How Free Range Parenting Works

And two we realized that the whole concept of free range parenting that will follow is comes from a place of extreme privilege. Yes, to be able to entertain the idea of free range parenting comes from a place of extreme privilege. Okay, I've Can I amend that or should I wait until we talk about that part to kind

of amend it? No, you can amend it, so so to me, free range parenting, having the freedom to free range parent is what I saw it ties in with parenting that's already being done by people who might not have a choice. Are you saying that the the um, the the ability to choose whether you want a free range parent or not is privileged? Yes? Okay, Yes, agreed.

I got you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and again we'll get into that, but um, well we'll get into that at the end, but I just want to just go ahead and lead that off because it's um a lot of privilege involved with being able to say, you know that you want to free range parent Are you going to Are you going to land one way or another on it on whether or not I support free range parenting? Yeah?

Uh yeah, I mean Emily, and I don't title it or say hey, I think we should do this as a style, but we, um, as it turns out, are sort of dabbling in free range parenting a bit as much as you can for a three and a half year old. So you're listening to your instincts. I've never read a parenting book, not knocking them, but I've never

read one. And we parent by instinct, and our daughter has always had a lot of room to free play and explore and figure stuff out on our own and fall down and get back up and all that all that stuff. Okay, I'm reading between the lines. You guys haven't decided yet, all right, so ready free range parenting go okay, So, um, do you remember when we were kids, back when we used to hang out when we were kids mm hmm, and we would go ride bikes together

at like UM sunrise. We had no idea where we were going to go, but it might involve a swamp, could involve a glacier. UM. There may have been like uh, rail riding hoboes that we shared lunch with. Who knows what the day was gonna bring, but we were up for all that and may or may not have engaged

in any of that UM during that day. And then at the end of the day, around sunset, maybe a little later, depending on whether it was summer or not, we ride our bikes back home, say see you tomorrow, go to our respective houses UM, and then talk the night away on our soup cans that were connected by UM a rope. And that was our childhood, right we

turned out. Sure, I have have talked about my childhood some growing up, but you know, I grew up in the woods basically on like a couple of acres of land with a creek and forest, not in a subdivision, but on a street with like seven houses in the woods,

and my mother had a UM. We had this giant iron bell it's probably about eighteen inches across that on a mounted on a big um like a telephone and pole kind of right beside our driveway, and she would at the you know, when it was dinner time in the evening, she would go pull that bell and you could hear it from like a mile away. This the bell tolling. And that's when Scott and I were like, all right, we you know, it's time to go eat um after having been out all day long with zero supervision.

And I had a great mom, Like, she wasn't neglectful. This is just how it was done. Yeah, were you a latch key kid? Um? I know your mom was a teacher, but did she stay at home with you? She didn't go back to teaching. She she quit teaching to raise kids and then started up again when I was like I feel like eighth or ninth grade or something like that. Okay, yeah, my mom took off until

I was like six seven. I guess, like kinder no, maybe she's still around a kindergard I guess about first grade when I was when I started school and she was like, okay, I'm going back to nursing um. And then after that point, I was a last key kid

for like the rest of my life. But I had like older sisters who would be home around the time I would, And but I had like my own key to my house that was just a couple of blocks away from my school, and I would walk myself or ride my bike myself, and then i'd be home by myself if my sister was doing something else for a couple of hours, until either my mom or my dad showed up. Um. And I think I turned out pretty

well too, so that I even key. Ever, Well, you guys probably didn't lock your doors if your mom rang a bell on the telephone poll to call you in for dinner. I don't think we locked our door, okay, But but you were. You had free range literally of your your house, your yard, the woods around you. Um. But here's a really big caveat from what I've seen.

