Yeaaaahh! I rode the subway alone at 9 in 1992, statistically a way more dangerous time. It was right after school so there were crossing guards, the train was always packed, and I remember feeling very safe and excited to do everything right and “keep my wits about me” and show my parents I could do it. It was the only way for me to get to the choir I had just gotten into, and my mom would meet me at a token booth half way and we’d ride the rest of the trip together. Love all these ideas. Thank you for bringing them up and for the great resources!
I love this conversation a LOT. My kid is a free-range kid, largely thanks to the pandemic which shut down schools here for a year and a half when she was six. We live in a little neighborhood filled with kids with just two dead-end culdesacs, which makes it feel relatively safe for the kids to wander the streets. But honestly we didn't have much of a choice; I was in the process of founding a business in 2020 while still running my private coaching practice and I DID NOT have time to watch my kiddo during all waking hours. Once we got masks, our garage became the "clubhouse" for about 10 neighborhood kids ranging in age from 5-9 who were all at loose ends. The older kids often came up with games or mediated disagreements and the young ones were just happy to be included (although there were definitely tears here and there). Six sets of parents were on a shared text thread, and we still laugh about getting texts like "can you see/hear the kids?" while we were in meetings and struggling to work from home. Community was so essential to make this work and I love that you mentioned that! We all coparented all of the kids during the pandemic because we HAD TO - and it was the greatest. My neighbors and I joke that they got a great Montessori education. They also definitely got poison ivy and left out and upset and in trouble occasionally - but these were risks we were willing to take to have them out of our hair and also happily occupied. To this day my kiddo is outside with her friends for multiple hours a day after school basically unsupervised - we're there, but we're not keeping tabs on them. They're free and happy, we can work, and we're close with our neighbors as a result. Everyone wins.
I totally love this and I'm jealous. It also takes the mental load off of parents of "coordinating" play dates. When we moved to Durham, coming from NYC we really prioritized being within walking distance from downtown. I love many things about our neighborhood, but if I were to move I would probably prioritize a quiet street where there were a lot of other families. there are a couple of roads near us that people drive way over the speed limit and treat like local highways, but there are many kids within walking distance. I am interested in bringing Let Grow to our school and see if we can encourage more neighborhood roaming.
I love this topic and I’m very glad you called out how this plays out differently for moms of color and moms living in poverty.
I definitely look to other moms to hear about their kid’s latest independence accomplishment so we can try them too. Without that prompt I wouldn’t think to challenge him (8) in that way. More from inertia than anxiety, though I am certainly a big worrier.
At a policy level, what I need my government to do is enforce moving violations and make streets safer for pedestrians. We live near a highway in Brooklyn, and people drive off into our residential neighborhood like lunatics. Seniors and children are killed every year by cars; I worry about this, not kidnapping.
The lunatic drivers are definitely a concern on my street as well. We would love to see speed bumps but haven’t gone down the route of investigating how to get them put in on our street.
I have so many thoughts about all of this. We live in a walkable village and are less than a quarter of a mile from a park with a nice flat field and a good playground. I allow my 9-year old to walk to the park alone – I can literally stand at my kitchen window and watch him cross the only street he needs to cross in order to get to the park – so when he is begging and begging me to play soccer I tell him to just grab the ball and see if anyone’s at the park. I also allow him to go for walks around our neighborhood (which has sidewalks everywhere). It’s one of his favorite ways to blow off steam when he gets mad! But I always feel like I’m playing with fire – like I’m just tempting fate and will somehow end up with CPS involved. One time, a woman saw him walking alone and pulled over, stopped him, asked what he was doing etc, and then asked him to walk home while she followed in her car so she could make sure he was okay. It was well-intentioned but when she spoke to me once my son came home I definitely felt pretty judged and like I was in a kind of risky situation.
