I enjoyed talking with Lenore Skenazy on Tuesday evening about her book, Free Range Kids, as part of our Summit Series for Families and if you haven’t read her book yet, I highly recommend it.  I admitted to her that I am not raising a free-range kid yet, but that I’m taking baby steps in that direction because I agree with so much of what she says in her book. 

I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter and all the reading I did to prepare for her birth.  I was a nervous wreck and spent the first year of her life obsessing over her eating habits and whether or not she would be suffocated in her crib by a blanket.  When she started going to daycare, we were lucky enough to find one with an older woman who had been in the daycare business for over 30 years, and had been in this particular infant room for the past thirteen.  She was the calm, reassuring voice my daughter and I both needed.  She was the one who told me to stop reading so many books and just come ask her if I had any questions—this, after she criticized some of the advice I was getting from my books.   I’ll admit I had been peppering her a bit too much with my facts and cautionary tales gleaned from every baby book on the market—and it’s true that I had given up my own instincts and common sense in favor of any advice found in my book of the week, but darn it, I didn’t want to screw this up. 

I think its hard today not to worry about letting your kids go out to play by themselves.  We automatically think about all the child abductions and creepy people we keep hearing about every night on the news.  But as the author points out in her book, only 1 in 1.5 million children is abducted and murdered by strangers.  It really isn’t happening more often today than it was years ago, we just hear about it on the news more often.  Statistically, children today are as safe from violent crime as kids who grew up in the seventies were.   To put it in perspective, forty times more kids are killed in car accidents than those who are abducted and killed.  And yet we don’t think twice about putting our children in our cars and driving them to school. 

Maybe it’s time for some common sense.  Instead of teaching our kids not to talk to strangers, teach them never to go off with strangers.  We should let them know that the elderly woman at the grocery store who just smiled at you and said she likes your dress is not a mass murderer about to snatch you away from your mother.  She was just being friendly.  In an old- fashioned way. 

Kids gain confidence from accomplishing things on their own.  So if we want to raise confident, responsible kids, maybe we should spend more time preparing them for life and less time teaching them that they should fear everyone they haven’t met.    

As the author pointed out , Free Range Kids is not about reckless risk-taking.  Lenore Skenazy doesn’t suggest you let you kids go play in traffic.  And there was a common theme between what she believes and what David Elkind pointed out in last week’s session:  We need to trust our kids more. 

Listen to the interview with Lenore Skenazy:

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Fun Mama - Deanna said:

... I enjoyed this book, too. I was a little cautious with the part about not reading parenting books. This is, after all, a parenting book. For myself, there are some parenting books that I absolutely abhor, because they essentially tell you to ignore your instincts and others I love because they helped me to listen to my instincts. And I got in trouble with a relative for not asking her advice after she kept telling me to do things that didn't feel right. But that's the thing about instincts. We need to follow our own.

October 02, 2009 | url

Megan at Simple Kids said:

... Exactly! We need to trust our children more. We need to trust ourselves more. I was struck by what you said about your own parenting experience when your daughter was a baby - that you have traded in your common sense and instincts for the advice of parenting boos. That was my experience with my oldest, too! Lenore speaks to so much of this (and more!) in this book. This is such a powerful read for any parent. I think on the back cover, one of the reviewers suggests giving it as baby shower gifts - honestly, I think that is a fabulous idea. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on the book! I'm right there with you on the baby steps.

October 01, 2009 | url

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