat. It doesn'tmean you can completely ignore
(21:40):
or scream at your kid, they'reall alive, and that's great. But
the Parents Magazine articlethat I quote the most, because I
feel it's the Rosetta Stone forthis current culture, is one
that was about play dates, whichis already a problem. But
anyways, the question that themagazine answers is, your kid is
old enough to stay home alone.
Often does for short periods,but now she has a friend over.
(22:01):
Can you actually make a dash,literally, a dash, to the dry
cleaner? And of course, ParentsMagazine says no, and they give
the two reasons. One is theycould get hurt. And they go into
a long story about some kid whomicrowaved some macaroni and
ended up with a burn. Okay? Andthen the second story is the
second caveat is also you wantto be there in case someone's
(22:23):
feelings get hurt. You want tobe there if there's a squabble
to step in in case someone'sfeelings get hurt. And I thought
that is the most dystopianpossible advice I've heard
anywhere, which is why I keepquoting it, because it's
assuming a that A, you only haveone kid because you're listening
to one conversation the wholetime. B, you're listening in on
(22:45):
every iteration of theirconversation. I don't want to be
Ken. No, Ken is cool at theOscars. How come you watch the
Oscars? I didn't get to watchthe Oscars. He's so funny. Now.
I want to be Ken. No, I want tobe Ken. You're supposed to be
listening to all that andthinking, Oh, are their feelings
getting hurt? I better step inif there's a squabble. It's
like, no me first. No me first,and you actually want them to
figure it out. But ParentsMagazine is saying step in
(23:08):
before they do. So really, whatthey're advising you is to
assume your child is so fragilethey can't handle an argument
with a friend and B that it isbetter to for you to solve it
than for them to solve it, whichmeans you've left them with no
muscle memory, no executivefunction, understanding of how
to solve an argument. Other thanMom, it's my turn. No, she said,
(23:30):
it's my turn. So that's, that's,um, that's the big problem is
that we have a lot ofassumptions about what we can
and must do, because we'reassuming that our kids are so
fragile that if we don't, allbets are off. So it drives
parents crazy. I think it drivesmoms particularly crazy. It was
(23:53):
just a Pew study. Why didn't bigPew study about parenting? And I
thought the most interestingthing was on page 13, where they
asked young people who didn'thave kids yet, do you want to
have kids? And 57%I think of the young men, said
yes, and I think about 43% ofthe women said yes, yes. And I'm
assuming those are differentnumbers than they would have
been a generation ago.
(24:16):
You know, they didn't put it incontext. I wish, I wish it was
there, but I have to assume thatit probably was, because it just
seems like, well, if my job isgoing to be listening in on
every play date and jumping inwith a with the perfect solution
anytime anybody's feelings aregetting hurt, that leaves me
with a terrible life. I mean,it's the opposite of date night,
(24:38):
right? It's, it's like beingwith the seven year olds, but
not being a seven year old. Andalso the icky feeling of almost
having a sickly child, thedifficulty of that, the thinking
of your kid as so inept orfragile that anything goes wrong
and it's my fault because Ididn't step in and now she's.
(25:00):
Suffering that's that's a roughthat's a rough road. I also
think there's such value inexperiencing some conflict in
childhood, because if you don't,then you get into the real
world. Or guess what, noteverybody is nice, not everybody
is going to compliment you andsay the right thing. And so I
think it's really important tolearn how to deal with different
(25:20):
types of people, because somedayyou're going to get a boss that
might not be the nicest, andthat's just real world. Yeah,
right, I endorse this statement.
I'm Lenore, and I approve ofJessica's statement. Oh, thank
you. Thank you. Yeah, and Iwanted to tell you so when I
when I told people that I wasexcited to interview you, and I
told them the story about howyou had your son on the subway,
(25:42):
I got the same response threeout of three times, and that
was, wow, that's reallyinteresting. What she did. But
times are different. Now. Timeshave changed. We couldn't do
that now. We couldn't let ourchildren ride their bikes to the
store by themselves, becauseit's a different world than it
was then, do you agree ordisagree with that statement?
(26:02):
What do you have to say? I hearit a lot, obviously, and I
agree. It feels reallydifferent. It feels much
scarier. We were talking aboutthis at the top of the
conversation about how the mediais so incessant now, and it
wasn't when most of us weregrowing up. But I do have on you
know, if you go to let grow.organd you click on the thing at
(26:24):
the bottom that says crimestatistics, just go look for
yourself. It's, I mean, I don'tmake up crime statistics. I take
them from the FBI, and you cansee that the homicide rate in
the and the violent crime ratein the 70s and 80s and 90s was
higher than it is now. Wow,simple as that. And you know
what? It did go up a littleagain. It was plunging from the
(26:46):
90s down, and then in covid like20 and maybe 2020, and 2021, it
went up a little, but it's beengoing down again since. So the
level that it's at, even havinggone up some in the last couple
of years is still lower than the70s, 80s or 90s. So I'm so happy
to have you on record sayingthis, because I want to tell you
(27:08):
about a personal dispute I'vebeen having with my mom. So this
is my mom, who grew up, youknow, in the 70s, and she did
admittedly hitchhike even as akid, and she's still here today.
She definitely took in LosAngeles. I mean, she describes
her parents, you know, theyweren't they were not
overprotective. They weren'twatching her very closely. And
so she did have a free rangechildhood. Herself and my
(27:31):
daughter, who's 13, we recentlygot a dog, and we've been having
her walk the dog around ourneighborhood. She takes a loop
with the dog. You know, it'sabout a half a mile loop. And my
mom told me she couldn't sleepone night. She was so worried,
because my daughter has been byherself walking the dog, and she
thinks we should have a rulethat when she walks the dog, she
(27:51):
should go with somebody else,for fear of a stranger, that my
dog doesn't look at somethingelse.
And I guess one time she waswalking and there was a man on
the street, and what'd you say?
Imagine that. Imagine that. Andyou know, and I said to her, You
know what, I was proud of. Mydaughter crossed the street. She
had the wherewithal to cross thestreet, go the other direction,
(28:13):
and everything was fine. It wasdaylight. And so I shared some
of the statistics that youshared about childhood
abductions and how they'rereally, really, really, really
rare, that concept de minimis.
Anyways, I think it'sinteresting, because even people
that had more of a free rangechildhood are so taught to be
afraid now, right, even if thestatistics don't support it,
(28:35):
right? You know, there'srationality and then there's
feelings, and feelings alwayswin. You know, there's Thinking
Fast and Slow. Your feelings arefast and your rationality is
slow. And we were talkingearlier about the whole idea of
mean world syndrome. How come?
So I hear this often that thegrandparents who let their kids,
you know, ride their bikes andtake the local bus or whatever,
are now so scared. And I thinkit has to do with the two
(28:56):
things. One is this sort of meanworld syndrome that she's had
another 30 years to, you know,see scary stories and have them
sink in. And your brain workslike Google, which is that, if
you ask Google, you know, wherecan I get a good taco? In
Jackson, Heights, Queens, whereI live up, comes a list of, you
know, oh, there's taco logo,there's taco freesia or
whatever. And it's, and it'srelevant, right? It's, it's the
(29:18):
search results that I'm lookingfor a lot of great taco places.
But if I ask, Is my kid safe atthe bus stop or walking the dog?
Up come the worst stories of thelast 50 years. Literally, the
last 50 years. Eyton page was athis bus stop in 1979 and he was
taken. JC Dugard was at her busstop in 1980 something, and she
was taken. Because these are thestories. First of all, these are
(29:40):
stories, right? You can't, youcan't access non stories about
you and me waiting at the busstop and the bus comes and we go
to school. And also, the moreyou know, the more emotional
something is, the easier it isto retrieve. So you got actual
footage, and you have stories,and you have emotion, and those.
Populate the search results ofis my kid safe walking the dog?
(30:04):
And so it looks like, no, yourkid, it's crazy to let your kid
walk the dog, don't you rememberthese three stories from, you
know, all these different erasand all these different states,
and the more easy it is for yourbrain to retrieve a story or to
retrieve an image or an idea,the more common your brain
thinks it is. That's just afallacy. It's called the
(30:24):
availability heuristic. The moreavailable a story is, the more
likely and common you think itis. And so we're all prey to
that. And so I'm not surprisedthat your mom in the intervening
30 years has gotten more scared.
But if you want to try to usethat slow, rational part of your
brain, go look up the actualsafety statistics. So that's it.
Yes, no. And are the rates ofabduction still as low as you
(30:49):
quoted in your book? They'reextraordinarily low. They're
extraordinarily low. I mean, Ialways talk to this poor guy,
David Finkelhor. He runs thecrimes against children Research
Center, and he is tasked withfiguring out, you know, how many
kids are abducted a year. And myother son points out, by the
time you're talking about thenumber of kids abducted, you've
lost the argument, which istrue, because everybody always
(31:10):
imagines, well, it might be veryfew, but what if mine is one of
them, but it's it's very, verylow. If you want your kid to be
kidnapped by a stranger, you'dhave to leave them outside for
750,000years for it to be statistically
likely that they would bekidnapped in a Law and Order
Type kidnapping. Peter Gray saidsomething interesting. He said,
(31:32):
The truth is, nobody wants yourkids. Yeah, yeah, there's,
there's no Henry story like thatto the ransom spreadsheet. But
the the other point is that,like, people always think that,
like there's safety or danger,and so I might as well go with
safety, right? I'm not going tolet my kid be kidnapped. It's
like, okay, well, what about theother side of things? What about
soaring rates of depression andanxiety, which, Peter has a
(31:53):
paper in the in the Journal ofPediatrics that traces not just
a correlation, but he believes acausation between as children's
independence, agency free playhave gone down literally over
the decades, not just sincecovid, not just since phone but
over the decades their mentalhealth has gone down in in
(32:14):
tandem. These fears arenegatively impacting our youth.