I think a lot of people who are like um, who aren't familiar necessarily fringe free range parenting, assumed that we could have done anything we wanted and gotten away with it because we were we had overly permissive parents. That's not That's not the case for me, and I would dare say that wasn't the case for you as well. That we actually had plenty of rules and structure. We were just also given a lot of freedom to do things within that rules and structure, including geographic freedom right

for sure. Okay, yeah, so that is what I thought all kids had up to this time. And I knew that there was like such things as piano and Mandarin lessons or um mandarin classes, that kind of stuff, like things that kids were taking more and more and they were really busy and stressed out, and they had like like um iPhones at age seven, that kind of thing.

But I still thought that this happened, and I was really shocked, about as shocked as I've ever been in researching an episode of stuff you should know to find that that is not the case. That not only does has this been kind of squeezed out by other activities, it's actually become criminalized behavior by society at large, the parents who were raising children today. I was blown away

to find this out. I really legitimately didn't know. Yeah, I mean, and getting back to the activities, you know, I played some soccer in high school and then I did like church sports, which there's not a lot of. I mean, I think we did like maybe one basketball practice a week, um, and so it wasn't like everyday practice and stuff like that. I never took lessons of any kind. Uh, like I taught my self guitar and all that stuff. So like, I I don't think I

literally ever had a structured post school activity in my life. Yeah, did you say church sports? Yeah, I played church softball and basketball. Did like everybody win every game? No, it was actually fiercely competitive. Okay, I'm just kidding. No, no, no it was. It was it was legit like we had a pretty good basketball team and in the league was pretty impressive too. But um, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't never signed it. I never had a class.

Like the idea of my mom having been like, all right, I'm gonna take you to your violin lesson and then on the weekends we have gymnastics and uh whatever else people are doing these days, was just just we didn't do that. She was just like, go play, right. So, so there has been and we'll talk about all the reasons why, but there has been a movement away from the kind of childhood we had a very pronounced one. Um. If you if you look at you know, culture is

a pendulum swinging one way or another. It has swung very far the opposite way to where kids lives are structured um down to the minute, where they have actual calendars and schedules that they have to keep up with

because they have so many things going on. Um and and there has come about in reaction to that, uh, an antithesis basically, and it is nothing more than letting kids grow up the way that you and I did, um and then and it has become so novel in the face of of the world and the culture that we have in raising kids in the United States now UM that it has its own name. It's a movement. They have to go to court to defend themselves. It's

so weird. But really, if you strip it down and look at it, all they're doing is raising their kids the way you and I and and Jerry I'm sure was raised. Well yeah, I mean to a certain degree, um. But the whole idea, and it's not just like I want you to grow up the way I did. It's what it really is is an argument that says, you

know what, kids will grow up healthier and happier. Uh if they have freedom to play and they have freedom to fail and freedom to um get in a playground, scrap and to work it out with another kid on their own and figure things out for themselves. They will end up better people because of this. It's not oh, I'm lazy or I have nostalgia for my childhood. It's uh.

And and you know, there's a lot of research into this now or some research that says, no, what we're doing is is trying to make better future adults by not hovering over my child scheduling them to death and um, you know, every time they fall, run over, pick themselves up and like and you know, rock them to sleep, you know if they get a boo boo. Right, So I sound so judgy. I don't mean that. Well, let's

let's just take a second. Let's take a break real quick and like connect ourselves and then we'll come back and we'll really get into what free range parenting is. Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh, Damn, Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right, stuff? Okay, Chuck? So I think you demonstrated something that is um has made free range parenting very unpalatable to a lot of a lot of parents who don't raise their kids that way.

And that it seems to be a reaction, um, almost an in your face to some people reaction or judgment of um, that helicopter style parenting where you're always kind of around your kid there, Um, their entire life is very structured and supervised, including playtime. UM, and that free range parenting is meant to be a reaction to that. And in some ways it is a reaction to that,

but it also stands on its own. And if you step back and look at it and look at free range parenting not as a reaction to helicopter parenting, but as its own thing, is its own philosophy for how to raise a kid, and you strip away like the judginess and all that stuff. It holds up to me. And like you said, there's been a lot of um, a lot of a lot more study recently, but the whole thing really started back in two thousand eight, um,

