Ep 209: Why Giving Kids More Freedom Makes Them Stronger, with Lenore Skenazy

Today on Your Child Is Normal, I’m thrilled to re-air one of our most important conversations with Lenore Skenazy — author of Free‑Range Kids and president of the nonprofit Let Grow, which is leading a national movement to restore childhood independence.

Lenore explains why when we trust kids to do more on their own, they grow stronger, more confident, and less anxious. She upends the “hover-parenting” norm and invites us to rethink what real childhood looks like.

In this episode you’ll hear:

•How childhood became over-scheduled, over-monitored, and under-trusted.

•Why giving kids more freedom isn’t neglect—it’s empowerment.

•Practical steps you can take this week to let your child take the reins (just a little).

•Lenore’s latest work including her brand-new TED Talk, “Why You Should Spend Less Time With Your Kids.” (Watch it here ➜ https://www.ted.com/talks/lenore_skenazy_why_you_should_spend_less_time_with_your_kids?language=en)  

Your Child is Normal is the trusted podcast for parents, pediatricians, and child health experts who want smart, nuanced conversations about raising healthy, resilient kids. Hosted by Dr. Jessica Hochman — a board-certified practicing pediatrician — the show combines evidence-based medicine, expert interviews, and real-world parenting advice to help listeners navigate everything from sleep struggles to mental health, nutrition, screen time, and more.

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:06

Hi everyone, and welcome back to your child is normal. I'm your host. Dr Jessica Hochman, today I'm re airing one of my favorite episodes, because it's such an important message, and I think it's one worth hearing again. My guest is Lenore skinnesi, author of free range kids, and President of let grow the nonprofit leading a national movement to give kids back some independence. Now if you've read Jonathan heights book the anxious generation, you'll recognize her name. He thanks Lenore in his acknowledgements and credits her with helping write several chapters of the book. He even called her quote his parenting muse. Lenore's work has been deeply influential in changing how we think about childhood safety and freedom. Her message is simple but powerful. Kids grow stronger, more confident and less anxious when we trust them to do more on their own. And a big congratulations to Lenore. Since we've recorded this episode, she has a brand new TED talk. I'll link it in the show notes below. Thank you again, Lenore, for coming on my podcast. I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity to record your wise words of wisdom. I'm also going to nickname you my parenting muse. So as you give this episode A Listen, my hope is that it leaves you with some inspiration to let your kids have a little more freedom. Lenore, scan easy. It is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you, Jessica. So tell me about yourself. Tell me Wednesday after that, thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here in cyberspace with you. I haven't met before, but I bet it's going to be fun. That's really what I think. Can I tell you after reading your book, I can tell you are very funny. Thank you. Well, I so appreciated reading your book, because humor is one of my favorite qualities in somebody. So thank you for shining your humor throughout the pages of your book, which I am highly recommending to anybody listening right now. Do yourself a favor and get this book right away, because the themes of your book, I wish I could sing it from the rooftop, so that everybody could hear and think about the messages that you convey, so that people can implement it into their own lives. I think it's so important. Sing it out. Sing it out. I will you have a song. We have a song. We have a theme song for let grow, which is the nonprofit that grew out of free range kids. And I will give it to you to put in the notes. It's, I'll just go outside to I will survive. I love it. Oh, I love it. I love that song, too. So tell me about yourself. Tell me how you ended up being the face of the free range kids movement. I wrote the book free range kids. He started the book. So what happened is, years ago, when our younger son, who's now 25 was nine, he had asked me and my husband to take him someplace he'd never been before, here in New York City, where we live, and let him find his own way home by the subway. Long story short, I did that. I took him to Bloomingdale's. I left him there. He knew it was that day. It wasn't like he felt abandoned. It was exciting. Bloomingdale sits on top of a subway stop. So he went down to the subway. He took the subway to 34th Street, which is the street where miracles occur. And then he took the bus home, and he came home so proud, excited, you know, sort of exuberant that he had done something that he was ready for, and that we had trusted him to do in the real world. And I was a newspaper columnist back then, and so I wrote a column, why I let my nine year old ride the subway alone? And two days later, I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News and NPR. And so I wrote, I started the blog that weekend to say, You know what, I actually love my son. I love safety. I love my other son too, who never gets mentioned, calls himself the control group. And I just, I just don't understand, didn't understand how I understand more how we've come to not trust our kids to do anything on their own without us ever, even though most of us grew up either walking to school or playing outside on the weekends or, you know, after school in the afternoon and and we cherished that, and we loved it, and we're grateful for that, and it's the one thing that we can't give our own kids, is independence. And it turns out that independence is really key for for for kids, for their parents, for busting anxiety, for a sense of adventure, and just for the good of all of us, we got to step back a little bit. So that's what I've dedicated my life to. How do we get parents to step back and and let their kids step up? I'm so curious when that all happened, when you blogged about it, and you got a lot of media press about letting your son ride the subway. Were you surprised at the backlash that you received? Surprised is sort of a mild way of putting it. I mean, I'm a newspaper columnist, right? I must have written two or 3000 columns over the course of my life. Name another one. How about that one last week? Lenoir, that was so interesting, so fun. What about that time you wrote about bioterrorism? What about all your columns on Barbie? Nobody cares. Just one column like exploded. So yes, I was quite surprised. That's so interesting. I mean, I just, I'm just so curious, from your perspective, how did it feel