I also feel this a lot with kid activities. When I was a kid, it was extremely common for my sisters and I to get somewhere a bit early or get picked up 20 minutes or so after our class/practice/etc had ended. We would bring a book or some homework or whatever, and just….chill. Now I definitely feel like in most situations, it would be a major faux pas if I were not there waiting to pick up my kid as soon as the activity ends. The only place where it feels like my kids are given the same kind of “handle yourselves” assumption of autonomy that I had as a kid is the ballet studio, where I do drop my older kid off 30 minutes early so I can go pick up my younger kid elsewhere, and he chills out in the dressing room reading his book until ballet class. But otherwise – setting aside dropping a kid off early or picking them up after class ends, even just not being there DURING the activity sometimes feels taboo. One kid does a soccer practice on Monday afternoons and my other kid needs to be dropped elsewhere right in the middle of it. So I bounce between the two locations, about 10 minutes from each other. One day the soccer kid got a stomachache and sat out the rest of practice and the coach called me and really seemed pretty weirded out that I wasn’t just right there watching – that she had to call me in the first place. I told her I was 7 minutes away and would be there shortly but I definitely felt super ashamed walking over to the field with everybody watching. I don’t remember my mom sitting there through basically ANYTHING I did as a kid whereas in that soccer group I definitely am the only parent dropping the kid off and leaving. It feels like I’m somehow creating a liability or something, by not being there ready to take control should my 9-year old need anything at all.
As for the pool – we used to walk to the pool ourselves and just handle everything. I mean there was a lifeguard, but we'd bring towels and snacks and money for the grill, and we'd swim and leave when we knew we had to/when we wanted to. Now, you aren’t allowed at our pool without an adult if you’re under 14.
I even notice it skiing. When I was a kid, being a family of 5 meant someone was always riding the lift with a stranger. And it was totally normal! Now, when I go skiing as the only adult with my two kids, if it's a two-seater lift, other adults will almost always let that spot on a chair go empty and wait for the next one, instead of sitting next to someone else’s kid. There’s definitely a huge amount of hesitation, broadly, to ever put anyone besides a legal guardian in a position where they might be perceived as the “adult on duty” for a random child – and implicit in that is the assumption that there always must be an adult on duty.
the story about the person following your kid in the car is just downright creepy. And I hate the idea that you felt shamed at the soccer practice! all of this is a reminder it can be hard to go against the helicopter cultural mentality even when we're making rational, informed decisions.
Ally, just coming here to say that you (obviously) have nothing to be ashamed of and also, shaming people is not nice. They shouldn't have done that to you.
On the upside, you're probably setting an example for all the parents who are yearning to drop their kids off and go do other stuff or take a moment to themselves. More power to you, trailblazer! lol
P.S. We never stay at activities unless we really want to; as a matter of fact, my partner and I use our daughter's Friday night ninja class as an excuse for a date night. It's wonderful.
I love this topic so much! all of this insight on how we’ve ended up with this unsustainable parenting culture is so valuable as we try to figure out how to undo it all. So great to learn about Let Grow as well. Our new neighborhood is a short walk to a gas station and Sonic so my boys have been loving the freedom of walking down there on the weekends for snacks (even if I don’t exactly love the amount of money they’re spending or sugar they’re consuming). They have several classmates in the neighborhood they ride the bus with and they hang out at each others houses. This summer will be interesting as I’ve only booked 2 weeks of camp and the rest of the time they’ll be free range and able to hang with their friends.
It is crazy to me that we live in a time when we need a CURRICULUM for something like the Let Grow Play Club, "where kids are allowed to be together and play in a phone-free environment with a 'lifeguard-like' adult to supervise, making sure no one is seriously injured, but the adult is not involved in planning any programming or interfering with social interactions."
I'm interested in ways tools like Let Grow allow adults to hold certain aspects of our kids' lives less tightly. It's as much a tool for us as a curriculum for kids.