I think so. And do you, I'mcurious, are there any other
common misconceptions of fearthat are prevailing our society?
Any anything else that that youthink parents should be aware
of, where the where the risksare out of proportion to
(32:35):
reality? Oh, that's such aninteresting question. What I
really liked in your book, if Iif just to be a leading, oh,
Halloween. So yeah, to lead, theanswer is Halloween. Yeah,
Halloween is great. I think Icall Halloween the test market
for our fears, because we seehow outlandish our advice can
get. And if people think it'snot outlandish, then they then
it sort of permeates the rest ofthe culture. So the number of
(32:58):
children killed by a stranger'spoisoned candy on Halloween,
turns out to be you read thebook? It's zero. It's zero.
Yeah, I actually talked to thesociologist who figured this
out. He actually went back to1958 and it and would read the
newspapers for November, 1,second and third in all those
(33:19):
eras to see if you know childdead and and, in fact, no, and
that would have been a bigstory. And there was one kid who
was poisoned by his dad for lifeinsurance policy purposes,
right? There's a life insurancepolicy that the father actually
three you'd taken out on thekid. And the the pathetic part
is that that dad sort ofbelieved what a lot of us, just
like so many kids are killed onHalloween by poison candy.
(33:40):
What's one more? It's likethere's this big pile of dead
kids. I'll just throw my kid onthere and, you know, we'll be
off to the races, and I'll getthe insurance policy. But it
turns out that actually, no,nobody is killed by that. And
you believed it, and you triedit, and he ended up being
executed himself, because, ofcourse, it was Texas. And then
you talked about a kid who gotinto their uncle's heroin and
(34:02):
always candy, yeah. So what'samazing is the power of myth to
shape our reality, which is thatthe University of Michigan just
did a study in a survey inSeptember, and I thought the
statistics were pretty shocking.
Maybe they won't shock you.
You're working as a pediatricianall the time, but they asked
parents of kids age nine to 11.
This was 1000 parents acrossevery demographic and geographic
(34:25):
area of America. Would you letyour kid trick or treat without
an adult? And the percent whosaid yes is these are kids nine
to 11, is what I'm scared tofind out the answer, 25% 15.
15% Wow.
Well, the sad part is, I havesuch wonderful memories of
(34:46):
Halloween being without myparents. You know, with my
friend Monica, we went fromhouse to house, and we collected
all this candy and we had thiswe had the best time. And so I
worry that with all of thisfear, we're literally removing
joy from our kids. Child.
Heads,yes, the short answer is, we
are. But it's, you know, if you,if you sort of want to claw our
way back, you have to point outthat it's not just joy, it's,
(35:09):
it's development. And part ofthe reason Halloween was
exciting is you were out on yourown at night, right? And you
were sort of dressed up like agrown up, whether you were a
vampire or a ballerina orwhatever, and you sort of had a
job, which was to knock on doorsand get something. And so it was
really the one night of the yearthat you got to be an adult. You
(35:30):
were facing your fears, you weredoing a job. You were dressed
like some, you know, something,not just a kid. And to take that
out of kids lives to make themsafer when no child has been
poisoned by a kid by a strangeron Halloween, and there's no
increase in child molesting byanybody on the sex offense
(35:51):
registry, which is another fearon Halloween. So if there's the
one thing that kids have to beaware of on Halloween is cars,
and one of the reasons that carsare such a danger, especially at
this point, is that so many carsare creeping along after their
kids as they go from house tohouse. So really, I would say,
let your kids trick or treat.
(36:12):
Tell them they can't go intoanybody's house and they should
wear something very reflective.
That's what I'd say. Yes, no,that no. I think that's great
advice. It's like the idea is tolet our kids do things, be
independent, but also teach themhow to be safe, appropriately
safe, right? Appropriately safe.
And then there's some safetythat comes from street smarts,
from saying, I am going to crossthe street, there's this guy
(36:34):
there, or you want them to useto develop their own smarts and
common sense, and if we're theredoing everything with them or
for them, they don't get todevelop it just like you know,
if you are holding your kid upso that they can pretend that
they're hanging from the junglegym, they will get no muscles,
(36:55):
right at some point you justhave to leave them hanging, as
it Were, with or without theiropposable thumbs in the mix, at
some point, you just have toleave them hanging for for their
benefit. So now I want to askyou for parents that are
listening, and maybe they are.
Maybe they think of themselvesas falling prey to the fear
culture, and they want to figureout how to get themselves out of
(37:17):
it. In your book, you talk a lotabout baby steps and how we can,
how we can think about more babysteps to have our kids become
more free range. Can youdescribe some baby steps that
parents can start to think aboutso they can implement into their
lives?
I can, but I'm going to pivot tolet grow, because let grow is
the nonprofit that grew out offree range kids, and when we
(37:39):
started it, our goal was nolonger to try to change minds.
I'd been lecturing about freerange kids for 10 years, and
everyone would nod along, andnothing would change. So when we
started let grow, we said ourgoal is to change behavior. So
what is the easiest way to dothat? It's collective action. Is
a lot easier than individualaction. And so let grow is
(38:04):
trying to promote a couplethings in the schools that you
can also try at home, but in theschools, it's a lot of people
doing the same thing at once,which has its own power. And so
we try to get schools to stayopen. And I would recommend you
talking to your school aboutthis for what we call a let grow
play club, where there's anadult watching the kids, but
they're like a lifeguard at thepool. You know, maybe once in a
(38:26):
while they'll blow a whistle,but really, the kids are making
up their own games. They'rehaving their arguments, they're
solving their Spats. They'recoming up with something fun to
do. They're changing the rules.
They're deciding who they wantto play with, who they don't
want to play with, and it islike a wildlife preserve of our
childhood after school, maybefive days a week, maybe three
days a week, whatever the schooldoes, it's mixed ages, and
(38:48):
there's no devices. So that is areally easy way to give kids
back the, you know, all theskills and the joy that they get
from free play. So that's easierthan doing it on your own and
trying to find a playmate. So Irecommend that. And then the
other thing we recommend as away to really make it much
(39:09):
easier to let go just a littlebit or more, is to have the
school assign what we call thelet grow experience. All our
materials are free, and so thelet grow experience is a
homework assignment that tellskids to go home and do something
new with your parentspermission, but without your
parents. And once again, it canbe the walking of the dog. It
(39:30):
can be, you know, wash the car,climb a tree, go to the store,
babysit your younger sibling,make pancakes for the whole
family. And the great thingabout this experience is that
all the kids are doing it andall the parents are doing it so
the parents don't feel likethey're the crazy one letting
their kid walk the dog right, orplay at the park. And so it's
(39:53):
just re normalizing the idea ofletting your kids go, which is
so.
So easy when you got a littlepush from the school saying,
This is really good, just tryit. And they're not saying you
have to put them on the subway.
They're just saying, figure outsomething that's right for you,
your kid, your neighborhood, andof course, your kids can do it
with friends. It doesn't have tobe alone, but it has to be
(40:13):
without you. And that's theeasiest way to take a step back.
Is when everybody's doing itwhen the school is recommending
it. No, you're right, because Itry to push my kids to be a
little more independent, and Ido feel like I might get, you
know, looked at once or twicefrom other moms that I'm being a
little bit different. My bigexample, personally, is my kids,
(40:34):
because I'm not home right whenthey get out of school, we have
a nanny, and then our nannydoesn't drive, and our kids go
on the LA public bus with ournanny, and they're the only kids
at my genuinely they're the onlychildren at our local elementary
school that take the LA publicbus home. And I get so many
(40:55):
looks of disbelief, so manyquestions, how could I, as a
pediatrician, allow my kids totake the LA public bus two miles
from the elementary school tohome? And the the funny part is,
My son likes it. When I askedhim about it, he goes with his
little sister, and he says helikes that. He feels
independent. He feels like hegets to do something different.
(41:15):
And so that says that thatspeaks volumes to me, that for
him, it's not a chore for him.
He genuinely enjoys it. But Idefinitely get questions from
the local parents. Well, it'sinteresting, because you are a
pediatrician, they should sortof assume that you have some
clue as to what's good for kids,right? Why would you be in this
profession? If you werecompletely oblivious to danger
(41:38):
and health? That wouldn't youwouldn't be a very great
pediatrician, right? Thank you.
Thank you. You think that theywould take a clue? Yes? So a
collective problems are easiersolved with collective action.
But it's so interesting thatyour son feels proud and kind of
happy doing this. It doesn'tsurprise me at all. And when you
do step back and let your kidsdo something like that. A, they
(42:01):
get this rush of excitementbecause they're big, right?
