born free
Filed Under Stuff, Tips & Tricks | September 30, 2009
Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids – Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry may be filled with tongue in cheek humour (Play Dates and Axe Murderers: How to Tell the Difference) but she’s serious about giving our kids a little more freedom.
You may have heard of Skenazy, better known as “America’s Worst Mom.” Her book was inspired by the media storm that resulted when she let her nine-year-old ride the New York subway alone. She did it because she knew her kid: he was ready, they’d practiced and he was prepared. Then, she wrote about it. The Today Show called, then MSNBC and Fox. Suddenly she found herself at the centre of a blizzard of blame.
Which brought out the investigative journalist in Skenazy, who set out to find out if our kids really are at risk every minute of every day. And, just by questioning whether it makes sense to never let our kids out of our sight, she became the voice of a whole new movement: Free-Range Kids.
Skenazy says that in general today’s parents aren’t that great at managing risk for their kids. But wait you say, no risk gets past me; I’m the Super-Parent of Risk Prevention.
Which is Skenazy’s point. Indiscriminate protection isn’t a risk management strategy. The first part of risk management is identifying what really are significant risks. Children face risks: cars, bikes, swimming pools and Skenazy is all for an ounce of prevention – car seats, bike helmets, fence and locked gates. But are our fears of stranger danger, playground perils and drowning in toilets based in reality, or are they fueled by sensationalist news stories, a multi-billion dollar safety industry and parental peer pressure?
What she found was that the “greatest risk of all just might be trying to raise a child who never encounters any risks.” Yes, raising your kids “Free Range” is about giving them some of the play experiences we cherish from our own childhoods and the happy by-product of that independence are kids who are able to handle themselves confidently and have the resilience to manage the risks they’re faced with themselves.
The best part of Skenazy’s book is that it leaves you feeling excited, rather than stressed. Which is certainly not always the case with parenting books.
For her ongoing thoughts on Free Range Kids and the pressures that push parents towards raising over-protected kids check out Skenazy’s blog or follow her on twitter.
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