Also, I'm curious if you all think there's a difference between a free-range parent and a free-range kid. In my family, I am a free-range parent of a highly-attached neurodivergent kid who needs the calming presence of a grownup to relax in the environment and play independently and/or with other kids. Our version of free-ranging looks like me being one room away while he does something on his own, so the free-ranging is more of a mindset rather than an actual physical space thing.
totally agree it's just as much for adults as for kids. I think free range means something different for every family, and i think it's great you are adapting it to your kids' needs.
This is so great to read. I find myself so frustrated with the parenting burden imposed by institutions/changing societal expectations. At school, parents are expected to be waiting at 3 pm for their children to emerge and quickly usher them home, for instance. Children don’t just stick around to play and then wander home on their own, as I did when I was a child. If you’re not there and waiting, you get a call from the principal. We’ve added so many unnecessary tasks to parenting that it’s become almost impossible to keep up. My child has only kids this year (age 10) started to become more independent at my insistence and in contrast to all of his peers. When I think of how much children are managed these days compared to when I grew up, the difference is incredible!
I read Lenore Skenazy's book, and I remember the Slate survey showing that successive generations were allowed to roam smaller and smaller areas at older and older ages. I think Jennifer Senior's book All Joy and No Fun also made that point. I grew up being able to bike to a friend's house, but not in a neighborhood with many kids, and not able to bike to a business. I have been delighted that my daughter and her friends in fifth grade walk together to shop and get snacks. It's been a gift that while we've been at the school it's drawn almost entirely from the surrounding blocks, so the girls can pick each other up easily. But I know that makes schools more segregated, too. The school lets kids self-dismiss starting in third grade, so walking home is normalized in the community, and that's been lovely. I think the ease of hanging out with friends has given my daughter social skills I didn't have at that age.
Yeaaaahh! I rode the subway alone at 9 in 1992, statistically a way more dangerous time. It was right after school so there were crossing guards, the train was always packed, and I remember feeling very safe and excited to do everything right and “keep my wits about me” and show my parents I could do it. It was the only way for me to get to the choir I had just gotten into, and my mom would meet me at a token booth half way and we’d ride the rest of the trip together. Love all these ideas. Thank you for bringing them up and for the great resources!
I love this topic and appreciate this thoughtful conversation so much. Thank you both!
I love this conversation a LOT. My kid is a free-range kid, largely thanks to the pandemic which shut down schools here for a year and a half when she was six. We live in a little neighborhood filled with kids with just two dead-end culdesacs, which makes it feel relatively safe for the kids to wander the streets. But honestly we didn't have much of a choice; I was in the process of founding a business in 2020 while still running my private coaching practice and I DID NOT have time to watch my kiddo during all waking hours. Once we got masks, our garage became the "clubhouse" for about 10 neighborhood kids ranging in age from 5-9 who were all at loose ends. The older kids often came up with games or mediated disagreements and the young ones were just happy to be included (although there were definitely tears here and there). Six sets of parents were on a shared text thread, and we still laugh about getting texts like "can you see/hear the kids?" while we were in meetings and struggling to work from home. Community was so essential to make this work and I love that you mentioned that! We all coparented all of the kids during the pandemic because we HAD TO - and it was the greatest. My neighbors and I joke that they got a great Montessori education. They also definitely got poison ivy and left out and upset and in trouble occasionally - but these were risks we were willing to take to have them out of our hair and also happily occupied. To this day my kiddo is outside with her friends for multiple hours a day after school basically unsupervised - we're there, but we're not keeping tabs on them. They're free and happy, we can work, and we're close with our neighbors as a result. Everyone wins.
I totally love this and I'm jealous. It also takes the mental load off of parents of "coordinating" play dates. When we moved to Durham, coming from NYC we really prioritized being within walking distance from downtown. I love many things about our neighborhood, but if I were to move I would probably prioritize a quiet street where there were a lot of other families. there are a couple of roads near us that people drive way over the speed limit and treat like local highways, but there are many kids within walking distance. I am interested in bringing Let Grow to our school and see if we can encourage more neighborhood roaming.