by a journalist. It wasn't a child psychologist, It wasn't a child development psychologist, it wasn't a child development, child analyst, psychologist, none of those things. I made that last one up, by the way. It was a journalist named Leonor's Skenazi. Yeah, so she was a New York mom. And in two thousand and eight, she wrote a column for The New York Sun called Why I let my nine year old

ride the subway alone. She was in a store one day in Manhattan and her son had been badgering her to be able to ride the subway and bus back home by himself. And finally one day she said, all right, great, let's do this. Here's a subway map, here's a subway card, here's twenty bucks. Um, here's some change for a pay phone. Um, have at it. The kid made it home. Uh, and he said he was quote ecstatic with independence. Yeah. And like she got a lot of blowback from this from

like the judgment goes both ways. I mean there were people that said it was neglect and abuse for her to do this and let her kid ride the subway alone. Oh oh yes, Yeah. If you had to divide the two sides up and start weighing which one was a little judge e er, you would definitely your hand would be much lower holding um the helicopter parents side for sure. Um. Yeah.

If you're a free range kid proponent or you raise your kids following that, there's a whole burden, whole social burden that you have in addition to the burden of raising your kids that you have to put up with for sure. Yeah, and I should point out to real quick that it all depends on upon your kids too. I don't think there are any sweeping generalizations. Um my daughter has always been very, um just instinctively kind of

safe and smart about stuff. Um, other kids in her class are just like a little wild banshees, and I would probably be a lot more um worried if she was the kind of kid who has an instinct to like jump out of a tree, um instead of like back down very slowly out of a tree. So right, it's all It's all different depending on your kid, you know, or a kid who like can't seem to shake being totally fascinated with matches or knives or something like that. Yeah. Yeah,

I think that was a really good point. Like it's you shouldn't sweep or generalize, but I think that's an even larger point to people should be left to raise their children, um how they see fit. Yeah, given a certain amount of um trust invested in the parents that the parent isn't going to harm the kid or let

harm come to the kid because that's their parent, right right. Okay, So this whole thing started with Lenora Skins, and like you said, she got a lot of blowback, but she also got a really positive response to an ex actually parlay the whole thing from that New York sun Um article into a blog that she called free Range Kids. So from what I understand, she coined the term free range kids and started writing about this stuff. And at first a lot of it was just like it's it's good.

It's on its face, it's obvious that this is how you should raise a kid. You know, kids need play, they need to learn how to pick themselves back up when they fall down. Um. And not only that, you're doing a disservice to your kid when you pick them up after they fall down, um, because they're not learning how to get back up themselves. Uh. And over time it kind of went as people became more and more

enamored with her philosophy or this whole free range kid's idea. Um. More child psychologists started weighing in and the whole movement kind of took the shape and they figured out that for a parent to kind of see the light as they as far as they were concerned, they had to first change just the mindset about what kind of world they were raising a kid in, because if you're a free range kid parent, um, you probably don't feel as threatened by the world in general as say a helicopter

parent would. Um ounce for ounce, Yeah for sure. UM. I mean when when when parents have experimented with this, the the changes that they've seen and their kids have been pretty striking. Um if anecdotal. UM. There's this one woman, Dana Bloomberg. She's a school counselor in suburban Chicago. And we should also point out depends on where you live as well. If you live in a very safe suburb or way out in the country, it's a little different than a kid like in the middle of the city

or something like that. But she gave her kid a lot of free range um starting in the second grade, and got some neighborhood parents involved and letting their kids do it. And they said, before you know it, they had this little, you know, little gang of kids kind of touring around the neighborhood, are on their own, and she's getting all these texts from these different parents, UM saying like what a big change has happened, Uh, in

their own kid. One parent even said it was life changing for her daughter, gave her a nuisance of confidence, and um, that's sort of what the free range thing can look like. But like you were saying, it all comes down to a squashing appearance fear, the biggest fear, which is my child will get abducted, or my child will get um uh, there will be a sexual predator to target my child, or heaven forbid, my child will

