I’ve written earlier (The Secret Lives of Children) about the constriction of freedom in children’s lives. One reason we don’t let kids out of our sight is because we’ve come to believe the world is a more dangerous place. It makes us nervous to have children out on their own- things go wrong when we aren’t monitoring their behavior. All of us sit around and remember fondly the freedom we had, but don’t grant it to our own children. We’d like to, but things are different now, we say.
I confess to accepting this notion in my own parenting. My children had more leeway than many others, but not as much as me. Part of it is the strictures in society – if there are no kids in the neighborhood because they’re all at adult supervised structured activities, what’s the use of letting them run around in the neighborhood? There’s no one home to administer band-aids. And what if the neighbors don’t want them messing up their nice Chemlawn? But part of the limiting was the result of my own fears – I bought into the notion of the dangerous world. (What if they do play on the Chemlawn? I can’t let that happen!)
But is it really more dangerous?
I think, by and large, it’s not. (Oh, great, Bill – your children are grown, and now you have this announcement for us.) It’s a belief fed by the constant stream of media content focusing on the dangers of childhood, gleefully reminding us of that very small number of really horrible accidents. But what we get from the media is not representative of the vast majority of people’s experiences. Yes, we all know someone to whom something happened, but it’s questionable whether that experience should radically change our behavior. For every measure of security offered, some freedom is taken away, and learning is based on the exploration of the world. Freedom is required for growth. Does our fear of the regret we might, possibly, conceivably feel keep us from allowing room for growth?
Michael Chabon (great writer!) has an article in the latest edition of the New York Review of Books, “Manhood for Amateurs; The Wilderness of Childhood” in which he questions all this. He notes that the rate of abductions of children has always stayed the same – what has gone up is our awareness of them. And a recent article in the New York Times Magazine about Jodi Picoult’s fiction notes how popular the genre of “children-in-peril” literature is. If you read all there’s offered about children as victims and watch Nancy Grace enough, you’ll just put your kid in a bubble suit and helmet and never let them go outside.
It’s an act of boldness to let children explore. There is a letting go, and the fear is that if we do let them go, “Something might happen”, and it will be our fault.
Something might happen, it’s true. Just as sure as something happens when we don’t give them space.
I don’t mean to say that children don’t require some special care, but I wonder about what different kinds of care there are. I don’t have this all worked out yet, but I’m looking at all of our protection of children with a rather jaundiced eye.
There’s an excellent book by Lenore Skenazy, called “Free Range Kids,” which explores this very topic. More info at:
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
Let’s see…
My kids–booster seats until age 8.
Me–8 kids unrestrained in the back of a pickup.
My kids–swim in public pools under the constant eye of a team of lifeguards.
Me–swim in the spring runoff formed swimming hole, no adult supervision.
My kids–bike helmets
Me–no helmets on horseback
My kids–play computer war games found online
Me–play with uranium ore found in abandoned mines
on the other hand…
my kids–24/7 cable news
me–Walter Cronkite 1/2 hour on weeknights
So I guess it’s a tossup.
I do think it is sad that kids today are faced with Lyme disease and ticks we never knew. That wild animals now have carried the dreaded rabies back into New England which we didnt grow up with. For the most part the woods of New England beckon children to come out and explore and the number of children doing that is so few the deer run home to tell parents they were seen. I will admit to doing some crazy things in my childhood. We were often gone 6-8 hours a day in summer and no one knew where we were. From that came the great sense of direction I have, a confidance that I can handle situations, I developed a resepct for mother nature. I am an independent adult because I was an independent kid. With my bike or horse I could be anywhere in town. Children are missing so much. They dont know how to find their way home, they dont have the pride from handling a serious situation on their own. They are missing the best ingrediant of childhood – freedom.
Who knows if childhood is more dangerous now. What is more prevalent now is media coverage of everything bad, which heightens people’s awareness (or paranoia). Did those things occur when we were young? Probably, we just didn’t hear much about them. Yes, we didn’t have Lyme disease and AIDS as such, but we did have Polio.