when people called you America's worst mom? I mean, did part of that inspire the work that you've continued to do? You know, maybe that's true. I have thought about it that way. But if you feel. Feel like you're saying something that's sort of thoughtful and reality based, and there's hysteria against you. Yeah, that does, that does motivate me to say, Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I mean, the reason I started the free range kids blog the weekend after the column was so that I could say my side of things, which is that, like you think I don't care if my kid lives or dies. You think I don't have any notion of what goes on in the subway. I live in New York City. I take the subway every day. You're writing to me from Montana saying you would never let your kid ride the subway. I would never let my kid ride a horse. I mean, we're just in different worlds, and you get to know your kid. You get to know your city. Most of us parents are making decisions to the best of our knowledge, knowing our kids, knowing what we loved doing and what's important, and also listening to them. I mean, our older son had not asked if we would take him someplace and let him find his own way home by the subway. He's two years older and never come up, so we didn't think about it until our younger son wanted to do it and and low back as if somebody else knew my kid better than me. It's kind of nuts. It's so true. That's something that I talk about all the time with parents, is that a lot of parents want to look to others for guidance on how to raise their children. But I think there's so much that parents know intuitively that I wish they would trust more, because it's true, they know their kids better than anybody else, hands down, right, just by virtue of that. So you're with all the time, you know, Dr Spock, back when there weren't a million parenting experts and there was just him, basically his first line in, you know, Dr Spock's baby in child care is trust yourself you know more than you think you know, which is interesting, because it implies that there you go, Doctor, I keep his book right by myself. Is that the new version, or is that an old version? That is an old version? Okay? Because the new versions are by Robert Needleman, who was my college roommates boyfriend way back when. So I feel sorry one handshake away from Dr Spock, but anyways, the even, the even the info you know, the exhortation to trust yourself you know more than you think you know, implies that back then, people were also worried, like, do I know? It's like, yeah, you actually do. So I think that a certain amount of you know, confusion and worry are just automatic when you're a parent, but nowadays, rather than being told you're going to be fine, or I trust you, or everybody's different. And so, you know, all the kids are different, all the parents are different, and that's the way it goes. It's like, here is the perfect recipe. Follow it to the T by the way, you'd need Madagascar vanilla, you know, that was harvested at the three month peak of its perfection to make this recipe. I mean, there's so many specific things that you're supposed to do, to say to your child, to do for your child, that are part of this complicated recipe. And it turns out, no, you don't have to do all that. I'm so fascinated to think about how this current culture of fear has manifested, because I agree with you. It's innate in all of us to worry to some degree. But I love how you talk about how the fear has become out of proportion to the reality of what we really have to worry about with our kids. So I'm curious, why do you think, and you talk about this in your book very beautifully, but why do you think this culture of fear has manifested to the degree that it has. There's a lot of strands running through the culture that have sort of amped it up. But then there's one overarching, crazy idea, which I'll get to after I talk about the strands in my book. I talk about four reasons that I think we're much more afraid for everything our kids do, see, wear, hear, lick, than our parents. And the first is that the media is it keeps getting more intense. You know, when I was growing up, there were, you know, three channels or something like that. And then in the 80s, along came two things. One is cable television, which meant a 24 hour news cycle, which had never been the case before. And also, in the 80s, we got the kids on the milk cartons with the word missing above them and no asterisk that says last seen being taken by non custodial parent in a contentious divorce case, which would have made things a lot clearer, but it wasn't there. And so it started seeming like, you know, between the news and the milk cartons that children were being snatched constantly, and then those the media recognizes that, you know, if you can get people to watch more, you make more money. That's all TV does. That's all the media does. It's that's what Facebook does. The more attention you get, the more money you get from advertisers. And so the scariest nightmares of parents became something that was always cycling through the media, and then when we got the internet, I can get pinged when there's a scary story. So it really just started sort of washing us in fear. And there's something called mean world syndrome. Maybe you've heard of it? Have you heard of it? No, it sort of explains itself in the same but was invented by a guy named George. Something. And I think the 60s, and the idea is that, you know, you watch TV and all you see is the mean stuff, right? It's a mean world out there. You know, you don't turn on the news. And here, you know, 1 million children got to school safely again today, you know, let's hear more details. Yes, everybody was at their bus stop, and it was fine. Okay, so that's, that's the world seems mean when you watch TV, and so you start becoming afraid of it. And so you stay inside, where you watch more TV, and you become more and more afraid. So the mean world syndrome is just sort of the feedback loop of believing the media and not having the counterfactual information, which is reality. Media is one of the reasons that we're so much more afraid. We live in a litigious society, and somehow we've sort of imbibed that, and we start thinking like lawyers, what could be dangerous, what could be what could we be liable for? And school districts, I just got this amazing document, a four page rule list from a Maryland Public School District. Of all the things that you're not allowed to have happen during recess, like, if there's children who are organizing a game, be especially vigilant, because they might argue, yeah, they might imagine that, or a child might be left out, yeah, that's true. And then they have to either get better the game or become a nicer person, and