They're back to this Tom Hanksidea, I can do something in the
real world. B, you feel soproud, right? I mean, I could
see it. You're smiling as you'retelling the story. I mean, he's
honestly I feel proud, but Ialso recognize that when people
listen to me telling the story,I may get judged, right? Because
(42:22):
it's not a very typical judgingeverybody every single second.
That's just human nature. That'strue. I agree with that. I gotta
deal with it. And I was gonnasay that the other thing that
your son is getting, aside frombeing part of the real world,
which is very heady and veryyour brain, is expecting that as
a child, they never expected tobe in a little cocoon. That's a
(42:42):
strange way to live. But he alsogets this other gift from you,
which is that you believe inHim, and to have your parents
not just love you and protectyou, but believe in you, think
that you're smart, you're brave,you're capable, and they put
their money where their mouthis, and they let you take a bus
that is sojust breathing in, it's just
(43:07):
fortifying, it's the windbeneath their wings, and to give
that to your child, as opposedto Honey, I'll be with you now.
Let me handle that. Oh, that'sdirty. Don't touch that. Oh, let
me help you. It's a differentfeeling. And I think your son is
lucky to have a mom who believesin Him. Thank you. Thank you.
And I do trust him. I mean, Ido. We do talk about safety
(43:30):
precautions and looking bothways and paying attention, so
it's not as if I just send himon his way without guidance. But
yeah, I do trust him, and even Ithought of an example this
morning. Something new we'vebeen having our eight year old
daughter do is she knows how towork our latte machine, the
(43:50):
Nespresso machine, and she'sbeen making my husband his
morning lattes. She lovesfrothing the milk, and she loves
putting the Nespresso are outhere. Oh my god, somebody to
make my latte in the morning.
How fantastic. When, at first Ithought, Should we be watching
her? Because scald burns arecommon for kids, and I watched
(44:11):
her do it, and she makes thelatte with caution, and she does
it well, and she's so proud ofherself to make it and give it
to my husband and it it worksfor both of us. You know, for
the parent, we're so excited towatch her participate and help
andand learn a new skill, and she's
so proud of herself when shehands him his morning latte. So
there again, you've mentioned somany great things. It's she's
(44:33):
proud. She knows you trust her,and also she's contributing.
She's not just a taker rightnow, she's a giver, right? She's
part of the economy of yourfamily. You You love her, but
you also are grateful to her. Soshe's not just grateful to you.
That's a that's a nicerelationship, as opposed to, you
know, giving the dog a treat,yes, no, and it feels good to be
(44:54):
a giver.
I think that's so smart to thinkabout.
The collective and how to try tochange the culture for our
children. Because I do agreethat that's that's a big that's
a meaning, that's a meaningfulstep. I always complain because
our neighborhood, there are alot of children that live in the
neighborhood, but rarely do Isee kids out and about playing
(45:16):
rarely, and so I'll walk with mykids, looking for kids, for
other kids around, for them toplay with. And I really don't
see any kids. You're like apredator. Where are the
children?
It's true. It's true. So here'sanother idea, which is to keep
Friday afternoons free. Try toget some other friends in the
neighborhood just one afternoona week. Don't schedule the Kumon
(45:40):
or the Mandarin or whatever thatday. And it's the Spanish
lessons, the tutors, Spanishlessons, sports, right? This is
a sport. It's called beingalive, right? Having fun, making
things happen, making friends.
And the joy of having somebodyin your neighborhood that you
can hang out with, well, theyneed to. They need to be around
these other kids for this tohappen. And maybe it requires
(46:02):
you going on, you know, nextdoor.com or talking to other
parents at, you know, at schoolat some point, just saying,
like, Hey, how about this Fridayafternoon thing? It's a great
idea free play. That's a greatidea, using next door to incur
to see if parents want to bringtheir kids over. I'm going to do
that. Why not? Hopefully, tryingto get a grant to start a little
(46:23):
app where you can find likeanybody else, I'm in 11372,
anyone else in 11372, want tolet their kids play on Fridays?
You know, I'll be on the stoopon 80th Street. And anybody who
wants to send their kids can,have you gotten a lot of good
feedback. It's let grow.org It'slet grow.org Yeah, which is real
fine, you know. And there'sstuff for individual parents
too. It's basically the sameideas for individuals as we
(46:46):
recommend for schools. You know,let your kid do something new on
their own and try to get, youknow, other parents who will let
their kids play outside. One momwho just had her kid do the let
grow project. Fifth grade,daughter never walked home from
school by herself. It's here inNew York City. And she said,
Well, how about it? And that'swhat the kid decided to do, walk
home with a friend, and I hadthe kid write something as long
(47:07):
as the mom was writing to me, Iwas like, well, could you have
your kid right how it was? Andthe mom first wrote this
poignant little story about howshe her daughter had been so
sort of brave and, you know, Iguess, assertive as a toddler,
and then had grown more timidover the years, and would say
things like, I shouldn't havedone that, or I should never
have tried. And it was breakingthe mom's heart, you know, to
(47:29):
see the kid both timid and alsoblaming herself when things
didn't go well no matter what.
And so she was surprised, buther daughter said, Yeah, I am
ready to walk home. So shewalked home with a friend. And
she said walking home was soscary that first time, because
she kept looking in all the carsand vans, you know, was
something terrible going tohappen. And she watched TV with
(47:50):
her grandmother, so she knewthat there were, you know,
predators and shipwrecks andasteroids. She was just afraid
of everything. And then she didit again. And she said, what was
really strange is that thistime, I still, you know, glanced
over my shoulder, but I wasalmost as happy and carefree as
my friend. And it's like, Imean, we send our kids to
(48:11):
therapists for that exactbreakthrough right to be almost
as carefree and happy as as acarefree, happy child. And it's
free. This is free. It's freefor the schools. It's free for
the parents. It takes no time,and so
it's still slower than I wouldlike. I mean, the electro
(48:33):
project and the electroexperience is just, they're all
there on the site. I wish everyschool would start doing them
tomorrow. You have tried to getan NIH grant, a therapist we
work with trying to get an NIHgrant to test independence as
therapy for children withanxiety. But of course, it's
also preventative, because yougrow up thinking, of course, I
(48:53):
can do things. Of course, I'mpart of the world. Of course my
parents need me to bring themtheir coffee. Of course, I am
smart enough and strong enoughand capable enough to do these
things. So I feel like ourmessage is very clear, our
methods are very simple, and ourmoment is now. I think you, I
think you're right, right on,because we are doing our kids
(49:14):
such a favor if we give themopportunities to be independent
and to play without parentshovering over them. That's
right, I was going to sayspeaking to the mic, but you are
speaking into the mic. You know?
What else I like that youmentioned in the book, which I
wholeheartedly agree with, andyou talked about the media and
the effects of media making usfearful. But I think for the
sake of our children, I thinkit's so important to turn the
(49:36):
news off when they're around. Ithink we do them such a
disservice if we're constantlyhaving the news on and they're
hearing the news, because thatwill seep into the young brains.
Yeah, yeah, there's no need to.
I mean, I think we should. Andyou're talking to somebody who
worked in the tabloid for 14years. I was at the New York
Daily News. You know, there's alot of bad news on that front
page, but yeah, I'd say turn offthe news. Why would you want
(49:58):
death and doom as your.
Wallpaper,well said, well. Said, well,
thank you so much. This has beenso enlightening, so helpful. I
so agree with your message, andI really hope that more and more
people tune in. I think letgrow.org is phenomenal, and if
there's any way can ever helpspread the message of let
(50:19):
grow.org. Please let me know. Goto your school. Go to your kids
school tomorrow. Hey, I wastalking to this lady. She
doesn't seem crazy. She's got anidea, and it's free and it's
free. Well, thank you so muchfor your time, your expertise
and all that you do. I amincredibly appreciative more
than more than you could know.
Oh well, okay, I think I know alot at this point, but this was
(50:39):
fun, and I'm glad you're apediatrician spreading these
messages that's that's reallyimportant, too. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you for listening,and I hope you enjoyed this
week's episode of your child isnormal. Also, if you could take
a moment and leave a five starreview, wherever it is you
listen to podcasts, I wouldgreatly appreciate it. A big
thank you to all of youlisteners, and we'll see you
next Monday. Bye.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to your child is
normal. I'm your host. DrJessica Hochman, today I'm re
airing one of my favoriteepisodes, because it's such an
important message, and I thinkit's one worth hearing again. My
guest is Lenore skinnesi, authorof free range kids, and
President of let grow thenonprofit leading a national
movement to give kids back someindependence. Now if you've read
Jonathan heights book theanxious generation, you'll
(00:28):
recognize her name. He thanksLenore in his acknowledgements
and credits her with helpingwrite several chapters of the
book. He even called her quotehis parenting muse. Lenore's
work has been deeply influentialin changing how we think about
childhood safety and freedom.
Her message is simple butpowerful. Kids grow stronger,
more confident and less anxiouswhen we trust them to do more on
their own. And a bigcongratulations to Lenore. Since
(00:49):
we've recorded this episode, shehas a brand new TED talk. I'll
link it in the show notes below.
