Why Parents Should Let Go of the Notion That Children Need to Be Supervised 24/7: Parenting Expert Lenore Skenazy

Lenore Skenazy’s organization has partnered with about 3,000 schools to engage students in independence building activities. Brendon Fallon

When Lenore Skenazy speaks, parents listen.

It all started back in 2008, when Skenazy wrote an audacious newspaper opinion piece about how she allowed her 9-year-old son to ride the New York subway alone. From then on, she was immediately dubbed “America’s worst mom.” And that label spurred the leader within her to start the Free-Range Kids movement.

It’s not that Skenazy eschews safety. It’s quite the opposite. She just believes, like many, that children have the right to some safe, unsupervised time. And parents have a right to give them that—without getting arrested. When she wrote about the experience on her blog, titled Free-Range Kids, Skenazy created a platform to share her mission: to help parents parent better. According to Skenazy, granting age-appropriate freedoms to children helps them become more self-reliant and confident, like riding a bike to the park, or walking home from school, or riding a subway—alone or with friends. Today, her nonprofit has partnered with some 3,000 schools to provide independence-minded activities for students.

“I was a lone wolf for about 10 years,” she said. “During that time, I wrote the book ‘Free-Range Kids,’ gave lectures, and kept blogging away.” Interestingly enough, the reader base grew over time. Skenazy recognized that parenting had changed over the years, morphing into over-supervised, or helicopter-style, parenting strategies. The erosion of freedom for children was based on an assumption that danger lurked everywhere—which is simply untrue, she said. What was particularly dismaying was hearing from parents who did trust their kids, yet the fear of getting arrested was becoming a reality for those exercising their right to parent with some distance.

Unsupervised Is Okay

Skenazy believes the growing fragility of young people is rooted in excessive parental oversight. Her blog connected her to parents who agreed that children needed to learn more responsibility—responsibility that was age-appropriate. “Society says you have to be with your kid every second of every day,” Skenazy said. She disagrees. But for parents to truly see how confident and competent their kids can be “requires a change of behavior.”

She said many people show up to her lectures and nod along in agreement with what she is saying. However, they go home and everything is the same: sports tournaments on the weekend, homework help after school, daily soccer practice. Parents understand the ideas behind unsupervised concepts, but they need tools to bring about change in behavior.

Skenazy’s movement expanded into a nonprofit called Let Grow. To change behavior through action, Let Grow provides schools with independence-building initiatives, all free to access. Kids experience age-appropriate adventures and solve problems on their own. In a nutshell, students can participate in the Let Grow Project and Let Grow Play Club, which build self-confidence through independent activities and free play without adult-directed influencing.

Let Grow’s mission, according to its website, rejects the idea that children “are in constant physical, emotional or psychological danger from creeps, kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, disappointing playdates and/or the perils of a non-organic grape.”

Our culture puts an emphasis on adult-directed activities, said Skenazy, allowing too much adult attention, adult direction, adult interference, and adult assistance. What children need are opportunities for adult-free play—whether it is allowing children to organize a pick-up game of basketball, figuring out how to make teams fair, or dealing with not enough players or missing pieces of equipment. Allowing children to be responsible and not worrying about the outcome encourages critical thinking. “Let children negotiate, pivot, and compromise. Give children time for free play with mixed ages and without adults supervising,” Skenazy said. “It is a fundamental building block of raising anti-fragile children, by making them more resilient, creative, and open-minded.”

Biba Kayewich for American Essence

Schools are catching on. To date, 3,000 participating schools are creating safe spaces for unstructured play, mixing kids from different grades for activities that occur before or after school. The only requirements? No deliberately hurting each other, and no phones or other electronic devices, said Skenazy.

When analyzing the kids who participated, Skenazy and researchers found that kids were able to raise their scores in math due to the executive function skills they learned. They also learned to negotiate and compromise. However, there was an even more effective result of the program. “The key thing you get out of the play club is friendship. Kids are lonely and they need to make them where they meet them. It makes life better for kids,” Skenazy added.

A Changing Trend

When schools participate in the Let Grow Project, children are given a school assignment that tells kids to go home and do something new on their own. The parents must approve of the assignment. They could be making dinner, running an errand, or going to a friend’s house. Skenazy said parents stand back and watch their kids rise to the occasion. It’s a program that essentially encourages opportunities for children to experience life without a parent obsessing over safety.

Until parents see their kids do something on their own, “they have no evidence that their kids will be okay,” she said. But by having kids participate in those assignments, “parents get the actual experience of taking their eyes off their kids and seeing that they did well with that independence. Or, they did screw up, but that is okay, too.” In contrast, “the message from the world is you better have an adult in case something happens!” she said.

Kids are so anxious and fear that they won’t be able to handle hurt or embarrassment of failure or know how to recover from it, she added. By giving children independence-minded activities, parents get to see their kids blossom in a modern culture that frequently denies them the freedom to live and grow within healthy boundaries.

With more schools jumping on board the Let Grow initiatives, school officials are pleased with the promising outcomes, Skenazy said. “Kids are more self-starting, more engaged, and more happy to be at school where there are friends and fun instead of just being graded and judged.”

Skenazy has championed the idea of free-range kids for over 15 years; she heartily believes that if parents let go of helicopter-style parenting and try letting their children do unsupervised free play, they will recognize that “humans are naturally hardwired to be independent.”

“My whole point is that it is really hard to prove that an absence of something is helpful. Instead of planning everything, try not to plan everything. Remember, when you’re in the driver’s seat, you have to figure things out. As the passenger, you don’t—and childhood today has become the passenger seat.”

For parents who worry that freedom can go too far, Skenazy’s advice is to set limits. If the child disobeys the rules, there should be consequences. Parents are allowed to set limits. “With Free-Range Kids, it means there are limits and there is freedom. We can do both—not either. So parents, let go, and let grow!”

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.