Nat and Drew interviewed Lenore Skenazy from Free Range Kids last week. Lenore stirred up headlines and debates around the world when she let her 9 yr old son ride the New York subway system on his own.
Here’s the full chat:
Lenore’s on to something. It may be a little extreme in presentation, but the underlying theme is bang on - we need to let go.
When I was in elementary school, I road my bike to school, on my own, and came home every day for lunch. That was more than 3 km of back and forth commuting each day that I did - on my own. This was in the early 80s, while the likes of Clifford Robert Olson was crawling Richmond, yet I still went to school by myself.
When I was 11 years old, I was babysitting my 8 yr old brother and 5 yr old sister. When I was 12 I was taking the public bus to high school in Vancouver.
Lenore’s assertion that things today are not any worse than they were decades ago is bang on. We may perceive more mayhem and restlessness on the streets, but it’s really the media’s desire to play up drama that makes it so. The 6 oclock News is less about news and more about emotion. When Natalee Holloway goes missing in Aruba, it’s not a mention on the cast, its a series of sensational reports that runs for months.
To get us involved and loyal to the newscasts, they purport to act “on our side.” They’re constantly taking major headline stories and spinning them into a local or personal angle. Just this week, a story on collapsing schools in China turned into a cry for analysis on our own schools and their earthquake safety.
We can be forgiven if we think things are crazy out there for kids, it’s all we’re fed when we turn on the tv. However, if you look at the statistics, things haven’t changed in 20 yrs.
Olympian Silken Laumann heads up an initiative with similar ideals. She wants us to get back to encouraging kids to be kids.
To energize families and neighbourhoods through play and to help parents create the opportunities for their children to play freely and safely together – to recreate in a modern context the neighbourhoods we grew up in and to redefine for our kids the play time we enjoyed and took for granted would always be available to them [source]
By driving our kids everywhere, and keeping them constantly under a watchful eye, we give in to a sort of terrorism. We’re so afraid of something bad happening, we change our behaviour. It’s turning us into a generation of overparenters. I’m guilty of it as well, just look at how I lash out when I don’t think Z is getting all he deserves at daycare.
But I’m going to try and change that. Mellow out a bit. Let Z be Z and just be there for when he needs me, not for when I need him.
Responsive parenting means just that: we respond to children’s needs. It’s not the same as over-parenting, in which we anticipate, preempt, or take control of our children’s needs and developmental tasks.
…
While there have always been obsessive, overbearing parents, they used to be the exception, rather than the norm. [source]
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I’m not a parent and I have no idea of how I will act as one, if and when I become a parent, but I like to think I won’t be over-bearing. I would want my children to be able to handle & deal with situations without me, have their own street sense and common sense. How will they learn if we do everything and think everything for them?
It’s about time we address this issue! Although I don’t have kids, most of my friends do! I can totally relate to what you did as a kid because I did the same. And yes, the media has created fear in so many people. Kids are becoming less independent and that causes many problems. They don’t know how to think for themselves, make decisions, etc. Parents need to let go while still being responsible!
Thanks so much for taking the time to pop by the blog, Natasha!
(everyone .. meet Natasha the first girl I ever kissed) gotta love the Facebook reconnections.
Dude, I had a speedometer on my bike. It was only 800m to school.
Oops, you’re right. Twice each way. Um, yeah, go math!