Thank you again, Lenore, forcoming on my podcast. I'm so
grateful to have had thisopportunity to record your wise
words of wisdom. I'm also goingto nickname you my parenting
muse. So as you give thisepisode A Listen, my hope is
that it leaves you with someinspiration to let your kids
have a little more freedom.
(01:11):
Lenore, scan easy. It is such apleasure to have you on the
podcast. Thank you so much forbeing here. Well, thank you,
Jessica. So tell me aboutyourself. Tell me Wednesday
after that, thank you. It's sucha pleasure to be here in
cyberspace with you. I haven'tmet before, but I bet it's going
to be fun. That's really what Ithink.
Can I tell you after readingyour book, I can tell you are
(01:31):
very funny. Thank you. Well, Iso appreciated reading your
book, because humor is one of myfavorite qualities in somebody.
So thank you for shining yourhumor throughout the pages of
your book, which I am highlyrecommending to anybody
listening right now. Do yourselfa favor and get this book right
away, because the themes of yourbook, I wish I could sing it
from the rooftop, so thateverybody could hear and think
(01:51):
about the messages that youconvey, so that people can
implement it into their ownlives. I think it's so
important. Sing it out. Sing itout. I will you have a song. We
have a song. We have a themesong for let grow, which is the
nonprofit that grew out of freerange kids. And I will give it
to you to put in the notes.
It's, I'll just go outside to Iwill survive. I love it. Oh, I
love it. I love that song, too.
(02:14):
So tell me about yourself. Tellme how you ended up being the
face of the free range kidsmovement. I wrote the book free
range kids. He started the book.
So what happened is, years ago,when our younger son, who's now
25 was nine, he had asked me andmy husband to take him someplace
he'd never been before, here inNew York City, where we live,
and let him find his own wayhome by the subway. Long story
(02:36):
short, I did that. I took him toBloomingdale's. I left him
there. He knew it was that day.
It wasn't like he feltabandoned. It was exciting.
Bloomingdale sits on top of asubway stop. So he went down to
the subway. He took the subwayto 34th Street, which is the
street where miracles occur. Andthen he took the bus home, and
(02:56):
he came home so proud, excited,you know, sort of exuberant that
he had done something that hewas ready for, and that we had
trusted him to do in the realworld. And I was a newspaper
columnist back then, and so Iwrote a column, why I let my
nine year old ride the subwayalone? And two days later, I was
on the Today Show, MSNBC, FoxNews and NPR. And so I wrote, I
(03:19):
started the blog that weekend tosay, You know what, I actually
love my son. I love safety. Ilove my other son too, who never
gets mentioned, calls himselfthe control group. And I just, I
just don't understand, didn'tunderstand how I understand more
how we've come to not trust ourkids to do anything on their own
without us ever, even thoughmost of us grew up either
(03:42):
walking to school or playingoutside on the weekends or, you
know, after school in theafternoon and and we cherished
that, and we loved it, and we'regrateful for that, and it's the
one thing that we can't give ourown kids, is independence. And
it turns out that independenceis really key for for for kids,
for their parents, for bustinganxiety, for a sense of
(04:05):
adventure, and just for the goodof all of us, we got to step
back a little bit. So that'swhat I've dedicated my life to.
How do we get parents to stepback and and let their kids step
up? I'm so curious when that allhappened, when you blogged about
it, and you got a lot of mediapress about letting your son
ride the subway. Were yousurprised at the backlash that
you received? Surprised is sortof a mild way of putting it. I
(04:28):
mean, I'm a newspaper columnist,right? I must have written two
or 3000 columns over the courseof my life. Name another one.
How about that one last week?
Lenoir, that was so interesting,so fun. What about that time you
wrote about bioterrorism? Whatabout all your columns on
Barbie? Nobody cares. Just onecolumn like exploded. So yes, I
was quite surprised. That's sointeresting. I mean, I just, I'm
just so curious, from yourperspective, how did it feel
(04:48):
when people called you America'sworst mom? I mean, did part of
that inspire the work thatyou've continued to do? You
know, maybe that's true. I havethought about it that way. But
if you feel.
Feel like you're sayingsomething that's sort of
thoughtful and reality based,and there's hysteria against
you. Yeah, that does, that doesmotivate me to say, Wait a
(05:11):
minute. Wait a minute. I mean,the reason I started the free
range kids blog the weekendafter the column was so that I
could say my side of things,which is that, like you think I
don't care if my kid lives ordies. You think I don't have any
notion of what goes on in thesubway. I live in New York City.
I take the subway every day.
You're writing to me fromMontana saying you would never
let your kid ride the subway. Iwould never let my kid ride a
(05:33):
horse. I mean, we're just indifferent worlds, and you get to
know your kid. You get to knowyour city. Most of us parents
are making decisions to the bestof our knowledge, knowing our
kids, knowing what we loveddoing and what's important, and
also listening to them. I mean,our older son had not asked if
we would take him someplace andlet him find his own way home by
(05:54):
the subway. He's two years olderand never come up, so we didn't
think about it until our youngerson wanted to do it and and low
back as if somebody else knew mykid better than me. It's kind of
nuts. It's so true. That'ssomething that I talk about all
the time with parents, is that alot of parents want to look to
others for guidance on how toraise their children. But I
(06:15):
think there's so much thatparents know intuitively that I
wish they would trust more,because it's true, they know
their kids better than anybodyelse, hands down, right, just by
virtue of that. So you're withall the time, you know, Dr
Spock, back when there weren't amillion parenting experts and
there was just him, basicallyhis first line in, you know, Dr
Spock's baby in child care istrust yourself you know more
(06:37):
than you think you know, whichis interesting, because it
implies that there you go,Doctor, I keep his book right by
myself. Is that the new version,or is that an old version? That
is an old version? Okay? Becausethe new versions are by Robert
Needleman, who was my collegeroommates boyfriend way back
when. So I feel sorry onehandshake away from Dr Spock,
(06:58):
but anyways, the even, the eventhe info you know, the
exhortation to trust yourselfyou know more than you think you
know, implies that back then,people were also worried, like,
do I know? It's like, yeah, youactually do. So I think that a
certain amount of you know,confusion and worry are just
automatic when you're a parent,but nowadays, rather than being
(07:21):
told you're going to be fine, orI trust you, or everybody's
different. And so, you know, allthe kids are different, all the
parents are different, andthat's the way it goes. It's
like, here is the perfectrecipe. Follow it to the T by
the way, you'd need Madagascarvanilla, you know, that was
harvested at the three monthpeak of its perfection to make
this recipe. I mean, there's somany specific things that you're
(07:41):
supposed to do, to say to yourchild, to do for your child,
that are part of thiscomplicated recipe. And it turns
out, no, you don't have to doall that. I'm so fascinated to
think about how this currentculture of fear has manifested,
because I agree with you. It'sinnate in all of us to worry to
some degree. But I love how youtalk about how the fear has
(08:04):
become out of proportion to thereality of what we really have
to worry about with our kids. SoI'm curious, why do you think,
and you talk about this in yourbook very beautifully, but why
do you think this culture offear has manifested to the
degree that it has. There's alot of strands running through
the culture that have sort ofamped it up. But then there's
(08:25):
one overarching, crazy idea,which I'll get to after I talk
about the strands in my book. Italk about four reasons that I
think we're much more afraid foreverything our kids do, see,
wear, hear, lick, than ourparents. And the first is that
the media is it keeps gettingmore intense. You know, when I
was growing up, there were, youknow, three channels or
something like that. And then inthe 80s, along came
(08:49):
two things. One is cabletelevision, which meant a 24
hour news cycle, which had neverbeen the case before. And also,
in the 80s, we got the kids onthe milk cartons with the word
missing above them and noasterisk that says last seen
being taken by non custodialparent in a contentious divorce
case, which would have madethings a lot clearer, but it
(09:12):
wasn't there. And so it startedseeming like, you know, between
the news and the milk cartonsthat children were being
snatched constantly, and thenthose the media recognizes that,
you know, if you can get peopleto watch more, you make more
money. That's all TV does.
That's all the media does. It'sthat's what Facebook does. The
more attention you get, the moremoney you get from advertisers.
(09:32):
And so the scariest nightmaresof parents became something that
was always cycling through themedia, and then when we got the
internet, I can get pinged whenthere's a scary story. So it
really just started sort ofwashing us in fear. And there's
something called mean worldsyndrome. Maybe you've heard of
(09:53):
it? Have you heard of it? No, itsort of explains itself in the
same but was invented by a guynamed George.
Something. And I think the 60s,and the idea is that, you know,
you watch TV and all you see isthe mean stuff, right? It's a
mean world out there. You know,you don't turn on the news. And
here, you know, 1 millionchildren got to school safely
again today, you know, let'shear more details. Yes,
(10:16):
everybody was at their bus stop,and it was fine. Okay, so
that's, that's the world seemsmean when you watch TV, and so
you start becoming afraid of it.
And so you stay inside, whereyou watch more TV, and you
become more and more afraid. Sothe mean world syndrome is just
sort of the feedback loop ofbelieving the media and not
having the counterfactualinformation, which is reality.