then everybody want to play with him or her again. Children are not allowed to skip rungs when they climb on a, you know, one of those hanging things. They're supposed to use their opposing opposing digits when climbing. It's like who I'm trying to imagine a kid just climbing with their ring finger. You know, these are things that don't even happen, and you have to be aware of anything dangerous on the ground, any tripping hazards, including, wait for it, gravel. You start, I mean, like you start living in this weird world that maybe was written by lawyers, was written by lawyers, but has no connection to children's actual activities, or what they are capable of, or, and what they're capable of dealing with, whether it's, you know, a playground dispute or gravel underfoot, right, right? So that just sort of like distances us from real life and, and, and puts this scrim of weird, bizarre, constant danger. You know, kids feelings are going to hurt, they're going to drip and they're going to skin a knee. These four pages are so weird. You know, of course, no running and of course no tag and this and that. But one of the things is, and if children are organizing a game of three square, and I thought, my God, that's the most lawyerly thing I've ever heard, because there is no three square, there's two square and there's four squared, and clearly they just averaged it, because they have no idea what reality is like on Earth, right? And so, so we start thinking like lawyers. Lenore, I want to tell you the the elementary school that I went to, I actually work down the street from the elementary school that I attended as a kid, and I heard from a patient recently that they they stopped allowing tag, and I just can't believe it. I loved playing tag as a kid. I love that game. And why? Why on earth are we telling kids they can't play tag? It just boggles my mind. Are we afraid they're going to trip and fall? I don't understand. Oh, there's, there's so many potential dangers. Oh, my God, Jessica, first of all, a kid could get tagged, and then they'll feel bad because they've lost. A kid, could get not tagged, and then they feel left out because nobody cared about them. A kid could be it. They are single, they are they are different from everyone else. They are ostracized. They must go and chase people and, oh my goodness, the running. And then there's the the tension of, am I going to be caught or not caught? And then let's just flip it for a second, because now I'm convinced, now I understand, yeah, right, right, right, and don't forget, there's gravel, right and there's exercise. Ipso facto, you don't want to do that, yeah? So, yeah. So, so let's think about what you do get from tag a, yes, Exercise B. What is executive function? So executive function is figuring out how to do something, how you will do something, and then proceeding to execute that plan, and also to be wise enough and sort of aware enough to pivot as new information comes in. So that's what you want to be doing. Right? You want your brain to be planning doing and recalibrating when need be, and coming up with an even better plan and then dealing with some problems, should they arise? Oh, my God, there's a power line down the street. I guess I'll just keep driving. No, go around it, right? And so what is tag, other than a master class in executive planning, okay? You know Jessica, is it? She always goes towards the tree first I'm going to go towards the school wait. She surprised me. She's coming here. I'm going to go and hide behind the, you know, the slide, or, you know, or maybe I want to get caught, because then the two of us together will play. It's just every step of that game is dealing with anxiety, dealing with new information coming at you, dealing. With previous things that you stored and thought about, assessing the situation, problem solving, using your body, using your brain. It is. It's a fantastic exercise in every sense of the word, and they might even experience the F word fun. Don't know. Why should they do that when they could be studying. Did you go and talk to them at all like, Excuse me, taking out tag. Are we taking away lunch too? Should they not eat? They could joke. Sorry, that's so, yeah, it's getting it's getting preposterous. That's, that's the truth. Maybe I should call. I haven't called because my kids don't go to that school, and I, you know, sometimes I maybe I'm conflict avoidant, but I think you're right that you have to start somewhere, or else it's just gonna take a hold of our society and we'll and our kids will just be left in their rooms. I guess that's what we're left with. That's what we hear. That kids are basically in an adult, supervised, structured activity, which would be the equivalent of recess with no tag, right or or somebody hovering over the three square game that doesn't exist to make sure nobody's feelings get hurt and nobody pushes the ball too hard. And then, if they're not in an adult run activity, they're generally on a device. And if you want your kids to succeed in the real world and thrive in the real world, you have to give it back to them. And that's what you know, I keep coming up with new slogans. What is a new slogan? And Jonathan Haidt, who I work with, who has a book coming out called the anxious generation, it's going to be a big deal. Maybe it's out by the time this comes out. But you know what's a slogan for this? Okay? It's like okay to save the anxious generation, which is often online and often depressed, just say this, be home by supper. It's that simple. Be home by supper. And I talk to my husband about this all the time, because we both experienced childhoods where we were able to play outside with friends, and we would come home by supper, and we have such beautiful memories of those times. And I feel bad. Yeah, so you were saying, Okay, so the first two things you said, I was gonna segue immediately, but I'll go through that. Alright, so the media, litigious society and expert culture, they're always telling you, you're doing it wrong. Here's a new way to do it. Here's exactly what to say when you're looking at the kids drawing, you can't say that's good picture. You did a good job. It's always, I see you put effort into your drawing skills. You know, let's, let's have a growth mindset. Tomorrow, you could do it again, and the kid will have two arms instead of the three that you gave them, something like that. Anyways, there's experts telling you you're doing it wrong, and here's better ways to do it. And it starts when you're pregnant, and you have to eat every single bite correctly. And if Woe be tied she who eats, you know, a bologna sandwich or a piece of brie, you know, the All, everything bad that happens to your kid, you know until you die, is because of that sandwich. And