get kidnapped and murdered. Right, because you can understand and it's really tough to fault somebody who doesn't want their kid wandering around by themselves because they're afraid that something really bad is going to happen to their kid. So kind of the first step to um, to adopting like a free range kid attitude, is to adjusting how you see the world. Um And they think they think that with there are several things like if you it's really

fascinated me. I love cultural changes, especially when we can point to different things, seemingly unrelated things that all kind of converge and has changed the world in ways you never think of that seems to have happened to produce today's helicopter parents or at least to produce the level of fear, the climate of fear that the world is an inherently dangerous, brutal um, sadistic place. That that where

children have no call to be wandering around themselves. UM. That that is actually you can trace that back to a convergence of things that have happened starting in like the late seventies and early eighties. UM. And in particular there was some high profile UH child murder cases basically UM that all kind of took place between nineteen seventy nine in Night one, and those really changed a lot of parents minds about things. Yeah. Um. In New York, the very sad story of six year old Eaton pats

Um disappeared and was later found out to have been murdered. UM. John Walsh very famously his son Adam. UM, he's the one that does all the TV shows now. I think he's on the Hunt on CNN now and really made this his life's work. But his son Adam disappeared, uh

and died in nineteen eighty one. UM. Obviously the Atlanta child murders UM from seventy eight one, and this all converged around the same time, Like you were talking about this, these these strange things aligning UM cable news coming out seeing Inn was launched in nineteen eighty, So all of a sudden, you have parents that are getting this kind of constant flow of fear from the news about their children.

Right Because so if if a um prior to cable news, twenty four hour news, UM, if something happened to a kid somewhere in in some state, maybe if it were just particularly egregious or outrageous, um or everything was kind of set up in just the right way, it would capture the attention of the national media and you would hear about it around the country. But that was really

really rare. And then second to that, the other place that you would hear about child abductions, child murder, murders, horrific like accidents that befell a child would be locally, right like on your local news that maybe maybe expanded to a region, maybe the state, but it was pretty localized. And so if statistically something like that happened fairly rarely, you weren't going to hear about it very often, And so in your mind it was a pretty rare thing,

and you weren't afraid of the world in general. But what a lot of commentators and a lot of UM, well, some of the people I ran across some research UM propose is that with cable news, that potential pool of horrible things that befell kids to talk about um expanded to the entire nation, not just local, not just regional or even state, but the whole nation. So now all the bad things happening to all the kids around the

nation was potential news fodder. And so when you were watching CNN, it seems like every other story was about a kid who had been abducted and killed, or sexually assaulted,

or any number of horrible things. And there's really no way to put it other than that that kind of stuff keeps people glued to their televisions, and so it's really in the best interests of news networks like CNN to feed people that, because while you're glued to your television, you're also glued to the ads that they showed too. And so from this model came a climate of fear that a lot of people point to is like, this

is the source, and it's not just CNN. CNN gets pointed to because it was the one that started at all. That is Ted Turtor who came up with this and started the first twenty four hour cable news network. But all cable news is guilty of this, and became guilty of it pretty quickly because that's the model of cable news. Um And because cable news laid that foundation and showed like, oh, you've got that kind of you can really make some revenue.

Nightly news tried its best to resist that kind of thing, but it kind of had to follow suit a little bit too, so it would become more sensational from the eighties onward as well, not nearly anything like cable news, but compared to how it had been before, it was much more sensationalized because it was following the cable news model.

And all that put together created the foundation of why people are just scared to death about the world because we we think that it's way more dangerous than it actually is, because the statistics are inflated by hearing about this stuff all the time. Yeah, and there's another couple

of things that contributed that um Skins has pointed out. One, we live in what you dubs and expert society, So again on cable news or on social media, like everywhere you turn, there's another expert coming out with a new book they're trying to sell basically telling you how you're doing it wrong as a parent, how you should do it um. And then the whole fact that we live

in a very litigious society. Now, so what if I want a free range parent my kid and they go down and get their friend um out of the house and their riding bikes and one of them gets hurt, Like their parents gonna sue me because my kid went and lured them into the mean streets. Right, Well, yeah,

