The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old's "pencil-holding deficiency," hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field — "helicopter parents," teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove-knob covers and "Kinderkords" (also known as leashes; they allow "three full feet of freedom for both you and your child") and Baby Kneepads (as if babies don't come prepadded). The mayor of a Connecticut town agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check first. Schools auctioned off the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building — a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking. (from “The Growing Backlash Against Overprotective Parenting” http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1940697,00.html#ixzz1aOjyrOfQ
Free range parenting/simplicity parenting/choose your title, believes that Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they'll fly higher. We're often the ones who hold them down. It’s a parenting style that believes that our children must learn to self sooth within the safety of our homes. They must learn to cope with failure when the stakes are low so that when they fail with high stakes, it doesn’t crumble them. They need to learn to solve problems, overcome obstacles, and learn to determine the difference between what is harmful and what is safe.
I have worked with college students in the classroom for about 13 years. I have seen firsthand the consequences of what we jokingly call helicopter parenting. I have witnessed how our children have shifted from self-reliant freshmen to young adults who lack self-soothing skills, coping skills, critical thinking skills, analytical skills, and who are ruled by fear (or in some cases, don’t believe in danger).
For many, helicopter parenting, or over-protective parenting emerged from a new sense of fear that began to reign in the media and parenting books in the mid-90’s. In the most recent decade, crime went down, yet parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds, and strollers suddenly needed the warning label "Remove Child Before Folding." Among 6-to-8-year-olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to '97, and homework more than doubled.” Our overall test scores are down, obesity is up, and the rate of depression among youth is the highest it has ever been.
There are so many places where we as mothers are controlled by our fear, and as I was putting this talk together, I thought long and hard about which direction to go with this. You see, I am a Free-Range parent. I believe that children are capable of great things, much greater things than our current society gives them credit for. I believe that our children are rational, they are divinely created, and it is my role as a mom to teach them and guide rather than clear all obstacles and dangers so they never encounter them (because the truth of the matter is, they are going to encounter those things. The question is, will they have the skills to survive?). But in order to be able to parent from this perspective, I have to constantly battle away the images of children dying in horrific accidents and I have to battle the disapproval of highly overprotective parents.
I do not intend to make anyone feel silly for any of the child-protection strategies you currently use, but I do want to encourage you to consider what you’re protecting your child from and to find comfort in knowing that God is control and he has exhorted us to not worry, but to parent in love and wisdom.
Isaiah 41:10 encourages us, “Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.” Often we fear the future and what will become of us. We fear for our children and work hard to protect them from disappointment and from danger. “Do not fear” says the Lord.
And yet, “Everyone is exhorting us to watch out, take care, and plan for the very worst-case scenario” (9). “Where did all this fear come from? Take your pick: The fact that we’re all working so hard that we don’t know our neighbors. The fact that the marketplace is brimming with products to keep our kids ‘safe’ from things we never used to worry about – like parks, learning to crawl, learning to walk, putting things in their mouths.
As parents, we are acutely aware of the dangers that face our children, but most people don't realize that crime rates in the US were on the rise during the 1970s and '80s and peaked in 1993. Since then crime has declined by 50 percent. Overall crime has declined in the US, but 24-hour news cycles can create the appearance that crime is everywhere all the time, a point that freerange parents make when encouraging parents not to become paranoid about their children in the world.
The media perpetuates the tragic images of children dying and brings them into my living room, making me believe that my child is one misstep away from being the child featured on the next edition of Breakings News at 5. The media coverage makes it seem like the problem is bigger than it is. And then when a tragic things does happen to a child (and I’m talking a one in a million kind of thing), the first thing people ask is, where was the mother? The truth of the matter is simply this: bad things happen. When we are dealing with a statistical possibility of .00007, it was just meant to be.
We live four blocks from school. I have been walking my boys to school for the last four years, and this year started out no differently. The difference this year though, with a 3rd grader and 1st grader, was that they would run on ahead of me, and I sort of just trailed behind them. So, I decided it was probably time to let them start walking to school on their own. They have to cross three roads, one of which is the block on the school with a designated crosswalk. Now, we’ve been working on crossing the roads safely for four years, and I fully trust my boys to stop, look both ways, and then proceed with caution. But I was on pins and needles the first time I let them go alone. Later that morning, a friend called me to see how it went. She asked how I couldn’t be worried that they were abducted and halfway on their way to Missouri. I laughed. First of all, I said, the statistical probability of their being abducted is almost zero, and besides, the school secretary calls by 8:30 if I haven’t called in their absence and they haven’t shown up yet. Besides, I went on, I am far more concerned that a distracted and hurried parent driving their kid to school is going to run over them in the crosswalk, which if far more likely than an abduction.
“Well, of course you would let your kids do that. You’re quite a bit less cautious than I am.” She responded. But she is wrong, of course. I think about my children’s safety all the time. I never intentionally put my kids into harms’ way. Ever. But as they have gotten older, I have let them stretch their bounds a bit because I know I can trust them. I have spent their entire childhood teaching them to listen to their intuition and to make good decisions. So, I wait to see what they’ll do. See how they’ll react to a new situation.