then there's the marketplace, which knows that the easiest dollar to get from any human being is the dollar of a worried parent. So you worry the parent so that you can get their dollar. Oh, are their knees gonna hurt you? No. Children crawl 137,000 miles before they stand. That sounds like too much. It's like, well, it's apparently not, because they all do it, but no, it sounds like a lot. Well, it does sound like a lot. I wouldn't want to crawl 137,000 miles. Well, then here's a knee pad. You can put the knee pads on your child, and their knees won't hurt, and it's like, but don't you want their knees to hurt so they stand because they can't stand to do so there's just all these products out there that exist that nobody has needed since the beginning of time, and nobody will need until the end of time. But they're out there and they they create a worry. And of course, tech is the one that does it best, because, Oh, you better be watching your kid every single second, and you better know every everything that they you know every place that they've been, and you better know their grades every second. And so you start feeling the big overarching change, I'd say, is that the assumption is that if, if you have every single data point about everything your child does, sees, eats, reads, licks, watches, hears, you can optimize them, second by second, heartbeat by heartbeat. There are, there are monitors that will, you know, measure your child's blood oxygen level from moment to moment. And then you can fix it, and then they'll be perfect, and then you can relax. But of course, you'll never relax, because getting a trillion data points per second is not going to relax you. And by the way, you aren't God, and you cannot make everything perfect. And in fact, she'll come into the world ready to be wired by an imperfect world. And that's what they're expecting. That's what their entire brain and gut biome, they're all expecting, you know, some some mouthfuls of sand and and those things will end up making them. Stronger in the long run, not horrible, horrible traumas. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about some everyday frustration, dirt, confusion and a couple of B minuses. You know, when parents ask me about particular recommendations on baby safety products, generally, my line is, save your money for a date night. You know, save your money and do something that you can enjoy it with, because you can literally spend all of your money, all of your hard earned money, on ways to baby proof your home and, quote, unquote, make them safer. There's toilet seat lock. There's Have you ever been an inside house with a toilet seat lock? That's just the worst. It's like, I gotta pee and I can't figure this thing out. It's literally endless. One thing I've learned as I talk to parents about fears. A big example is the fear of a kid falling out of the crib and hurting themselves. And oftentimes they'll have a kid that crawls, you know, learns to crawl, and somehow, as Houdini gets out of the crib, and parents are petrified, oh my goodness, my kid can get themselves out of the crib. And I have to say, of all the times that I've heard the story, which I've heard multiple, multiple times. I've never had a kid. No, I don't want to maybe knock on wood, but have a have a problem from that fall. Yes, they get out of the crib, but somehow they're okay. And, you know, I just think there's a saying that kids are made of rubber, like they're they can fall, but they're a lot more resilient than I think parents give them credit for and so that's just something I try to, I really try to reinforce, when I talk to parents, that they're a lot their bodies are a lot more forgiving than we realize. And and it's not just physically resilient. I mean, the other thing is that they are emotionally resilient. And I don't I hate that. I always have to give the caveat. It doesn't mean you can completely ignore or scream at your kid, they're all alive, and that's great. But the Parents Magazine article that I quote the most, because I feel it's the Rosetta Stone for this current culture, is one that was about play dates, which is already a problem. But anyways, the question that the magazine answers is, your kid is old enough to stay home alone. Often does for short periods, but now she has a friend over. Can you actually make a dash, literally, a dash, to the dry cleaner? And of course, Parents Magazine says no, and they give the two reasons. One is they could get hurt. And they go into a long story about some kid who microwaved some macaroni and ended up with a burn. Okay? And then the second story is the second caveat is also you want to be there in case someone's feelings get hurt. You want to be there if there's a squabble to step in in case someone's feelings get hurt. And I thought that is the most dystopian possible advice I've heard anywhere, which is why I keep quoting it, because it's assuming a that A, you only have one kid because you're listening to one conversation the whole time. B, you're listening in on every iteration of their conversation. I don't want to be Ken. No, Ken is cool at the Oscars. How come you watch the Oscars? I didn't get to watch the Oscars. He's so funny. Now. I want to be Ken. No, I want to be Ken. You're supposed to be listening to all that and thinking, Oh, are their feelings getting hurt? I better step in if there's a squabble. It's like, no me first. No me first, and you actually want them to figure it out. But Parents Magazine is saying step in before they do. So really, what they're advising you is to assume your child is so fragile they can't handle an argument with a friend and B that it is better to for you to solve it than for them to solve it, which means you've left them with no muscle memory, no executive function, understanding of how to solve an argument. Other than Mom, it's my turn. No, she said, it's my turn. So that's, that's, um, that's the big problem is that we have a lot of assumptions about what we can and must do, because we're assuming that our kids are so fragile that if we don't, all bets are off. So it drives parents crazy. I think it drives moms particularly crazy. It was just a Pew study. Why didn't big Pew study about parenting? And I thought the most interesting thing was on page 13, where they asked young people who didn't have kids yet, do you want to have kids? And 57% I think of the young men, said yes, and I think about 43% of the women said yes, yes. And I'm assuming those are different numbers than they would have been a generation ago. You know, they didn't put it in context. I wish, I wish it was there, but I have to assume that it probably was, because it just seems like, well, if my job is going to be listening in on every play date and jumping in with a with the perfect solution anytime anybody's feelings are getting hurt, that leaves me with a terrible life. I mean, it's the opposite of date night, right? It's, it's like being with the seven year olds, but not being a seven year old. And also the icky feeling of almost having a sickly child, the difficulty of that, the thinking of your kid as so inept or fragile that anything goes wrong and it's my fault because I didn't step in and now she's. Suffering that's that's a rough that's a rough road. I also think there's such value in experiencing some conflict in childhood, because if you don't, then you get into the real world. Or guess what, not everybody is nice, not everybody is going to compliment you and say the right thing. And so I think it's really important to learn how to deal with different types of people, because someday you're going to get a boss that might not be the nicest, and that's just real world. Yeah, right, I endorse this statement. I'm Lenore, and I approve of Jessica's statement. