Lenore Skenazy

And you still have to come out of your house to get the kid.

You can't wave from the window.

You have to come down and get them.

So this is a culture that is demanding a level of safety and supervision and help for the kids that is just off the charts.

So I don't blame parents.

for being helicopters because the culture is recommending it and sometimes, often enough, demanding it.

And so, you know, Skechers shoes for kids, they now have a hole underneath the insole where you can put a tracking device.

I mean, that's how normalized constant supervision has become.

but the way to fight it is the easiest way to to change anything is collectively if we're all afraid to send our kids outside you know what is the what are the other parents going to think is it too tough is it too soon is my kid too spacey is to have everybody doing it at once and so that's why let grow

the nonprofit that grew out of free-range kids, recommends that schools give kids a homework assignment called the Let Grow Experience.

It's free, where every kid gets the homework that says, go home and do something new on your own with your parents' permission, but without your parents.

And then we give a list of giant, you know, you can climb a tree, you can make pancakes, you can walk to the store, whatever it is.

But if everybody is doing it, all the third graders are, you know, getting themselves to their guitar lessons or picking up the milk for dinner, you're not the crazy mom.

letting them do it and all the kids are talking to each other and all the parents are talking to each other and you re-normalized letting go but but letting go is not just good because okay they're getting a little independence maybe they're less anxious letting go is really important because it rewires you the parent because when you see your kid come back from that errand

And they got the milk or I was just talking to a lady today.

Who was I talking to right before you?

I'm losing my mind.

But she let her kid go into the grocery and get the things for dinner.

And he came out.

He was six.