(10:38):
Media is one of the reasons thatwe're so much more afraid. We
live in a litigious society, andsomehow we've sort of imbibed
that, and we start thinking likelawyers, what could be
dangerous, what could be whatcould we be liable for? And
school districts, I just gotthis amazing document, a four
page rule list from a MarylandPublic School District. Of all
(11:01):
the things that you're notallowed to have happen during
recess, like, if there'schildren who are organizing a
game, be especially vigilant,because they might argue, yeah,
they might imagine that, or achild might be left out, yeah,
that's true. And then they haveto either get better the game or
become a nicer person, and theneverybody want to play with him
(11:21):
or her again. Children are notallowed to skip rungs when they
climb on a, you know, one ofthose hanging things. They're
supposed to use their opposingopposing digits when climbing.
It's like who I'm trying toimagine a kid just climbing with
their ring finger. You know,these are things that don't even
happen, and you have to be awareof anything dangerous on the
(11:44):
ground, any tripping hazards,including, wait for it, gravel.
You start, I mean, like youstart living in this weird world
that maybe was written bylawyers, was written by lawyers,
but has no connection tochildren's actual activities, or
what they are capable of, or,and what they're capable of
dealing with, whether it's, youknow, a playground dispute or
(12:06):
gravel underfoot, right, right?
So that just sort of likedistances us from real life and,
and, and puts this scrim ofweird, bizarre, constant danger.
You know, kids feelings aregoing to hurt, they're going to
drip and they're going to skin aknee. These four pages are so
(12:27):
weird. You know, of course, norunning and of course no tag and
this and that. But one of thethings is, and if children are
organizing a game of threesquare, and I thought, my God,
that's the most lawyerly thingI've ever heard, because there
is no three square, there's twosquare and there's four squared,
and clearly they just averagedit, because they have no idea
what reality is like on Earth,right? And so, so we start
(12:49):
thinking like lawyers. Lenore, Iwant to tell you the the
elementary school that I wentto, I actually work down the
street from the elementaryschool that I attended as a kid,
and I heard from a patientrecently that they they stopped
allowing tag, and I just can'tbelieve it. I loved playing tag
as a kid. I love that game. Andwhy? Why on earth are we telling
kids they can't play tag? Itjust boggles my mind. Are we
(13:11):
afraid they're going to trip andfall? I don't understand. Oh,
there's, there's so manypotential dangers. Oh, my God,
Jessica, first of all, a kidcould get tagged, and then
they'll feel bad because they'velost. A kid, could get not
tagged, and then they feel leftout because nobody cared about
them. A kid could be it. Theyare single, they are they are
different from everyone else.
They are ostracized. They mustgo and chase people and, oh my
(13:31):
goodness, the running. And thenthere's the the tension of, am I
going to be caught or notcaught? And then let's just flip
it for a second, because now I'mconvinced, now I understand,
yeah, right, right, right, anddon't forget, there's gravel,
right and there's exercise. Ipsofacto, you don't want to do
that, yeah? So, yeah. So, solet's think about what you do
get from tag a, yes, Exercise B.
(13:55):
What is executive function? Soexecutive function is figuring
out how to do something, how youwill do something, and then
proceeding to execute that plan,and also to be wise enough and
sort of aware enough to pivot asnew information comes in. So
that's what you want to bedoing. Right? You want your
brain to be planning doing andrecalibrating when need be, and
(14:19):
coming up with an even betterplan and then dealing with some
problems, should they arise? Oh,my God, there's a power line
down the street. I guess I'lljust keep driving. No, go around
it, right? And so what is tag,other than a master class in
executive planning, okay? Youknow Jessica, is it? She always
goes towards the tree first I'mgoing to go towards the school
(14:41):
wait. She surprised me. She'scoming here. I'm going to go and
hide behind the, you know, theslide, or, you know, or maybe I
want to get caught, because thenthe two of us together will
play. It's just every step ofthat game is dealing with
anxiety, dealing with newinformation coming at you,
dealing.
With previous things that youstored and thought about,
(15:04):
assessing the situation, problemsolving, using your body, using
your brain. It is. It's afantastic exercise in every
sense of the word, and theymight even experience the F word
fun. Don't know. Why should theydo that when they could be
studying. Did you go and talk tothem at all like, Excuse me,
taking out tag. Are we takingaway lunch too? Should they not
(15:26):
eat? They could joke. Sorry,that's
so, yeah, it's getting it'sgetting preposterous. That's,
that's the truth. Maybe I shouldcall. I haven't called because
my kids don't go to that school,and I, you know, sometimes I
(15:48):
maybe I'm conflict avoidant, butI think you're right that you
have to start somewhere, or elseit's just gonna take a hold of
our society and we'll and ourkids will just be left in their
rooms. I guess that's what we'releft with.
That's what we hear. That kidsare basically in an adult,
supervised, structured activity,which would be the equivalent of
recess with no tag, right or orsomebody hovering over the three
(16:12):
square game that doesn't existto make sure nobody's feelings
get hurt and nobody pushes theball too hard. And then, if
they're not in an adult runactivity, they're generally on a
device. And if you want yourkids to succeed in the real
world and thrive in the realworld, you have to give it back
to them. And that's what youknow, I keep coming up with new
(16:32):
slogans. What is a new slogan?
And Jonathan Haidt, who I workwith, who has a book coming out
called the anxious generation,it's going to be a big deal.
Maybe it's out by the time thiscomes out. But you know what's a
slogan for this? Okay? It's likeokay to save the anxious
generation, which is oftenonline and often depressed, just
say this,be home by supper. It's that
(16:53):
simple.
Be home by supper. And I talk tomy husband about this all the
time, because we bothexperienced childhoods where we
were able to play outside withfriends, and we would come home
by supper,and we have such beautiful
memories of those times. And Ifeel bad. Yeah, so you were
saying, Okay, so the first twothings you said, I was gonna
(17:14):
segue immediately, but I'll gothrough that. Alright, so the
media, litigious society andexpert culture, they're always
telling you, you're doing itwrong. Here's a new way to do
it. Here's exactly what to saywhen you're looking at the kids
drawing, you can't say that'sgood picture. You did a good
job. It's always, I see you puteffort into your drawing skills.
You know, let's, let's have agrowth mindset. Tomorrow, you
(17:36):
could do it again, and the kidwill have two arms instead of
the three that you gave them,something like that. Anyways,
there's experts telling youyou're doing it wrong, and
here's better ways to do it. Andit starts when you're pregnant,
and you have to eat every singlebite correctly. And if Woe be
tied she who eats, you know, abologna sandwich or a piece of
brie, you know, the All,everything bad that happens to
(17:58):
your kid, you know until youdie, is because of that
sandwich. And then there's themarketplace, which knows that
the easiest dollar to get fromany human being is the dollar of
a worried parent. So you worrythe parent so that you can get
their dollar. Oh, are theirknees gonna hurt you? No.
Children crawl 137,000miles before they stand. That
sounds like too much. It's like,well, it's apparently not,
(18:19):
because they all do it, but no,it sounds like a lot. Well, it
does sound like a lot. Iwouldn't want to crawl 137,000
miles. Well, then here's a kneepad. You can put the knee pads
on your child, and their kneeswon't hurt, and it's like, but
don't you want their knees tohurt so they stand because they
can't stand to do so there'sjust all these products out
there that exist that nobody hasneeded since the beginning of
(18:42):
time, and nobody will need untilthe end of time. But they're out
there and they they create aworry. And of course, tech is
the one that does it best,because, Oh, you better be
watching your kid every singlesecond, and you better know
every everything that they youknow every place that they've
been, and you better know theirgrades every second. And so you
start feeling the bigoverarching change, I'd say, is
(19:05):
that the assumption is that if,if you have every single data
point about everything yourchild does, sees, eats, reads,
licks, watches, hears, you canoptimize them, second by second,
heartbeat by heartbeat. Thereare, there are monitors that
will, you know, measure yourchild's blood oxygen level from
moment to moment. And then youcan fix it, and then they'll be
(19:29):
perfect, and then you can relax.
But of course, you'll neverrelax, because getting a
trillion data points per secondis not going to relax you. And
by the way, you aren't God, andyou cannot make everything
perfect. And in fact, she'llcome into the world ready to be
wired by an imperfect world. Andthat's what they're expecting.
That's what their entire brainand gut biome, they're all
(19:50):
expecting, you know, some somemouthfuls of sand and and those
things will end up making them.
Stronger in the long run, nothorrible, horrible traumas. I'm
not talking about that. I'mtalking about some everyday
frustration, dirt, confusion anda couple of B minuses. You know,
when parents ask me aboutparticular recommendations on
(20:12):
baby safety products, generally,my line is, save your money for
a date night. You know, saveyour money and do something that
you can enjoy it with, becauseyou can literally spend all of
your money, all of your hardearned money, on ways to baby
proof your home and, quote,unquote, make them safer.
There's toilet seat lock.
There's Have you ever been aninside house with a toilet seat
lock? That's just the worst.
(20:33):
It's like, I gotta pee and Ican't figure this thing out.
