Lenore Skenazy

Simple, just keep the schools open for free play, right?

The second thing we suggest is that schools do the let-grow experience.

And that's when teachers give kids the homework assignment that says, go home and do something new on your own, with your parents' permission, but without your parents.

You can climb a tree, walk the dog, make pancakes, doesn't matter, anything, depending on your age and your neighborhood, et cetera.

And it's in just over a thousand schools so far.

And last year, we heard of one kid who was 10 or 11, and he decided, for his Let Grow experience, he would make dinner for his family.

So he went to get the ingredients at the store, and he's shopping, and he's getting everything, and then he can't find the hot sauce.

And the idea of asking a clerk for help, going up to an adult like a moron, an idiot, he just felt so tiny, he couldn't do it.

He ran out of the store.

He literally left his cart and all the other groceries there, and he bolted.

And then he went back in, and he talked to the clerk, and he got the hot sauce, and in one sense, it's just a simple errand, right?

But in another sense...

It's the hero's journey, right?

Because he had been defeated and humiliated.

He actually abandoned his quest, just like they say in those hero's journeys books.

But then he went back in, and he did it himself.

I did it myself are childhood's magic words.

I did it myself is the original anxiety buster.

And in fact, if I ask you right now, and probably we'll talk about it later, to remember something that made you really proud of your own kid or your grandkid or your niece or your student, nephew, whatever, it's usually something like, you know, he was on an overnight last night and the other mom called to say he cleared the table.

Really?