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and I wanted to tell you so when I when I told people that I was excited to interview you, and I told them the story about how you had your son on the subway, I got the same response three out of three times, and that was, wow, that's really interesting. What she did. But times are different. Now. Times have changed. We couldn't do that now. We couldn't let our children ride their bikes to the store by themselves, because it's a different world than it was then, do you agree or disagree with that statement? What do you have to say? I hear it a lot, obviously, and I agree. It feels really different. It feels much scarier. We were talking about this at the top of the conversation about how the media is so incessant now, and it wasn't when most of us were growing up. But I do have on you know, if you go to let grow.org and you click on the thing at the bottom that says crime statistics, just go look for yourself. It's, I mean, I don't make up crime statistics. I take them from the FBI, and you can see that the homicide rate in the and the violent crime rate in the 70s and 80s and 90s was higher than it is now. Wow, simple as that. And you know what? It did go up a little again. It was plunging from the 90s down, and then in covid like 20 and maybe 2020, and 2021, it went up a little, but it's been going down again since. So the level that it's at, even having gone up some in the last couple of years is still lower than the 70s, 80s or 90s. So I'm so happy to have you on record saying this, because I want to tell you about a personal dispute I've been having with my mom. So this is my mom, who grew up, you know, in the 70s, and she did admittedly hitchhike even as a kid, and she's still here today. She definitely took in Los Angeles. I mean, she describes her parents, you know, they weren't they were not overprotective. They weren't watching her very closely. And so she did have a free range childhood. Herself and my daughter, who's 13, we recently got a dog, and we've been having her walk the dog around our neighborhood. She takes a loop with the dog. You know, it's about a half a mile loop. And my mom told me she couldn't sleep one night. She was so worried, because my daughter has been by herself walking the dog, and she thinks we should have a rule that when she walks the dog, she should go with somebody else, for fear of a stranger, that my dog doesn't look at something else. And I guess one time she was walking and there was a man on the street, and what'd you say? Imagine that. Imagine that. And you know, and I said to her, You know what, I was proud of. My daughter crossed the street. She had the wherewithal to cross the street, go the other direction, and everything was fine. It was daylight. And so I shared some of the statistics that you shared about childhood abductions and how they're really, really, really, really rare, that concept de minimis. Anyways, I think it's interesting, because even people that had more of a free range childhood are so taught to be afraid now, right, even if the statistics don't support it, right? You know, there's rationality and then there's feelings, and feelings always win. You know, there's Thinking Fast and Slow. Your feelings are fast and your rationality is slow. And we were talking earlier about the whole idea of mean world syndrome. How come? So I hear this often that the grandparents who let their kids, you know, ride their bikes and take the local bus or whatever, are now so scared. And I think it has to do with the two things. One is this sort of mean world syndrome that she's had another 30 years to, you know, see scary stories and have them sink in. And your brain works like Google, which is that, if you ask Google, you know, where can I get a good taco? In Jackson, Heights, Queens, where I live up, comes a list of, you know, oh, there's taco logo, there's taco freesia or whatever. And it's, and it's relevant, right? It's, it's the search results that I'm looking for a lot of great taco places. But if I ask, Is my kid safe at the bus stop or walking the dog? Up come the worst stories of the last 50 years. Literally, the last 50 years. Eyton page was at his bus stop in 1979 and he was taken. JC Dugard was at her bus stop in 1980 something, and she was taken. Because these are the stories. First of all, these are stories, right? You can't, you can't access non stories about you and me waiting at the bus stop and the bus comes and we go to school. And also, the more you know, the more emotional something is, the easier it is to retrieve. So you got actual footage, and you have stories, and you have emotion, and those. Populate the search results of is my kid safe walking the dog? And so it looks like, no, your kid, it's crazy to let your kid walk the dog, don't you remember these three stories from, you know, all these different eras and all these different states, and the more easy it is for your brain to retrieve a story or to retrieve an image or an idea, the more common your brain thinks it is. That's just a fallacy. It's called the availability heuristic. The more available a story is, the more likely and common you think it is. And so we're all prey to that. And so I'm not surprised that your mom in the intervening 30 years has gotten more scared. But if you want to try to use that slow, rational part of your brain, go look up the actual safety statistics. So that's it. Yes, no. And are the rates of abduction still as low as you quoted in your book? They're extraordinarily low. They're extraordinarily low. I mean, I always talk to this poor guy, David Finkelhor. He runs the crimes against children Research Center, and he is tasked with figuring out, you know, how many kids are abducted a year. And my other son points