It's literally endless. Onething I've learned as I talk to
parents about fears. A bigexample is the fear of a kid
falling out of the crib andhurting themselves. And
oftentimes they'll have a kidthat crawls, you know, learns to
crawl, and somehow, as Houdinigets out of the crib, and
parents are petrified, oh mygoodness, my kid can get
(20:55):
themselves out of the crib. AndI have to say, of all the times
that I've heard the story, whichI've heard multiple, multiple
times. I've never had a kid. No,I don't want to maybe knock on
wood, but have a have a problemfrom that fall. Yes, they get
out of the crib, but somehowthey're okay. And, you know, I
just think there's a saying thatkids are made of rubber, like
they're they can fall, butthey're a lot more resilient
(21:18):
than I think parents give themcredit for and so that's just
something I try to, I really tryto reinforce, when I talk to
parents, that they're a lottheir bodies are a lot more
forgiving than we realize. Andand it's not just physically
resilient. I mean, the otherthing is that they are
emotionally resilient. And Idon't I hate that. I always have
to give the caveat. It doesn'tmean you can completely ignore
(21:40):
or scream at your kid, they'reall alive, and that's great. But
the Parents Magazine articlethat I quote the most, because I
feel it's the Rosetta Stone forthis current culture, is one
that was about play dates, whichis already a problem. But
anyways, the question that themagazine answers is, your kid is
old enough to stay home alone.
Often does for short periods,but now she has a friend over.
(22:01):
Can you actually make a dash,literally, a dash, to the dry
cleaner? And of course, ParentsMagazine says no, and they give
the two reasons. One is theycould get hurt. And they go into
a long story about some kid whomicrowaved some macaroni and
ended up with a burn. Okay? Andthen the second story is the
second caveat is also you wantto be there in case someone's
(22:23):
feelings get hurt. You want tobe there if there's a squabble
to step in in case someone'sfeelings get hurt. And I thought
that is the most dystopianpossible advice I've heard
anywhere, which is why I keepquoting it, because it's
assuming a that A, you only haveone kid because you're listening
to one conversation the wholetime. B, you're listening in on
(22:45):
every iteration of theirconversation. I don't want to be
Ken. No, Ken is cool at theOscars. How come you watch the
Oscars? I didn't get to watchthe Oscars. He's so funny. Now.
I want to be Ken. No, I want tobe Ken. You're supposed to be
listening to all that andthinking, Oh, are their feelings
getting hurt? I better step inif there's a squabble. It's
like, no me first. No me first,and you actually want them to
figure it out. But ParentsMagazine is saying step in
(23:08):
before they do. So really, whatthey're advising you is to
assume your child is so fragilethey can't handle an argument
with a friend and B that it isbetter to for you to solve it
than for them to solve it, whichmeans you've left them with no
muscle memory, no executivefunction, understanding of how
to solve an argument. Other thanMom, it's my turn. No, she said,
(23:30):
it's my turn. So that's, that's,um, that's the big problem is
that we have a lot ofassumptions about what we can
and must do, because we'reassuming that our kids are so
fragile that if we don't, allbets are off. So it drives
parents crazy. I think it drivesmoms particularly crazy. It was
(23:53):
just a Pew study. Why didn't bigPew study about parenting? And I
thought the most interestingthing was on page 13, where they
asked young people who didn'thave kids yet, do you want to
have kids? And 57%I think of the young men, said
yes, and I think about 43% ofthe women said yes, yes. And I'm
assuming those are differentnumbers than they would have
been a generation ago.
(24:16):
You know, they didn't put it incontext. I wish, I wish it was
there, but I have to assume thatit probably was, because it just
seems like, well, if my job isgoing to be listening in on
every play date and jumping inwith a with the perfect solution
anytime anybody's feelings aregetting hurt, that leaves me
with a terrible life. I mean,it's the opposite of date night,
(24:38):
right? It's, it's like beingwith the seven year olds, but
not being a seven year old. Andalso the icky feeling of almost
having a sickly child, thedifficulty of that, the thinking
of your kid as so inept orfragile that anything goes wrong
and it's my fault because Ididn't step in and now she's.
(25:00):
Suffering that's that's a roughthat's a rough road. I also
think there's such value inexperiencing some conflict in
childhood, because if you don't,then you get into the real
world. Or guess what, noteverybody is nice, not everybody
is going to compliment you andsay the right thing. And so I
think it's really important tolearn how to deal with different
(25:20):
types of people, because somedayyou're going to get a boss that
might not be the nicest, andthat's just real world. Yeah,
right, I endorse this statement.
I'm Lenore, and I approve ofJessica's statement. Oh, thank
you. Thank you. Yeah, and Iwanted to tell you so when I
when I told people that I wasexcited to interview you, and I
told them the story about howyou had your son on the subway,
(25:42):
I got the same response threeout of three times, and that
was, wow, that's reallyinteresting. What she did. But
times are different. Now. Timeshave changed. We couldn't do
that now. We couldn't let ourchildren ride their bikes to the
store by themselves, becauseit's a different world than it
was then, do you agree ordisagree with that statement?
(26:02):
What do you have to say? I hearit a lot, obviously, and I
agree. It feels reallydifferent. It feels much
scarier. We were talking aboutthis at the top of the
conversation about how the mediais so incessant now, and it
wasn't when most of us weregrowing up. But I do have on you
know, if you go to let grow.organd you click on the thing at
(26:24):
the bottom that says crimestatistics, just go look for
yourself. It's, I mean, I don'tmake up crime statistics. I take
them from the FBI, and you cansee that the homicide rate in
the and the violent crime ratein the 70s and 80s and 90s was
higher than it is now. Wow,simple as that. And you know
what? It did go up a littleagain. It was plunging from the
(26:46):
90s down, and then in covid like20 and maybe 2020, and 2021, it
went up a little, but it's beengoing down again since. So the
level that it's at, even havinggone up some in the last couple
of years is still lower than the70s, 80s or 90s. So I'm so happy
to have you on record sayingthis, because I want to tell you
(27:08):
about a personal dispute I'vebeen having with my mom. So this
is my mom, who grew up, youknow, in the 70s, and she did
admittedly hitchhike even as akid, and she's still here today.
She definitely took in LosAngeles. I mean, she describes
her parents, you know, theyweren't they were not
overprotective. They weren'twatching her very closely. And
so she did have a free rangechildhood. Herself and my
(27:31):
daughter, who's 13, we recentlygot a dog, and we've been having
her walk the dog around ourneighborhood. She takes a loop
with the dog. You know, it'sabout a half a mile loop. And my
mom told me she couldn't sleepone night. She was so worried,
because my daughter has been byherself walking the dog, and she
thinks we should have a rulethat when she walks the dog, she
(27:51):
should go with somebody else,for fear of a stranger, that my
dog doesn't look at somethingelse.
And I guess one time she waswalking and there was a man on
the street, and what'd you say?
Imagine that. Imagine that. Andyou know, and I said to her, You
know what, I was proud of. Mydaughter crossed the street. She
had the wherewithal to cross thestreet, go the other direction,
(28:13):
and everything was fine. It wasdaylight. And so I shared some
of the statistics that youshared about childhood
abductions and how they'rereally, really, really, really
rare, that concept de minimis.
Anyways, I think it'sinteresting, because even people
that had more of a free rangechildhood are so taught to be
afraid now, right, even if thestatistics don't support it,
(28:35):
right? You know, there'srationality and then there's
feelings, and feelings alwayswin. You know, there's Thinking
Fast and Slow. Your feelings arefast and your rationality is
slow. And we were talkingearlier about the whole idea of
mean world syndrome. How come?
So I hear this often that thegrandparents who let their kids,
you know, ride their bikes andtake the local bus or whatever,
are now so scared. And I thinkit has to do with the two
(28:56):
things. One is this sort of meanworld syndrome that she's had
another 30 years to, you know,see scary stories and have them
sink in. And your brain workslike Google, which is that, if
you ask Google, you know, wherecan I get a good taco? In
Jackson, Heights, Queens, whereI live up, comes a list of, you
know, oh, there's taco logo,there's taco freesia or
whatever. And it's, and it'srelevant, right? It's, it's the
(29:18):
search results that I'm lookingfor a lot of great taco places.
But if I ask, Is my kid safe atthe bus stop or walking the dog?
Up come the worst stories of thelast 50 years. Literally, the
last 50 years. Eyton page was athis bus stop in 1979 and he was
taken. JC Dugard was at her busstop in 1980 something, and she
was taken. Because these are thestories. First of all, these are
(29:40):
stories, right? You can't, youcan't access non stories about
you and me waiting at the busstop and the bus comes and we go
to school. And also, the moreyou know, the more emotional
something is, the easier it isto retrieve. So you got actual
footage, and you have stories,and you have emotion, and those.
Populate the search results ofis my kid safe walking the dog?
(30:04):
And so it looks like, no, yourkid, it's crazy to let your kid
walk the dog, don't you rememberthese three stories from, you
know, all these different erasand all these different states,
and the more easy it is for yourbrain to retrieve a story or to
retrieve an image or an idea,the more common your brain
thinks it is. That's just afallacy. It's called the
(30:24):
availability heuristic. The moreavailable a story is, the more
likely and common you think itis. And so we're all prey to
that. And so I'm not surprisedthat your mom in the intervening
30 years has gotten more scared.