that was another thing that happened, Chuck. In the seventies, the idea of negligence became really big, and there was what's called like a tortue revolution to where you went from well you know your kid was your kid didn't know your the the other kid's arm was gonna get broken, so you can't get sued for that. To know that was negligent, and we're going to allow that and more and more case law expanded to to to make people

think like lay yours because of it too. Dude, when you were a kid, was I mean that must have been a thing, because did you ever have the lawsuit threat from another child? Yeah? That was such a thing like yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna kick your butt or whatever. It's like, oh yeah, well my dad's gonna sue you for all the money you got. That's right, he's a dentist. That's so funny, man, to think back in the seventies, these children threatening lawsuits on Yeah, I'd forgotten about that

for like ripping their shirt or something. Any number of things could could generate yea. Um. But in the end, Skins says, and this is I think a pretty relevant quote. She said, all of this stuff combined has convinced parents that they have to be both omniscient and omnipotent um because of fear, and monitor every single move that your kid makes. So, uh, let's take a break and we're gonna come back and talk a little bit about the the facts about whether or not your kids are really

in danger out on the streets. After this, Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh can Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right, shot alright, Chuck. So um, like we're saying to to not be just scared to death because you're letting your kids say walk home from the park or something like that. Unsupervised, you you have to go through a change in mindset, like you have to stop seeing the world is a very very scary place.

And sometimes statistics can be actually kind of comforting. So the free range Kids movement has really, you know, made one of its um foundational support polls, and you think I would actually be getting better at this all this time, but but you stumble through something like anyway, they talk a lot about statistics and crime statistics related to kids in particular, and when you look at them in the cold, hard light of the day, UM, it doesn't seem like

it's a very dangerous world after all. Right, if you look at the numbers, UM, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that just one percent of the twenty seven thousand missing children cases are non family abductions, and that also includes like friends and acquaintances. So if you're talking about literally a stranger targeting your child and plucking them off a playground, it is exceedingly rare that

that happens. And then so one percent is non family, right, right, But that also doesn't even break down like if it's a friend or an acquaintance of a family or something like that. It's a little strangers snatching your kid rarely, rarely,

rarely happens. Yeah. So even even that, even including like friends of the family, um, somebody who's not a direct family member but known to the kid, a non stranger, that's two hundred and seventy kids that that happened to in two thousand, seventeen out of twenties seven thousand, I think, um, which is that's awful for those kids that they were kidnapped, right.

There's that's That's another thing too, is when you throw out statistics like this, it's really easy to be like, see that was it, um, But you don't want to do that because to those two hundred and seventy families that that's that's all that matters. And that's really important to remember as well when we're kind of tossing out these statistics too. Yeah, and not to make light of family abductions, which is you know ninety one percent of abductions, Uh,

those are horrific and traumatic as well. We're just talking about the bare bones of like the fear that if I let my kid go to a park as strangers going to pluck them right, right, so, so and so even that even if you look at its twenty seven thousand out of all the kids in the United States in two thousand seventeen, seven thousand of them were went missing in two thousand seventeen, and the vast majority of

them ran away. So, if you're worried that your kid is going to get plucked by a stranger, specifically out of a park somewhere, because you let them go to the park with the free range parenting, people are saying, if you look at the statistics, the chances of that are so small that it's actually not worth limiting your kids freedom of movement because of that outlier possibility. It just doesn't. It's just a disproportionate response to that risk,

is what they're saying. Right. Um, if you want to talk about the worst thing that you can imagine, which is UM, a child murder Uh. From nineteen eighty to two thousand eight, UM statistics about murders of children under five years old, Uh, sixty percent of the time the parents are the ones who did it, um, followed by so that's total or male acquaintances. UM, So like you know, mom's boyfriend or something like that, Uh seven percent or other relatives. So only three percent of all murders of