The other piece that makes it appear more dangerous is the proximity of disasters. The Cold War created lots of fear, but it was a long range fear. The terrorism following 9/11 was close to home and more threatening to me. Probably because I’m an adult now and not a kid.
Another point is that when we were young, we didn’t have as many material things as kids do today. We had to make do with what we had and be creative. This generation of kid has everything, when they want it. They don’t need to create their own play. If it is not adult organized it is programmed into some device that they play with. This makes them less likely to either want to be creative and resourceful or incapable of being so. All of which adds to our own feelings that if we let them loose on their own that something will happen.
I let my 6 year old “explore” in the woods of our back yard with his friend and 8 year old cousin last week. We have 2 acres but only about a 1/2 acre is wooded. There’s a pond in the back full of turtles and frogs. I know that we have coyotes somewhere nearby…one walked across the front yard last year. Terrifying stuff to an adult.
They all took wiffle bats with them and said they were treasure hunting. In and out of the woods for hours laughing, screaming and telling me about everything they found. The best ‘treasure’? A fallen tree that had rotted and when it was bashed with their bats, “Looked & smelled just like PUMPKINS!”.
This day, which was probably one of the best of Jacob’s summer so far, was without a doubt, one of the most nerve -wracking afternoons for me in years. I sat on the back porch listening to their voices and if I didn’t hear anything for longer than a minute, I called to them. I gave (forced) cheerful warnings about staying together. I was SOO relieved when they asked if they could go in the pool-finally they’d be in my sight.
When I was a kid we played in the woods all the time. Were coyotes around then? Were there ponds and snakes? YES!
I need to let this happen for Jacob more often. I cannot protect him from everything. Right?
In my efforts to be Uber-Mom, I made sure my kids were supervised all the time and that a responsible adult I trusted was in charge in my absences. I afforded them privacy, but I did not afford them free range. And I think I cheated them out of what I call “Beanie MacDougal Stories.”
Beanie MacDougal was the hell-raising childhood neighbor of my friend Bruce. I never tire of hearing Bruce tell about the myriad creative ways he and Beanie defied the odds and survived to maturity.
It’s ironic. We are so vigilant about keeping their bodies intact that we cloister kids away from true life adventure on a scale they can deal with. And yet I’ll wager any 9-year-old in my neighborhood has seen more action movie/video images of violence than I’ve seen in half a lifetime.
I ran wild as a kid in the country. My kids less so on our island. Met a kid yesterday, eleven years old, lives in Manhatten, attends the KIPP School, rides the subway alone alot. I think security is overrated, freedom underrated. Thoughtful blog. Thanks.
jay
There is a whole differint level to this conversation. Today much of the natural world as it was experinced in the 30′s 40′s and 50′s has been paved over to develop suburban housing. We have built a world were many children just don’t have the space to explore – they don’t have the excess to the oppurtunity.
We have built a world with out wood lots, streams or fields. This lack of access prevents the question did you play in the woods today? from even arising. I have written a more lenghy responce to these ideas in my blog –
The Dyslexic Storytellers Blog.
I have been thinking about this topic for a while and reflecting on my hesitancy to allow my kids “free reign”. I appreciate the blogs contribution to my inner debate as it succinctly summarized part of my thought process.
I agree the media plays into my tendencies to be hyper-sensitive to the “dangerous” world, but there are other reasons I am hesitant to allow for more freedom.
One issue for many people is the lack of health insurance and affordable health care. I worry if my child is being reckless s/he will become injured resulting in an costly ER visit which would have an impact on our financial stability.
I also worry potential litigation if I am not adequately supervising children in my care and they are harmed, let alone the guilt I would feel.
Further, I wonder about the quality of parent-child relationships in “free-reign” vs. “smothering” families. I recently listened to Woody Allen on a Fresh Air podcast and he mentioned his relationship with his parents as being somewhat absent (not eating meals together, spending time with both parents, etc.) which led me to wonder if we are becoming more involved parents as time goes on. Perhaps it is just the folks I have encountered or the broad strokes I am painting with, but I wonder if one could correlate absolute freedom with lack of parental engagement. Again, I am speaking in very broad terms here.
