Lenore Skenazy

And then the kid says, are you kidding?

I want to take the Long Island Railroad.

I want to walk home by myself.

And this particular kid who wanted to walk home by himself, his mom was so worried, she took the day off work on the first day he was walking home.

Anyways, and then it got more and more normal.

But one of the kids wanted to take a city bus.

And she was afraid to sleep in her own bed, but she was willing to take the city bus.

That was something exciting for her.

And when she was on the bus,

her phone stopped working and she was like oh no you know where do i get off i i i don't know what i'm supposed to do and she was like very frantic and the lady sitting next to her saw like is there something the matter can i help and she said yes i don't know where i'm supposed to get off and the lady said well my phone works oh you're you know you missed your stop you have to get off the next one you got to walk back a few blocks and the girl said thank you and she did and that night

She slept in her own bed, which sounds like it's too pat and perfect to be real, but it really happened.

And my whole point is that psychologists believe A, that independence is important, but B, messing up is great.

When something goes wrong,

That's when you realize like, oh, I can handle this, or that wasn't the end of the world.

And that is very freeing.

I think that's the whole Nike idea too.

Why do it?

You might mess up.

It's like, that's okay.

That's part of the process.