young children are strangers. Right, So again and again, dressing tanks. We're addressing the fear of strangers doing something to your child, not making light of these other statistics. And there are parents out there who are like, good, that's enough. That's the fact that it happens to one kid makes me want to protect my child and make sure that they don't do that. Okay, you're the parent, You're you're raising

your kid in that that way. I understand, um, But again, what the what the free range kids people are saying is like, like, is it really worth that? Like what what about that is? Is? I mean, is it really worth that kind of a response, And we'll get to we'll get to that, because you could say, like, if there were no negative aspects of of completely ensconcing your kid in protection, then the free range kids advocates wouldn't have anything. They could be like, Okay, well whatever, that's

what you're doing with your kid. But there's suspicions that the that actually is detrimental to the development of a kid, protecting them from everything at all costs. And I think that's one of the big other Um foundational platform post tenants of the free range kids thing that one was for showing off. Uh, alright, so building on that, um, like you, like you were saying, like they're there, There has to be like in order to get a parent

on board with a free range parting lifestyle. It's not just I want to be lazy or I want to go back to my childhood. Um, it's a parent who thinks there are actual benefits to doing so, and that that outweighs the risk, like you were saying, of the three percent, uh chance or the one percent to the point five percent chance that something's gonna happen to my

kid if they're on their own. Um, there is evidence, and it's growing and growing evidence that all these efforts to schedule all these activities for your kid are overlooking one big fundamental element of raising a healthy, well adjusted child that seems to be getting lost more and more, which is something called free play. Um. The American Academy of Pediatrics has a report out that said that free

play promotes social um. Sorry, social, it's the saying, uh, social emotional, cognitive, language, and self regulation skills that build executive function and a pro social brain. And play is fundamentally important for learning twenty one century skills like problem solving, collaboration, creativity,

uh and executive functioning skills that are critical for adult success. Right, And they threw that last one in to be like, well, okay, maybe plays good, but it's not going to help them in life, and they're saying, yes, it will actually help them in life, and that by keeping them from playing, you're basically creating a little adult from from the nursery.

Which is interesting to be chucked because prior to the nineteenth century, when you were a kid, starting around age five or something, you you had a job, even if it wasn't around like your family's farm. Maybe you were helping out with um, the wash that your mom took in who knows. But then you like, there was no such thing as childhood really um, And then we moved away from that and we developed childhood. And now it

seems like we're moving away from childhood. Now we're taking kids and they're not they're not working on the farm. We're making little CEOs and marketing directors and brand managers and stuff like that. But they're they're losing their childhood in that bargain. As I think what they're saying, and from play specifically, play helps, but it helps also like um, just in and of itself for its own sake, but

it also helps eventually down the road. It's an investment that will pay off, I think in terms that helicopter parents can understand. Yeah, there's another guy named Peter Gray. He's a developmental psychologist. UM. He has a book called Free to Learn and founded a nonprofit I believe with yes skins called Let Grow. UM little play on words there, and he basically says that, you know, if you look back to human evolution, um children, Uh, their education was

through play with their peers. And if you look at um societies and cultures in the world today that um, I mean, how would you classify these cultures traditional societies? I'm not sure maybe, but they say that that children of these cultures that still play and explore freely. Um, if they're left to do that, they will do so

into their teen years. UM. Like that is their natural instinct is to be among their peers, free playing, right, but so and so like, I think one of the problems that helicopter parents have with the idea of play is that like it's it's a waste of time the kid could be learning like cello or um, you know, doing math flash cards are like creating a better foundation for a better future for themselves, and that if they're

not doing that, they're falling behind. And so what Peter Gray and some of his ilk are saying is like no, no, no. Play helps develop a child in ways that no other thing you could possibly come up with their supervisor get them to do can because this is what we've done all this time, and this is how we've built society is letting little kids play and figure things out on

their own. And he says that if there's a parent around, if it's supervised, if there's a parent even within like eyesight er, ear shotter, you know there's a parent watching, it's going to be different. It has to be unsupervised, unstructured play so that the kids can be left to make up their own rules, can can be taught by the group that you know, actually, no, that's not really fair or it's not really cool to take the ball