But if you want to try to usethat slow, rational part of your
brain, go look up the actualsafety statistics. So that's it.
Yes, no. And are the rates ofabduction still as low as you
(30:49):
quoted in your book? They'reextraordinarily low. They're
extraordinarily low. I mean, Ialways talk to this poor guy,
David Finkelhor. He runs thecrimes against children Research
Center, and he is tasked withfiguring out, you know, how many
kids are abducted a year. And myother son points out, by the
time you're talking about thenumber of kids abducted, you've
lost the argument, which istrue, because everybody always
(31:10):
imagines, well, it might be veryfew, but what if mine is one of
them, but it's it's very, verylow. If you want your kid to be
kidnapped by a stranger, you'dhave to leave them outside for
750,000years for it to be statistically
likely that they would bekidnapped in a Law and Order
Type kidnapping. Peter Gray saidsomething interesting. He said,
(31:32):
The truth is, nobody wants yourkids. Yeah, yeah, there's,
there's no Henry story like thatto the ransom spreadsheet. But
the the other point is that,like, people always think that,
like there's safety or danger,and so I might as well go with
safety, right? I'm not going tolet my kid be kidnapped. It's
like, okay, well, what about theother side of things? What about
soaring rates of depression andanxiety, which, Peter has a
(31:53):
paper in the in the Journal ofPediatrics that traces not just
a correlation, but he believes acausation between as children's
independence, agency free playhave gone down literally over
the decades, not just sincecovid, not just since phone but
over the decades their mentalhealth has gone down in in
(32:14):
tandem. These fears arenegatively impacting our youth.
I think so. And do you, I'mcurious, are there any other
common misconceptions of fearthat are prevailing our society?
Any anything else that that youthink parents should be aware
of, where the where the risksare out of proportion to
(32:35):
reality? Oh, that's such aninteresting question. What I
really liked in your book, if Iif just to be a leading, oh,
Halloween. So yeah, to lead, theanswer is Halloween. Yeah,
Halloween is great. I think Icall Halloween the test market
for our fears, because we seehow outlandish our advice can
get. And if people think it'snot outlandish, then they then
it sort of permeates the rest ofthe culture. So the number of
(32:58):
children killed by a stranger'spoisoned candy on Halloween,
turns out to be you read thebook? It's zero. It's zero.
Yeah, I actually talked to thesociologist who figured this
out. He actually went back to1958 and it and would read the
newspapers for November, 1,second and third in all those
(33:19):
eras to see if you know childdead and and, in fact, no, and
that would have been a bigstory. And there was one kid who
was poisoned by his dad for lifeinsurance policy purposes,
right? There's a life insurancepolicy that the father actually
three you'd taken out on thekid. And the the pathetic part
is that that dad sort ofbelieved what a lot of us, just
like so many kids are killed onHalloween by poison candy.
(33:40):
What's one more? It's likethere's this big pile of dead
kids. I'll just throw my kid onthere and, you know, we'll be
off to the races, and I'll getthe insurance policy. But it
turns out that actually, no,nobody is killed by that. And
you believed it, and you triedit, and he ended up being
executed himself, because, ofcourse, it was Texas. And then
you talked about a kid who gotinto their uncle's heroin and
(34:02):
always candy, yeah. So what'samazing is the power of myth to
shape our reality, which is thatthe University of Michigan just
did a study in a survey inSeptember, and I thought the
statistics were pretty shocking.
Maybe they won't shock you.
You're working as a pediatricianall the time, but they asked
parents of kids age nine to 11.
This was 1000 parents acrossevery demographic and geographic
(34:25):
area of America. Would you letyour kid trick or treat without
an adult? And the percent whosaid yes is these are kids nine
to 11, is what I'm scared tofind out the answer, 25% 15.
15% Wow.
Well, the sad part is, I havesuch wonderful memories of
(34:46):
Halloween being without myparents. You know, with my
friend Monica, we went fromhouse to house, and we collected
all this candy and we had thiswe had the best time. And so I
worry that with all of thisfear, we're literally removing
joy from our kids. Child.
Heads,yes, the short answer is, we
are. But it's, you know, if you,if you sort of want to claw our
way back, you have to point outthat it's not just joy, it's,
(35:09):
it's development. And part ofthe reason Halloween was
exciting is you were out on yourown at night, right? And you
were sort of dressed up like agrown up, whether you were a
vampire or a ballerina orwhatever, and you sort of had a
job, which was to knock on doorsand get something. And so it was
really the one night of the yearthat you got to be an adult. You
(35:30):
were facing your fears, you weredoing a job. You were dressed
like some, you know, something,not just a kid. And to take that
out of kids lives to make themsafer when no child has been
poisoned by a kid by a strangeron Halloween, and there's no
increase in child molesting byanybody on the sex offense
(35:51):
registry, which is another fearon Halloween. So if there's the
one thing that kids have to beaware of on Halloween is cars,
and one of the reasons that carsare such a danger, especially at
this point, is that so many carsare creeping along after their
kids as they go from house tohouse. So really, I would say,
let your kids trick or treat.
(36:12):
Tell them they can't go intoanybody's house and they should
wear something very reflective.
That's what I'd say. Yes, no,that no. I think that's great
advice. It's like the idea is tolet our kids do things, be
independent, but also teach themhow to be safe, appropriately
safe, right? Appropriately safe.
And then there's some safetythat comes from street smarts,
from saying, I am going to crossthe street, there's this guy
(36:34):
there, or you want them to useto develop their own smarts and
common sense, and if we're theredoing everything with them or
for them, they don't get todevelop it just like you know,
if you are holding your kid upso that they can pretend that
they're hanging from the junglegym, they will get no muscles,
(36:55):
right at some point you justhave to leave them hanging, as
it Were, with or without theiropposable thumbs in the mix, at
some point, you just have toleave them hanging for for their
benefit. So now I want to askyou for parents that are
listening, and maybe they are.
Maybe they think of themselvesas falling prey to the fear
culture, and they want to figureout how to get themselves out of
(37:17):
it. In your book, you talk a lotabout baby steps and how we can,
how we can think about more babysteps to have our kids become
more free range. Can youdescribe some baby steps that
parents can start to think aboutso they can implement into their
lives?
I can, but I'm going to pivot tolet grow, because let grow is
the nonprofit that grew out offree range kids, and when we
(37:39):
started it, our goal was nolonger to try to change minds.
I'd been lecturing about freerange kids for 10 years, and
everyone would nod along, andnothing would change. So when we
started let grow, we said ourgoal is to change behavior. So
what is the easiest way to dothat? It's collective action. Is
a lot easier than individualaction. And so let grow is
(38:04):
trying to promote a couplethings in the schools that you
can also try at home, but in theschools, it's a lot of people
doing the same thing at once,which has its own power. And so
we try to get schools to stayopen. And I would recommend you
talking to your school aboutthis for what we call a let grow
play club, where there's anadult watching the kids, but
they're like a lifeguard at thepool. You know, maybe once in a
(38:26):
while they'll blow a whistle,but really, the kids are making
up their own games. They'rehaving their arguments, they're
solving their Spats. They'recoming up with something fun to
do. They're changing the rules.
They're deciding who they wantto play with, who they don't
want to play with, and it islike a wildlife preserve of our
childhood after school, maybefive days a week, maybe three
days a week, whatever the schooldoes, it's mixed ages, and
(38:48):
there's no devices. So that is areally easy way to give kids
back the, you know, all theskills and the joy that they get
from free play. So that's easierthan doing it on your own and
trying to find a playmate. So Irecommend that. And then the
other thing we recommend as away to really make it much
(39:09):
easier to let go just a littlebit or more, is to have the
school assign what we call thelet grow experience. All our
materials are free, and so thelet grow experience is a
homework assignment that tellskids to go home and do something
new with your parentspermission, but without your
parents. And once again, it canbe the walking of the dog. It
(39:30):
can be, you know, wash the car,climb a tree, go to the store,
babysit your younger sibling,make pancakes for the whole
family. And the great thingabout this experience is that
all the kids are doing it andall the parents are doing it so
the parents don't feel likethey're the crazy one letting
their kid walk the dog right, orplay at the park. And so it's
(39:53):
just re normalizing the idea ofletting your kids go, which is
so.
So easy when you got a littlepush from the school saying,
This is really good, just tryit. And they're not saying you
have to put them on the subway.
They're just saying, figure outsomething that's right for you,
your kid, your neighborhood, andof course, your kids can do it
with friends. It doesn't have tobe alone, but it has to be
(40:13):
without you. And that's theeasiest way to take a step back.
Is when everybody's doing itwhen the school is recommending
it. No, you're right, because Itry to push my kids to be a
little more independent, and Ido feel like I might get, you
know, looked at once or twicefrom other moms that I'm being a
little bit different. My bigexample, personally, is my kids,
(40:34):
because I'm not home right whenthey get out of school, we have
a nanny, and then our nannydoesn't drive, and our kids go
on the LA public bus with ournanny, and they're the only kids
at my genuinely they're the onlychildren at our local elementary
school that take the LA publicbus home. And I get so many
(40:55):
looks of disbelief, so manyquestions, how could I, as a
pediatrician, allow my kids totake the LA public bus two miles
from the elementary school tohome? And the the funny part is,
My son likes it. When I askedhim about it, he goes with his
little sister, and he says helikes that. He feels
independent. He feels like hegets to do something different.