I love Let Grow and am glad to see you spotlighting their cause!
I love this topic and I’m very glad you called out how this plays out differently for moms of color and moms living in poverty.
I definitely look to other moms to hear about their kid’s latest independence accomplishment so we can try them too. Without that prompt I wouldn’t think to challenge him (8) in that way. More from inertia than anxiety, though I am certainly a big worrier.
At a policy level, what I need my government to do is enforce moving violations and make streets safer for pedestrians. We live near a highway in Brooklyn, and people drive off into our residential neighborhood like lunatics. Seniors and children are killed every year by cars; I worry about this, not kidnapping.
1000% more concerned about cars than kidnappers. and texting and driving.
We don't have sidewalks in our area, it's suburban but it is a very real limiting factor for my kids to go beyond our immediate neighborhood.
The lunatic drivers are definitely a concern on my street as well. We would love to see speed bumps but haven’t gone down the route of investigating how to get them put in on our street.
I have so many thoughts about all of this. We live in a walkable village and are less than a quarter of a mile from a park with a nice flat field and a good playground. I allow my 9-year old to walk to the park alone – I can literally stand at my kitchen window and watch him cross the only street he needs to cross in order to get to the park – so when he is begging and begging me to play soccer I tell him to just grab the ball and see if anyone’s at the park. I also allow him to go for walks around our neighborhood (which has sidewalks everywhere). It’s one of his favorite ways to blow off steam when he gets mad! But I always feel like I’m playing with fire – like I’m just tempting fate and will somehow end up with CPS involved. One time, a woman saw him walking alone and pulled over, stopped him, asked what he was doing etc, and then asked him to walk home while she followed in her car so she could make sure he was okay. It was well-intentioned but when she spoke to me once my son came home I definitely felt pretty judged and like I was in a kind of risky situation.
I also feel this a lot with kid activities. When I was a kid, it was extremely common for my sisters and I to get somewhere a bit early or get picked up 20 minutes or so after our class/practice/etc had ended. We would bring a book or some homework or whatever, and just….chill. Now I definitely feel like in most situations, it would be a major faux pas if I were not there waiting to pick up my kid as soon as the activity ends. The only place where it feels like my kids are given the same kind of “handle yourselves” assumption of autonomy that I had as a kid is the ballet studio, where I do drop my older kid off 30 minutes early so I can go pick up my younger kid elsewhere, and he chills out in the dressing room reading his book until ballet class. But otherwise – setting aside dropping a kid off early or picking them up after class ends, even just not being there DURING the activity sometimes feels taboo. One kid does a soccer practice on Monday afternoons and my other kid needs to be dropped elsewhere right in the middle of it. So I bounce between the two locations, about 10 minutes from each other. One day the soccer kid got a stomachache and sat out the rest of practice and the coach called me and really seemed pretty weirded out that I wasn’t just right there watching – that she had to call me in the first place. I told her I was 7 minutes away and would be there shortly but I definitely felt super ashamed walking over to the field with everybody watching. I don’t remember my mom sitting there through basically ANYTHING I did as a kid whereas in that soccer group I definitely am the only parent dropping the kid off and leaving. It feels like I’m somehow creating a liability or something, by not being there ready to take control should my 9-year old need anything at all.
As for the pool – we used to walk to the pool ourselves and just handle everything. I mean there was a lifeguard, but we'd bring towels and snacks and money for the grill, and we'd swim and leave when we knew we had to/when we wanted to. Now, you aren’t allowed at our pool without an adult if you’re under 14.