out, by the time you're talking about the number of kids abducted, you've lost the argument, which is true, because everybody always imagines, well, it might be very few, but what if mine is one of them, but it's it's very, very low. If you want your kid to be kidnapped by a stranger, you'd have to leave them outside for 750,000 years for it to be statistically likely that they would be kidnapped in a Law and Order Type kidnapping. Peter Gray said something interesting. He said, The truth is, nobody wants your kids. Yeah, yeah, there's, there's no Henry story like that to the ransom spreadsheet. But the the other point is that, like, people always think that, like there's safety or danger, and so I might as well go with safety, right? I'm not going to let my kid be kidnapped. It's like, okay, well, what about the other side of things? What about soaring rates of depression and anxiety, which, Peter has a paper in the in the Journal of Pediatrics that traces not just a correlation, but he believes a causation between as children's independence, agency free play have gone down literally over the decades, not just since covid, not just since phone but over the decades their mental health has gone down in in tandem. These fears are negatively impacting our youth. I think so. And do you, I'm curious, are there any other common misconceptions of fear that are prevailing our society? Any anything else that that you think parents should be aware of, where the where the risks are out of proportion to reality? Oh, that's such an interesting question. What I really liked in your book, if I if just to be a leading, oh, Halloween. So yeah, to lead, the answer is Halloween. Yeah, Halloween is great. I think I call Halloween the test market for our fears, because we see how outlandish our advice can get. And if people think it's not outlandish, then they then it sort of permeates the rest of the culture. So the number of children killed by a stranger's poisoned candy on Halloween, turns out to be you read the book? It's zero. It's zero. Yeah, I actually talked to the sociologist who figured this out. He actually went back to 1958 and it and would read the newspapers for November, 1, second and third in all those eras to see if you know child dead and and, in fact, no, and that would have been a big story. And there was one kid who was poisoned by his dad for life insurance policy purposes, right? There's a life insurance policy that the father actually three you'd taken out on the kid. And the the pathetic part is that that dad sort of believed what a lot of us, just like so many kids are killed on Halloween by poison candy. What's one more? It's like there's this big pile of dead kids. I'll just throw my kid on there and, you know, we'll be off to the races, and I'll get the insurance policy. But it turns out that actually, no, nobody is killed by that. And you believed it, and you tried it, and he ended up being executed himself, because, of course, it was Texas. And then you talked about a kid who got into their uncle's heroin and always candy, yeah. So what's amazing is the power of myth to shape our reality, which is that the University of Michigan just did a study in a survey in September, and I thought the statistics were pretty shocking. Maybe they won't shock you. You're working as a pediatrician all the time, but they asked parents of kids age nine to 11. This was 1000 parents across every demographic and geographic area of America. Would you let your kid trick or treat without an adult? And the percent who said yes is these are kids nine to 11, is what I'm scared to find out the answer, 25% 15. 15% Wow. Well, the sad part is, I have such wonderful memories of Halloween being without my parents. You know, with my friend Monica, we went from house to house, and we collected all this candy and we had this we had the best time. And so I worry that with all of this fear, we're literally removing joy from our kids. Child. Heads, yes, the short answer is, we are. But it's, you know, if you, if you sort of want to claw our way back, you have to point out that it's not just joy, it's, it's development. And part of the reason Halloween was exciting is you were out on your own at night, right? And you were sort of dressed up like a grown up, whether you were a vampire or a ballerina or whatever, and you sort of had a job, which was to knock on doors and get something. And so it was really the one night of the year that you got to be an adult. You were facing your fears, you were doing a job. You were dressed like some, you know, something, not just a kid. And to take that out of kids lives to make them safer when no child has been poisoned by a kid by a stranger on Halloween, and there's no increase in child molesting by anybody on the sex offense registry, which is another fear on Halloween. So if there's the one thing that kids have to be aware of on Halloween is cars, and one of the reasons that cars are such a danger, especially at this point, is that so many cars are creeping along after their kids as they go from house to house. So really, I would say, let your kids trick or treat. Tell them they can't go into anybody's house and they should wear something very reflective. That's what I'd say. Yes, no, that no. I think that's great advice. It's like the idea is to let our kids do things, be independent, but also teach them how to be safe, appropriately safe, right? Appropriately safe. And then there's some safety that comes from street smarts, from saying, I am going to cross the street, there's this guy there, or you want them to use to develop their own smarts and common sense, and if we're there doing everything with them or for them, they don't get to develop it just like you know, if you are holding your kid up so that they can pretend that they're hanging from the jungle gym, they will get no muscles, right at some point you just have to leave them hanging, as it Were, with or without their opposable thumbs in the mix, at some point, you just have to leave them hanging for for their benefit. So now I want to ask you for parents that are listening, and maybe they are. Maybe they think of themselves as falling prey to the fear culture, and they want to figure out how to get themselves out of it. In your book, you talk a lot about baby steps and how we can, how we can think about more baby steps to have our kids become more free range. Can you describe some baby steps that parents can start to think about so they can implement into their lives? I can, but I'm going to pivot to let grow, because let grow is the nonprofit that grew out of free range kids, and when we started it, our goal was no longer to try to change minds. I'd been lecturing about free range kids for 10 years, and everyone would nod along, and nothing would