(41:15):
And so that says that thatspeaks volumes to me, that for
him, it's not a chore for him.
He genuinely enjoys it. But Idefinitely get questions from
the local parents. Well, it'sinteresting, because you are a
pediatrician, they should sortof assume that you have some
clue as to what's good for kids,right? Why would you be in this
profession? If you werecompletely oblivious to danger
(41:38):
and health? That wouldn't youwouldn't be a very great
pediatrician, right? Thank you.
Thank you. You think that theywould take a clue? Yes? So a
collective problems are easiersolved with collective action.
But it's so interesting thatyour son feels proud and kind of
happy doing this. It doesn'tsurprise me at all. And when you
do step back and let your kidsdo something like that. A, they
(42:01):
get this rush of excitementbecause they're big, right?
They're back to this Tom Hanksidea, I can do something in the
real world. B, you feel soproud, right? I mean, I could
see it. You're smiling as you'retelling the story. I mean, he's
honestly I feel proud, but Ialso recognize that when people
listen to me telling the story,I may get judged, right? Because
(42:22):
it's not a very typical judgingeverybody every single second.
That's just human nature. That'strue. I agree with that. I gotta
deal with it. And I was gonnasay that the other thing that
your son is getting, aside frombeing part of the real world,
which is very heady and veryyour brain, is expecting that as
a child, they never expected tobe in a little cocoon. That's a
(42:42):
strange way to live. But he alsogets this other gift from you,
which is that you believe inHim, and to have your parents
not just love you and protectyou, but believe in you, think
that you're smart, you're brave,you're capable, and they put
their money where their mouthis, and they let you take a bus
that is sojust breathing in, it's just
(43:07):
fortifying, it's the windbeneath their wings, and to give
that to your child, as opposedto Honey, I'll be with you now.
Let me handle that. Oh, that'sdirty. Don't touch that. Oh, let
me help you. It's a differentfeeling. And I think your son is
lucky to have a mom who believesin Him. Thank you. Thank you.
And I do trust him. I mean, Ido. We do talk about safety
(43:30):
precautions and looking bothways and paying attention, so
it's not as if I just send himon his way without guidance. But
yeah, I do trust him, and even Ithought of an example this
morning. Something new we'vebeen having our eight year old
daughter do is she knows how towork our latte machine, the
(43:50):
Nespresso machine, and she'sbeen making my husband his
morning lattes. She lovesfrothing the milk, and she loves
putting the Nespresso are outhere. Oh my god, somebody to
make my latte in the morning.
How fantastic. When, at first Ithought, Should we be watching
her? Because scald burns arecommon for kids, and I watched
(44:11):
her do it, and she makes thelatte with caution, and she does
it well, and she's so proud ofherself to make it and give it
to my husband and it it worksfor both of us. You know, for
the parent, we're so excited towatch her participate and help
andand learn a new skill, and she's
so proud of herself when shehands him his morning latte. So
there again, you've mentioned somany great things. It's she's
(44:33):
proud. She knows you trust her,and also she's contributing.
She's not just a taker rightnow, she's a giver, right? She's
part of the economy of yourfamily. You You love her, but
you also are grateful to her. Soshe's not just grateful to you.
That's a that's a nicerelationship, as opposed to, you
know, giving the dog a treat,yes, no, and it feels good to be
(44:54):
a giver.
I think that's so smart to thinkabout.
The collective and how to try tochange the culture for our
children. Because I do agreethat that's that's a big that's
a meaning, that's a meaningfulstep. I always complain because
our neighborhood, there are alot of children that live in the
neighborhood, but rarely do Isee kids out and about playing
(45:16):
rarely, and so I'll walk with mykids, looking for kids, for
other kids around, for them toplay with. And I really don't
see any kids. You're like apredator. Where are the
children?
It's true. It's true. So here'sanother idea, which is to keep
Friday afternoons free. Try toget some other friends in the
neighborhood just one afternoona week. Don't schedule the Kumon
(45:40):
or the Mandarin or whatever thatday. And it's the Spanish
lessons, the tutors, Spanishlessons, sports, right? This is
a sport. It's called beingalive, right? Having fun, making
things happen, making friends.
And the joy of having somebodyin your neighborhood that you
can hang out with, well, theyneed to. They need to be around
these other kids for this tohappen. And maybe it requires
(46:02):
you going on, you know, nextdoor.com or talking to other
parents at, you know, at schoolat some point, just saying,
like, Hey, how about this Fridayafternoon thing? It's a great
idea free play. That's a greatidea, using next door to incur
to see if parents want to bringtheir kids over. I'm going to do
that. Why not? Hopefully, tryingto get a grant to start a little
(46:23):
app where you can find likeanybody else, I'm in 11372,
anyone else in 11372, want tolet their kids play on Fridays?
You know, I'll be on the stoopon 80th Street. And anybody who
wants to send their kids can,have you gotten a lot of good
feedback. It's let grow.org It'slet grow.org Yeah, which is real
fine, you know. And there'sstuff for individual parents
too. It's basically the sameideas for individuals as we
(46:46):
recommend for schools. You know,let your kid do something new on
their own and try to get, youknow, other parents who will let
their kids play outside. One momwho just had her kid do the let
grow project. Fifth grade,daughter never walked home from
school by herself. It's here inNew York City. And she said,
Well, how about it? And that'swhat the kid decided to do, walk
home with a friend, and I hadthe kid write something as long
(47:07):
as the mom was writing to me, Iwas like, well, could you have
your kid right how it was? Andthe mom first wrote this
poignant little story about howshe her daughter had been so
sort of brave and, you know, Iguess, assertive as a toddler,
and then had grown more timidover the years, and would say
things like, I shouldn't havedone that, or I should never
have tried. And it was breakingthe mom's heart, you know, to
(47:29):
see the kid both timid and alsoblaming herself when things
didn't go well no matter what.
And so she was surprised, buther daughter said, Yeah, I am
ready to walk home. So shewalked home with a friend. And
she said walking home was soscary that first time, because
she kept looking in all the carsand vans, you know, was
something terrible going tohappen. And she watched TV with
(47:50):
her grandmother, so she knewthat there were, you know,
predators and shipwrecks andasteroids. She was just afraid
of everything. And then she didit again. And she said, what was
really strange is that thistime, I still, you know, glanced
over my shoulder, but I wasalmost as happy and carefree as
my friend. And it's like, Imean, we send our kids to
(48:11):
therapists for that exactbreakthrough right to be almost
as carefree and happy as as acarefree, happy child. And it's
free. This is free. It's freefor the schools. It's free for
the parents. It takes no time,and so
it's still slower than I wouldlike. I mean, the electro
(48:33):
project and the electroexperience is just, they're all
there on the site. I wish everyschool would start doing them
tomorrow. You have tried to getan NIH grant, a therapist we
work with trying to get an NIHgrant to test independence as
therapy for children withanxiety. But of course, it's
also preventative, because yougrow up thinking, of course, I
(48:53):
can do things. Of course, I'mpart of the world. Of course my
parents need me to bring themtheir coffee. Of course, I am
smart enough and strong enoughand capable enough to do these
things. So I feel like ourmessage is very clear, our
methods are very simple, and ourmoment is now. I think you, I
think you're right, right on,because we are doing our kids
(49:14):
such a favor if we give themopportunities to be independent
and to play without parentshovering over them. That's
right, I was going to sayspeaking to the mic, but you are
speaking into the mic. You know?
What else I like that youmentioned in the book, which I
wholeheartedly agree with, andyou talked about the media and
the effects of media making usfearful. But I think for the
sake of our children, I thinkit's so important to turn the
(49:36):
news off when they're around. Ithink we do them such a
disservice if we're constantlyhaving the news on and they're
hearing the news, because thatwill seep into the young brains.
Yeah, yeah, there's no need to.
I mean, I think we should. Andyou're talking to somebody who
worked in the tabloid for 14years. I was at the New York
Daily News. You know, there's alot of bad news on that front
page, but yeah, I'd say turn offthe news. Why would you want
(49:58):
death and doom as your.
Wallpaper,well said, well. Said, well,
thank you so much. This has beenso enlightening, so helpful. I
so agree with your message, andI really hope that more and more
people tune in. I think letgrow.org is phenomenal, and if
there's any way can ever helpspread the message of let
(50:19):
grow.org. Please let me know. Goto your school. Go to your kids
school tomorrow. Hey, I wastalking to this lady. She
doesn't seem crazy. She's got anidea, and it's free and it's
free. Well, thank you so muchfor your time, your expertise
and all that you do. I amincredibly appreciative more
than more than you could know.
Oh well, okay, I think I know alot at this point, but this was
(50:39):
fun, and I'm glad you're apediatrician spreading these
messages that's that's reallyimportant, too. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you for listening,and I hope you enjoyed this
week's episode of your child isnormal. Also, if you could take
a moment and leave a five starreview, wherever it is you
listen to podcasts, I wouldgreatly appreciate it. A big
thank you to all of youlisteners, and we'll see you
next Monday. Bye.
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