and go home because you aren't winning. Um, that's how you learn that stuff, and those are good things to learn. That makes you a more socially well adjusted kid than um. Probably learning Cello is going to well, yeah, I mean, you can try and teach your kid by showing and by telling as much as you can as a parent, and that is all valuable, But nothing will teach a lesson to a kid like learning it through experience with

their peers. Right, And like I remember myself, you know, when I was a kid, Like the biggest lessons I learned, we're lessons that I learned among my peer group, you know, like tough, hard lessons that a lot of parents, I think try and even shield their kid from because it's tough stuff sometimes. But um, and you know, you don't want your kid to suffer traumas and things like that. But uh, and not to sound like a parent from the nineteen fifties, but that stuff does help build your

child's character. And I mean, I guess that sounds of old school. What it does is it helps them learn how to regulate their emotions and how to fit in with their peer group, which is in turn going to be eventually just society at large. Right. It's funny you say that that sounds kind of fifties because this whole idea of like free range kids is kind of based on that philosophy of Dr Spock, who was like one of the first experts, one of the first child experts

that America ever really paid attention to. And he wrote a book in nineteen forties called The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child, And he basically is saying all the stuff that free range kids parents say is like, let your kids play, Let your kids like learned through their own um, their own way of like exploring the world, like, let them take risks, UM, let them be themselves. Trust your instincts as a parent. And so that's what free ranch parents seemed to be kind of getting back to,

is like the doctor spak Um school of thought. Benjamin Spock, not um, the other spok not live long in prosper Spot. Did he have a first name? Oh? I don't know, man, I didn't watch a Star Trek. I didn't either. Just lay it on a million people who are going to send the email we're waiting. Uh. There's something called the internal external locus of control scale UM. It's an odd name, but this is UM been around since the nineteen sixties.

It's a psychological indicator scale. UH. And these days, since the nineteen sixties, there's been a big shift in the scale and how teens report themselves and their internal control in today, teens report very little internal control over their

own lives. And Gray believes and I think he's really onto something here that, uh, these high levels of anxiety and depression among kids these days has a lot to do with that, and the things is directly related to the decline and free play over the last you know, forty or fifty years, right, which I want to say like this, this is like one psychologist's opinion. It makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm sure it

does to a lot of people. But there's you know, this is not necessarily like like gospel truth or set in Stone. It's the jury is still kind of out, but there's a lot of evidence out there that that does seem like over protecting your kid can stunt them and um, emotionally or developmentally, and then letting them go be themselves and learn things on their own and learn that they can pick themselves back up and still survive and failure is not the worst thing in the world

can actually help them develop. Um. This is it's just like we we routinely shoot holes in in social psychology stuff all the time, and we do it gleefully. So I don't want to like go the opposite way and just be like, but this one's right because we agree with you. Um, that's not necessarily the case, and I'm sure a lot of people disagree with it, but I tend to kind of favor that that mentality, probably because

that's how I was raised. Yeah, And like I said, it does sound like um from the nineties say that failure breeds character, but you know, it really does. It's sort of a simplistic way to say it. But when you fail, you um hopefully learn something and build on that, and that does build character. Right. So one of the one of the things they call that is the dignity of risk, where you are showing your kid, I'm I'm

letting you go figure this out on your own. Um. And and another big misunderstanding with free range parents is that that you just go from like zero to walking, you know, taking the subway in New York, Um, at the flip of a switch. That's not how it works. You you slowly build your kid up for this, you know,

the big thing that you write an article about. But there's you know, dozens or scores or possibly hundreds of little little interactions that you're having to kind of make sure that your kid is up for this when they're finally when you decide they're finally ready to um. And it's not just like flipping a switch. It's very kind of thoughtful and protracted and um planned but not necessarily shared with the kid. That's planned, UM paying out of trust and so that the kid can show you, yeah,