change. So when we started let grow, we said our goal is to change behavior. So what is the easiest way to do that? It's collective action. Is a lot easier than individual action. And so let grow is trying to promote a couple things in the schools that you can also try at home, but in the schools, it's a lot of people doing the same thing at once, which has its own power. And so we try to get schools to stay open. And I would recommend you talking to your school about this for what we call a let grow play club, where there's an adult watching the kids, but they're like a lifeguard at the pool. You know, maybe once in a while they'll blow a whistle, but really, the kids are making up their own games. They're having their arguments, they're solving their Spats. They're coming up with something fun to do. They're changing the rules. They're deciding who they want to play with, who they don't want to play with, and it is like a wildlife preserve of our childhood after school, maybe five days a week, maybe three days a week, whatever the school does, it's mixed ages, and there's no devices. So that is a really easy way to give kids back the, you know, all the skills and the joy that they get from free play. So that's easier than doing it on your own and trying to find a playmate. So I recommend that. And then the other thing we recommend as a way to really make it much easier to let go just a little bit or more, is to have the school assign what we call the let grow experience. All our materials are free, and so the let grow experience is a homework assignment that tells kids to go home and do something new with your parents permission, but without your parents. And once again, it can be the walking of the dog. It can be, you know, wash the car, climb a tree, go to the store, babysit your younger sibling, make pancakes for the whole family. And the great thing about this experience is that all the kids are doing it and all the parents are doing it so the parents don't feel like they're the crazy one letting their kid walk the dog right, or play at the park. And so it's just re normalizing the idea of letting your kids go, which is so. So easy when you got a little push from the school saying, This is really good, just try it. And they're not saying you have to put them on the subway. They're just saying, figure out something that's right for you, your kid, your neighborhood, and of course, your kids can do it with friends. It doesn't have to be alone, but it has to be without you. And that's the easiest way to take a step back. Is when everybody's doing it when the school is recommending it. No, you're right, because I try to push my kids to be a little more independent, and I do feel like I might get, you know, looked at once or twice from other moms that I'm being a little bit different. My big example, personally, is my kids, because I'm not home right when they get out of school, we have a nanny, and then our nanny doesn't drive, and our kids go on the LA public bus with our nanny, and they're the only kids at my genuinely they're the only children at our local elementary school that take the LA public bus home. And I get so many looks of disbelief, so many questions, how could I, as a pediatrician, allow my kids to take the LA public bus two miles from the elementary school to home? And the the funny part is, My son likes it. When I asked him about it, he goes with his little sister, and he says he likes that. He feels independent. He feels like he gets to do something different. And so that says that that speaks volumes to me, that for him, it's not a chore for him. He genuinely enjoys it. But I definitely get questions from the local parents. Well, it's interesting, because you are a pediatrician, they should sort of assume that you have some clue as to what's good for kids, right? Why would you be in this profession? If you were completely oblivious to danger and health? That wouldn't you wouldn't be a very great pediatrician, right? Thank you. Thank you. You think that they would take a clue? Yes? So a collective problems are easier solved with collective action. But it's so interesting that your son feels proud and kind of happy doing this. It doesn't surprise me at all. And when you do step back and let your kids do something like that. A, they get this rush of excitement because they're big, right? They're back to this Tom Hanks idea, I can do something in the real world. B, you feel so proud, right? I mean, I could see it. You're smiling as you're telling the story. I mean, he's honestly I feel proud, but I also recognize that when people listen to me telling the story, I may get judged, right? Because it's not a very typical judging everybody every single second. That's just human nature. That's true. I agree with that. I gotta deal with it. And I was gonna say that the other thing that your son is getting, aside from being part of the real world, which is very heady and very your brain, is expecting that as a child, they never expected to be in a little cocoon. That's a strange way to live. But he also gets this other gift from you, which is that you believe in Him, and to have your parents not just love you and protect you, but believe in you, think that you're smart, you're brave, you're capable, and they put their money where their mouth is, and they let you take a bus that is so just breathing in, it's just fortifying, it's the wind beneath their wings, and to give that to your child, as opposed to Honey, I'll be with you now. Let me handle that. Oh, that's dirty. Don't touch that. Oh, let me help you. It's a different feeling. And I think your son is lucky to have a mom who believes in Him. Thank you. Thank you. And I do trust him. I mean, I do. We do talk about safety precautions and looking both ways and paying attention, so it's not as if I just send him on his way without guidance. But yeah, I do trust him, and even I thought of an example this morning. Something new we've been having our eight year old daughter do is she knows how to work our latte machine, the Nespresso machine, and she's been making my husband his morning lattes. She loves frothing the milk, and she loves putting the Nespresso are out here. Oh my god, somebody to make my latte in the morning. How fantastic. When, at first I thought, Should we be watching her? Because scald burns are common for kids, and I watched her do it, and she makes the latte with caution, and she does it well, and she's so proud of herself to make it and give it to my husband and it it works for both of us. You know, for the parent, we're so excited to watch her participate and help and and learn a new skill, and she's so proud of herself when she hands him his morning latte. So there again, you've mentioned so many great things. It's she's proud. She