In the early years of childrearing, I baby proofed the things in my home that I truly felt were safety hazards – I put outlet covers in the outlets and moved the hazardous cleaning supplies etc. to a high cupboard. But there were a slew of “baby-proofing suggestions” that I choose to not do. Instead I worked hard early on to teach them what is okay and what is not. My mantra, “they’ll only do it once” has horrified many a visitor to my house. Playdates are a nightmare b/c I have more rules than babyproofing strategies in place. But rules are designed to be my babyproofing strategy. I am teaching my children to trust me (if I say it will hurt, it will hurt!) and to obey me when I say “no.” I don’t have things to slow the shutting of the cupboard doors or to keep fingers from getting pinched in the doors. But the truth of the matter is that I would rather they learn that it hurts to shut the door on their fingers at home on a door that weighs very little rather than learn it on the doors at the library where it will actually cause damage instead of just a sting. I want them to learn to avoid walking into the corners of furniture at home, so that when they are in a place of sharp corners and dangerous edges, they already know that it doesn’t feel good to run into those things. We learn a lot of things by cause and effect, trial and error. By removing this experience from our children when they are small and capable of bouncing back easily, we inadvertently increase the odds of their getting really hurt when they are less flexible.
Freerange parents are not daredevils. We believe in life jackets and bike helmets and air bags. But we also believe in independence. Cultivating independence is central to free-range parents, rather than cultivating parent-assisted independence, which according to Skenazy—author of Free-Range Kids, doesn't give the child the satisfaction of truly realizing that she can do something on her own.
Children in 1997 played less and had less overall unsupervised free time than they did 16 years earlier. According to the American Journal of Free Play, author and psychologist Peter Gray, today's kids are missing out on opportunities to be physically active, tap into their creativity, gain social skills, manage risk, regulate their emotions and become self-reliant. If mom swoops in every time a playmate steals away a toy, the child fails to learn coping skills, negotiating skills, and most importantly, to just get over it!
Play time gives kids the opportunity to work on social skills, much of which require the ability to handle disputes. Research demonstrates that play stimulates the genes that govern nerve growth in the frontal cortex, the executive portion of the brain, allowing kids to mature in their ability to govern their emotions and behavior.
Age-appropriate independence allows a parent to define boundaries for his or her child and set guidelines.
Freerange parenting is about teaching your kids to be self-reliant and teaching them common sense so they can make good decisions. Consider the topic of stranger danger. Are you afraid your child will be abducted, murdered, sexually abused? Do you worry about this in Target, at the library, at the park? Did you know that the odds of your child being abducted and murdered by a stranger are a consistent 1 in 1.5 million, which comes out to a statistical chance of about .00007? Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives? Most of the kids whose pictures hang on the “Missing” bulletin boards were kidnapped by a family member, close friend, or are runaways? What would you want your child to do if you were at a park and he had fallen off the swings and was bleeding and a nearby mom had rushed over to help your son? You had taken the youngest to the bathroom, so you missed the whole thing. Does your son trust the stranger to help him or does he assume that the stranger with the bandaid is simply hoping to lure him away to the nearby Honda Odyssey to sell him for bread money? It sounds a bit ludicrous, I know, but when we teach our children to avoid all strangers, we are teaching them that strangers cannot help them. Find an adult with a badge to help. Okay, how does that work at the park? Instead teach your children common sense. Mom with kids at park? Good stranger for help. Man sitting alone with small dog at edge of park? Maybe not the best first choice. Teach your children to be polite to strangers, to be kind to others, and to know what a “bad” stranger looks like. Get in a car with a stranger? Never. Say hi when they say hi as you’re passing by? Yes. That is training your children to be decent human beings. Don’t prevent your kids from going to the park because you are afraid they will get hurt or encounter strangers.
I am a free range parent. It doesn’t mean I don’t worry about my kids safety. If you knew me well, you would know that I actually have a lot of anxiety, especially when it comes to the health and well-being of my family. But I am constantly reminded that we are children of God, and we are not to let fear rule us, our lives, or our parenting styles. 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (NKJV). A spirit of fearfulness and timidity does not come from God. “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18). No one is perfect, and God knows this. We aren’t perfect parents, and we will sometimes prevent our children from learning important things because we are too afraid to let them try. But we must remind ourselves that it isn’t our role to protect our children from everything, but rather to teach them how to live safely in the world. We don’t want them to be afraid. We want them to be bold and courageous. And if you’ve ever read any parenting manual, you will find that most of them agree that modeling acceptable behavior is one of the most successful parenting techniques there is. And most of know by now that our children don’t just pick up the good behaviors we model. If we are afraid of everything, chances are that they will be, too.
Jump back to my current class of college freshmen: I often have the opportunity to pick my students’ brains on things that I can’t find good research on. For example – I ran across an article about Yosemite National Park that stated that the number of preventable deaths was at an all-time high, and the deaths were mostly in the early 20-something age bracket. So I asked my class why they thought this was happening. Their response both surprised me and gave me some keen insight. They said that they have grown up in a world where everything is dangerous. There are danger signs on everything from pencils (obviously not dangerous) to stickers, to matches and gas cans. They said that their generation is immune in a way to warning signs b/c they see them everywhere, on everything, including things that just obviously aren’t dangerous. So, either they don’t acknowledge the warning signs anymore or they don’t know how to rank the level of danger. If everything is dangerous, then nothing is dangerous. And that, my friend, is the greatest danger of all.
So be encouraged. God has gifted you with children, and he gave you common sense to use every day to parent your kids.
For further reading, please read Free-Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy
