Lenore Skenazy

Yeah, I'm sorry.

So he's 27 now, so I've been thinking about it for a while.

And I think two things struck a nerve, because I looked at older columns of mine where I had let my kids play in the courtyard without me.

I let them take elevators without me.

I let them go.

They're two boys.

Let them go to the men's room without me, obviously.

And nobody cared about any of those columns.

So I think by writing about my kid taking the subway by himself, it was basically the subway.

New York City subway does not have a great reputation.

And people think it's hell.

And why would you send your kid?

down to hell at least without you and then um i think it wasn't just me saying you know kids need independence it was me actually doing it pedal to the metal and and the fact that he loved it i think was also um maybe just interesting it wasn't something that we did because he should do it he should learn he should be tough toughened up it was just he wanted to take the subway by himself and we let him it's like oh yeah kids have things that they want to do on their own and maybe we should listen to them and see what happens so

but I think it's the subway.

I knew you were gonna ask.

And frankly, I've been asked this for a while and I never have a great pithy explanation, but it is basically,

believing that kids can do some things on their own the way most of today's parents and certainly the grandparents remember as kids.

What's strange about childhood today is the fact that kids do almost nothing on their own.

And I have some statistics.

We did a study with the Harris people, the Harris poll people, and they found that the majority of kids age eight to 12 have