Letting Your Children Go Outdoors

“),,”filter”:{“nextExceptions”:”img, blockquote, div”,”nextContainsExceptions”:”img, blockquote, a.btn, ao-button”},”renderIntial”:true,”wordCount”:350 }”>

When I heard the news Georgia’s mother arrested When someone noticed their ten-year-old son walking alone less than a mile from home, the first thing I did for my reckless behavior was open Google Maps. I looked at the distance between my house and a nearby middle school where my six-year-old daughter sometimes walks with a friend her age. They enjoy the excitement of playing on the playground without an adult around, and I enjoy the freedom of having the house to myself for half an hour.

Still, I’m relieved every time I hear my daughter approaching the driveway after one of her mini-adventures, which according to my Google Maps search covers less than a half-mile round trip. My relief comes less from worry that something might actually happen to him than from the possibility that a neighbor or passerby might judge me as negligent for letting him walk to the playground alone.

Even before the story about the Georgia mom blew up the internet, I had heard similar reports: Texas mom was handcuffed and jailed overnight for turning her child eight. walk half a mile House; maryland brothers He was detained for approximately six hours He was arrested by the police for playing alone in the playground.

Every time one of these stories makes headlines, the American people lose their collective shit. People from all walks of the political spectrum are equally outraged and (for once) agree that helicopter parenting culture has gone too far. The same comments are echoed on the internet: When I was a kid, my parents didn’t care where we were as long as we were home when the street lights came on! Or: When I was that age, I used to walk home from school And I’m babysitting my little siblings!

Parents I know in real life are similarly supportive of giving our children the freedom to roam, and they fear we might get in trouble for it. A friend of mine said “Roaming LicenseA card for her eight-year-old to carry. If a concerned citizen tries to intervene, the child can present a card with the phone number of his/her parents, stating that he/she is not lost or neglected.

Meanwhile, my aunt told me that her two children, ages 15 and 8, were recently walking home from the library when a nice older woman pulled up next to them and begged them to come in to give them up. go home. The woman was so distraught over what she perceived as the children’s risky behavior that she thought asking them to get into a car with a stranger was better than letting them walk unsupervised down a familiar suburban street in broad daylight.

Although such errors in judgment may be well-intentioned, the chances of a child being kidnapped or hit by a car are extremely low. extremely low It was lower in the United States and certainly lower than it was in the eighties and nineties when I was a kid. But partly because media reports tend to amplify violence and tragedy, such events may seem more common than they actually are, leading some people to misjudge the risk of children acting independently.

According to anecdotes, the fact that modern children walk or play alone worries many people. people from generations older than mine, People who had a lot of freedom growing up but may have watched too much CSI ever since. My own peers (mostly older millennials) have absorbed many articles extolling developmental benefits We allow our children to manage risks and develop their independence, and many of us try to encourage such behavior.

2023 Pew study We kind of back that up by finding that only 28 percent of millennial parents are “very concerned” about their child being kidnapped. The same study found that Black and Hispanic parents were significantly more concerned about their children being shot than white or Asian parents; This aligns with demographic trends in gun violence and underscores the fact that free parenting is a privilege of living in a relatively safe place.

Personally, I’m more worried about the social or legal repercussions of letting my child wander around the neighborhood unsupervised than I am about a stranger catching it. What if my concerns were as exaggerated as those of the woman in the car who tried to stop my niece and nephew from walking home? Lenore Skenazy, who coined the term “free-range parenting” and co-founded Let Grow, a childhood independence nonprofit, underlines this: extremely rare for parents to face legal action Because they let their children play outside or walk home alone, it’s so rare that it becomes national news when it happens.

In other words, just as the risk of a child being kidnapped is very low, the chance of someone calling the police when I let my six-year-old explore outside with a friend is just as low; especially now that there are more states. Passing free-range parenting laws.

Parenting is inherently risky. The world is not completely safe and will never be. But instead of being moved by the stories it could be Perhaps the best thing we can do for our children and ourselves is to focus on what is still okay; Like my daughter jumping out of the driveway with her best friend, her cheeks flushed with cold and excitement. I return home just as the street lights come on and I take a hot dinner out of the oven.