I even notice it skiing. When I was a kid, being a family of 5 meant someone was always riding the lift with a stranger. And it was totally normal! Now, when I go skiing as the only adult with my two kids, if it's a two-seater lift, other adults will almost always let that spot on a chair go empty and wait for the next one, instead of sitting next to someone else’s kid. There’s definitely a huge amount of hesitation, broadly, to ever put anyone besides a legal guardian in a position where they might be perceived as the “adult on duty” for a random child – and implicit in that is the assumption that there always must be an adult on duty.
the story about the person following your kid in the car is just downright creepy. And I hate the idea that you felt shamed at the soccer practice! all of this is a reminder it can be hard to go against the helicopter cultural mentality even when we're making rational, informed decisions.
Ally, just coming here to say that you (obviously) have nothing to be ashamed of and also, shaming people is not nice. They shouldn't have done that to you.
On the upside, you're probably setting an example for all the parents who are yearning to drop their kids off and go do other stuff or take a moment to themselves. More power to you, trailblazer! lol
P.S. We never stay at activities unless we really want to; as a matter of fact, my partner and I use our daughter's Friday night ninja class as an excuse for a date night. It's wonderful.
I love this topic so much! all of this insight on how we’ve ended up with this unsustainable parenting culture is so valuable as we try to figure out how to undo it all. So great to learn about Let Grow as well. Our new neighborhood is a short walk to a gas station and Sonic so my boys have been loving the freedom of walking down there on the weekends for snacks (even if I don’t exactly love the amount of money they’re spending or sugar they’re consuming). They have several classmates in the neighborhood they ride the bus with and they hang out at each others houses. This summer will be interesting as I’ve only booked 2 weeks of camp and the rest of the time they’ll be free range and able to hang with their friends.
It is crazy to me that we live in a time when we need a CURRICULUM for something like the Let Grow Play Club, "where kids are allowed to be together and play in a phone-free environment with a 'lifeguard-like' adult to supervise, making sure no one is seriously injured, but the adult is not involved in planning any programming or interfering with social interactions."
and yet, here we are!
Indeed! I 100% support Let Grow's work.
This!
I'm interested in ways tools like Let Grow allow adults to hold certain aspects of our kids' lives less tightly. It's as much a tool for us as a curriculum for kids.
Also, I'm curious if you all think there's a difference between a free-range parent and a free-range kid. In my family, I am a free-range parent of a highly-attached neurodivergent kid who needs the calming presence of a grownup to relax in the environment and play independently and/or with other kids. Our version of free-ranging looks like me being one room away while he does something on his own, so the free-ranging is more of a mindset rather than an actual physical space thing.
totally agree it's just as much for adults as for kids. I think free range means something different for every family, and i think it's great you are adapting it to your kids' needs.
This is so great to read. I find myself so frustrated with the parenting burden imposed by institutions/changing societal expectations. At school, parents are expected to be waiting at 3 pm for their children to emerge and quickly usher them home, for instance. Children don’t just stick around to play and then wander home on their own, as I did when I was a child. If you’re not there and waiting, you get a call from the principal. We’ve added so many unnecessary tasks to parenting that it’s become almost impossible to keep up. My child has only kids this year (age 10) started to become more independent at my insistence and in contrast to all of his peers. When I think of how much children are managed these days compared to when I grew up, the difference is incredible!
I read Lenore Skenazy's book, and I remember the Slate survey showing that successive generations were allowed to roam smaller and smaller areas at older and older ages. I think Jennifer Senior's book All Joy and No Fun also made that point. I grew up being able to bike to a friend's house, but not in a neighborhood with many kids, and not able to bike to a business. I have been delighted that my daughter and her friends in fifth grade walk together to shop and get snacks. It's been a gift that while we've been at the school it's drawn almost entirely from the surrounding blocks, so the girls can pick each other up easily. But I know that makes schools more segregated, too. The school lets kids self-dismiss starting in third grade, so walking home is normalized in the community, and that's been lovely. I think the ease of hanging out with friends has given my daughter social skills I didn't have at that age.
there is nothing like a tween empowered to buy their own snack! love it.