Free-Range Kids. Lenore Skenazy

Foreword

      I am a ten-year-old girl growing up in New York City. At my school, once you're in fifth grade, with permission from your parents, you're allowed to self-dismiss, meaning we leave the building after school without a grownup.

      My best friend, Isabel, and I had been looking forward to this for years, planning out different routes and hunting for all the delis and ice cream shops we could stop at along the way. We tried to memorize all of the landmarks just in case we got lost. And when the time came, we did get lost, but it was actually kind of fun to figure out our way back.

      My grade has around 150 kids, but on the first day we were allowed to self-dismiss, Isabel and I were the only ones from our class of 30 kids who had their mom's permission. By the end of the year, it looked like only a couple dozen of the whole fifth grade were self-dismissing. Everyone else had to wait for their parents or a babysitter. A babysitter at 10 years old! No thanks. Not when I could be with my best friend getting Nutella-flavored frozen yogurt with mochi topping.

That experience of wandering through the streets of my neighborhood really paid off, because now, almost a year later, during Covid quarantine, Isabel and I are meeting up in the park with our roller skates. We look around and notice that we're the only kids our age who are on our own. More than ever, it's really nice to get out of the house without having my mom breathing down my neck. Besides, she'd never approve of the candy that Isabel and I buy with the quarters we steal from the fountain!

       Francesca Haidt, Summer 2020

      When we asked our daughter to say how Lenore Skenazy had changed her childhood, she wrote the story above. The first edition of this book, Free-Range Kids, made Francesca's childhood better, as it has for hundreds of thousands of children. It makes childhood better because it makes parents and schools better.

      All children need a “secure base”—a loving adult they can go to when they need protection or comforting—but they don't learn much when they're safe on base. The best thing loving parents can do for their children is to give them the freedom and confidence to go out, go out again, maybe a little farther this time, maybe trying something new next time. If the parent tags along or directs the child, there will be little learning and scant growth.

Until the 1980s, American children had the time and the freedom to engage in unsupervised free play and exploration. But for a variety of reasons covered in this book, by the 1990s, American parents had developed a collective paranoia about what would happen to their children if they were ever to be unguarded by an adult, even for a moment. Safety became a sacred value, carried to absurd levels that gave Skenazy ample material for comedy (she is really funny). But the massive society-wide deprivation of childhood freedom is no laughing matter. It appears to be one of the major reasons that rates of adolescent anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide have risen for those born in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

      Skenazy is on a mission to help parents and schools give kids the freedom they need to develop into healthy, capable, autonomous adults. This updated edition of Free-Range Kids will show you how to do it.

      It can be challenging. You have to trust your child, trust Skenazy, and trust other people in your community. The first several times that our older child Max walked the half mile to school alone in fifth grade, we were anxious. Would cars see him? Would he watch out for cyclists going the wrong way in the bike lane? But he thrived on the independence and showed such good sense that we quickly lost our fear.

      Three years later, at age 13, he texted us from the U.S. Open, asking if he could stay for the late night match, which meant he'd have to take the subway home after midnight. We hesitated, but said yes. He returned at 2 a.m. buzzing about the amazing tennis he'd seen that day, and how one of the subway lines he needed was closed for repairs, so he hailed a cab for the last leg (which he'd never done on his own). It was a day of adventure, after which he was visibly more confident.

      It's nerve-wracking to let go, and we are two people who are reluctant to cede control. But the payoff is huge: you see your kids gaining competence, a sense of place and direction, and the ability to speak and plan for themselves.

      We are so grateful to Skenazy for writing this book and showing us how to let go, and let grow.

      Jonathan Haidt (co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind) and Jayne Riew

      New York City