knows you trust her, and also she's contributing. She's not just a taker right now, she's a giver, right? She's part of the economy of your family. You You love her, but you also are grateful to her. So she's not just grateful to you. That's a that's a nice relationship, as opposed to, you know, giving the dog a treat, yes, no, and it feels good to be a giver. I think that's so smart to think about. The collective and how to try to change the culture for our children. Because I do agree that that's that's a big that's a meaning, that's a meaningful step. I always complain because our neighborhood, there are a lot of children that live in the neighborhood, but rarely do I see kids out and about playing rarely, and so I'll walk with my kids, looking for kids, for other kids around, for them to play with. And I really don't see any kids. You're like a predator. Where are the children? It's true. It's true. So here's another idea, which is to keep Friday afternoons free. Try to get some other friends in the neighborhood just one afternoon a week. Don't schedule the Kumon or the Mandarin or whatever that day. And it's the Spanish lessons, the tutors, Spanish lessons, sports, right? This is a sport. It's called being alive, right? Having fun, making things happen, making friends. And the joy of having somebody in your neighborhood that you can hang out with, well, they need to. They need to be around these other kids for this to happen. And maybe it requires you going on, you know, next door.com or talking to other parents at, you know, at school at some point, just saying, like, Hey, how about this Friday afternoon thing? It's a great idea free play. That's a great idea, using next door to incur to see if parents want to bring their kids over. I'm going to do that. Why not? Hopefully, trying to get a grant to start a little app where you can find like anybody else, I'm in 11372, anyone else in 11372, want to let their kids play on Fridays? You know, I'll be on the stoop on 80th Street. And anybody who wants to send their kids can, have you gotten a lot of good feedback. It's let grow.org It's let grow.org Yeah, which is real fine, you know. And there's stuff for individual parents too. It's basically the same ideas for individuals as we recommend for schools. You know, let your kid do something new on their own and try to get, you know, other parents who will let their kids play outside. One mom who just had her kid do the let grow project. Fifth grade, daughter never walked home from school by herself. It's here in New York City. And she said, Well, how about it? And that's what the kid decided to do, walk home with a friend, and I had the kid write something as long as the mom was writing to me, I was like, well, could you have your kid right how it was? And the mom first wrote this poignant little story about how she her daughter had been so sort of brave and, you know, I guess, assertive as a toddler, and then had grown more timid over the years, and would say things like, I shouldn't have done that, or I should never have tried. And it was breaking the mom's heart, you know, to see the kid both timid and also blaming herself when things didn't go well no matter what. And so she was surprised, but her daughter said, Yeah, I am ready to walk home. So she walked home with a friend. And she said walking home was so scary that first time, because she kept looking in all the cars and vans, you know, was something terrible going to happen. And she watched TV with her grandmother, so she knew that there were, you know, predators and shipwrecks and asteroids. She was just afraid of everything. And then she did it again. And she said, what was really strange is that this time, I still, you know, glanced over my shoulder, but I was almost as happy and carefree as my friend. And it's like, I mean, we send our kids to therapists for that exact breakthrough right to be almost as carefree and happy as as a carefree, happy child. And it's free. This is free. It's free for the schools. It's free for the parents. It takes no time, and so it's still slower than I would like. I mean, the electro project and the electro experience is just, they're all there on the site. I wish every school would start doing them tomorrow. You have tried to get an NIH grant, a therapist we work with trying to get an NIH grant to test independence as therapy for children with anxiety. But of course, it's also preventative, because you grow up thinking, of course, I can do things. Of course, I'm part of the world. Of course my parents need me to bring them their coffee. Of course, I am smart enough and strong enough and capable enough to do these things. So I feel like our message is very clear, our methods are very simple, and our moment is now. I think you, I think you're right, right on, because we are doing our kids such a favor if we give them opportunities to be independent and to play without parents hovering over them. That's right, I was going to say speaking to the mic, but you are speaking into the mic. You know? What else I like that you mentioned in the book, which I wholeheartedly agree with, and you talked about the media and the effects of media making us fearful. But I think for the sake of our children, I think it's so important to turn the news off when they're around. I think we do them such a disservice if we're constantly having the news on and they're hearing the news, because that will seep into the young brains. Yeah, yeah, there's no need to. I mean, I think we should. And you're talking to somebody who worked in the tabloid for 14 years. I was at the New York Daily News. You know, there's a lot of bad news on that front page, but yeah, I'd say turn off the news. Why would you want death and doom as your. Wallpaper, well said, well. Said, well, thank you so much. This has been so enlightening, so helpful. I so agree with your message, and I really hope that more and more people tune in. I think let grow.org is phenomenal, and if there's any way can ever help spread the message of let grow.org. Please let me know. Go to your school. Go to your kids school tomorrow. Hey, I was talking to this lady. She doesn't seem crazy. She's got an idea, and it's free and it's free. Well, thank you so much for your time, your expertise and all that you do. I am incredibly appreciative more than more than you could know. Oh well, okay, I think I know a lot at this point, but this was fun, and I'm glad you're a pediatrician spreading these messages that's that's really important, too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of your child is normal. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review, wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. A big thank you to all of you listeners, and we'll see you next Monday. Bye.