Regardless, this blog and the comments have encouraged me to push myself in evaluating potential risks and gains for my kids when as opportunities for freedom present themselves.
I have these little trees by my classroom door – overgrown shrubs, really. One of the teachers I work with is appalled that I let the kids climb the trees – they are supervised, my assistant and I are right there, but she has a hissy and shoos her class away from us when she catches us at it. My thought is, you have to be able to take risks to learn, to put yourself out there in front of people, and where else can a prek kid in the city do that? My Grandma said you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die, too. Yes, childhood is dangerous in a different way now!
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I remember the terror of the day my children disappeared into the park and were gone for two hours. They remember the adventure. During an extreemly bumpy Air plane ride, I remember a stewardess moaning, “Oh no!” at each bump. I rememeber my 8 year old son John smiling,” Whoopee! Whoopee!”
Between the terror and the Oh No’s of life, our children need their adventures that allow them to explore and get a little lost, and find themselves. It is my firm belief that our children need adventure, risk taking, climbing, hole digging and even a little of graffitti writing.
I know that because of media, law suits in the news, blame cast on parents, that I did not provide as much freedom as my parents did. It is a fine line, like a thread, that parents walk as they raise their kids and seek to provide them with confidence.
I remember being trusted to go to the store alone, give the store keeper money, and return hooe with the goods. I felt powerful and competant. I remember returning home with a package of Half and Half chewing tobacco, instead of the Half and Half Milk my mother wanted. It was an “oops” and a “fixable thing” and I simply went back to the store and made things right. I view things in my life now as oopses, not tragedies, because of those triel runs I got to take as a child.
I let my kids climb over rocks, up rocks, down mountains, wade in creeks, see rattlers in the wild, (thank God they saw the rattler!), and there were many fine lines between safety and danger. I am glad for every time they returned safe and for every time they stretched to learn about risks and growing, and every time they learned from their mistakes a little bit of confidence in handling the world.
I raised three boys and they are still alive and that is a hopeful thing…and a thankful thing…and not really due to me but due to the mysteries of life and death and danger and safety.
Another side of over-supervision is that we don’t let our kids fight enough. Wait, hear me out.
We’re animals, right? Primates. Highly social. Play is the way we learn how to negotiate relationships we’ll have later on. And among chimps and bonobos (close cousins to chimps and ourselves), reconciliation is a skill that’s very important among adults. How do they learn it? By making up after fighting as juveniles (kids).
Frans de Waal, a primatologist, has focused some research on how human kids learn reconciliation skills. It turns out that when adults prevent fights, or step in to mediate them, kids don’t learn how to do that on their own. The kids who are the best peacemakers among themselves are the ones who are allowed to play in a rough-and-tumble way and to argue loudly (something permitted much more in Europe than in the US).
I thought I was being a good parent by stepping in and saying “Use your words . . . Can you say you’re sorry?” Of course I still wouldn’t let kids punch or kick each other. But a shoving match? Maybe we should let it happen and let kids rise to the occasion of making up afterwards.
Not long ago I found a diary I wrote when I was 8. It wasn’t the normal kind of blank diary; it had “prompts” that you were supposed to fill in. “The best part of this month was…” “One interesting thing that happened at school was…”
Well, one of them said “If I have kids, I will…”
My response was “let them fight.”
I think as adults we have that instinct to spare our kids any negative feelings. And sometimes not even for the kids’ sake… as a specialist I fight the instinct to solve their problems. Arguing is not fun, and not fun is bad for business. But kids know that an argument is not the end of the world, even if it means every one isn’t Getting Along for a little while.
But maybe they don’t know it… sometimes it seems like every time kids working in small groups in my classes have a dispute, they call me or another teacher to mediate. Have we created kids that can’t handle any kind of negative feeling??