I'm ready for this, I know what to do. I'm not just gonna like ball up on the on the ground in the subway and and start crying until someone calls nine on one and the cops come get me. Well. Yeah, And I'm sure when she sent um her kid on on the subway home that very first time, it wasn't just like all right, here's the stuff, see you later. I'm sure there was a very serious talk like all right, dude, I trust you. I'm letting you do this. I know

you know the way. We're gonna give this a shot. Um, don't if I see you on the news in the middle of time square like you're gonna be a big trouble. Um. I'm sure there was a lot of thought in talk that went into that, and uh, you know what, I'm saying, yeah, so totally, and kids get that stuff. You know, for sure, kids are smarter than people give them credit for a lot of times. I think, Um, it's interesting when it

comes to the law because it's such a new thing. Um. In Utah last year in two thousand eighteen, became the first state to pass what was called a free range parenting law, where it basically was just sort of redefining what child neglect was. Uh. And in Utah, I thought I was gonna go the other way when I was reading this, but um, it actually went the way of

sort of encouraging or being behind free parenting. The new definition, a parent cannot be accused of neglect just because their kid is going to a store by themselves that's down the street, or playing outside alone, or biking to school on their own, or at home without a parent there, Um, if they're a minor, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, I thought so too. Um, But most free range parents are like, oh,

we don't want to live to you in Utah. So hopefully our states will all come up with similar laws that that decriminalize free range parenting, because in a lot of states, things like latch key kids are illegal, like you can have your kid taken from you if they are a latch key kid under a certain age. I think in Washington you have to be fourteen to be left at home alone like you, you could lose your kid.

And so there's a real problem with trying free range parenting because part of this um helicopter parenting society is

also helicopter villaging. But rather and picking up the phone and calling the parents whose kids you see wandering alone down the street like you used to would have done, now that people just call, pick up the phone and call the cops, and then the cops respond and they take the kid to child protective services and the parent has to go down and explain that they will never do this again and they're very very sorry, or else child protective services will take their kid from them because

most states rule on what's called the best interests of the child, which is totally subjective, is completely not based in any actual case law. Necessarily, it's just does the child protective services person think that that the kid is

is smart enough to walk from the playground to the house. No, okay, well we're taking your kid, maybe permanently, and so it's it's really risky to raise your kid this way, because people will call the cops if they see your kid walking down the street and real trouble your your parentship of your kid is in jeopardy at that moment, which has got to be one of the worst things that could possibly happen to a parent. Yeah, and this is where we kind of we get back to the place

of like, this is a privilege. Has a lot to do with this, because when it comes to the law and children and child protective services, you are way more likely um to get a visit um from child protective services if you are poor, UM, or if you're a person of color or minority UM. Like, they may write an article about you in the local magazine praising you if you're like a white suburban parent of middle or upper middle class for letting your kid free range around.

But um. In the case of like Deborah Harrold in two thousand fourteen in South Carolina, UM, she wasn't like, oh, I want to be a free range parent. She's like, I am a working mom, and I work at McDonald's and I'm finishing a shift and my nine year old daughter is playing in a park nearby until I'm done, and and they sent her to jail for a night and took her daughter for two weeks away from her seventeen days. Yeah, so it is very much a case of privilege to even be allowed to do this without

getting a visit from Child Protective Services. Right so, um, Skinazy and some of the other free range parents say, right, this is why we need laws that are much more common sense and decriminalize this kind of behavior and put the trust back in parents to know that their kids are smart enough, or if they think their kids aren't smart enough to be trusted with that kind of stuff,

they wouldn't let them do that. Um. They argue that this would benefit everybody, whether no matter you know, whether you're a minority or um whatever, um socioeconomic status you have, which is which is true? That's a pretty it's a pretty sensible. Um, it's sensible. But I think that that kind of underscores the larger problem, which is, you know, like some people don't have the choice to to get childcare if the school suddenly canceled class, like you just

can't afford it. What are you gonna do? And then your your work says, well, you can't bring them here, this is work You know what, what can you do? Hopefully you've raised your kid to a point where you can trust them to go play, you know, next door at the playground or something like that. But that doesn't mean that you're not gonna end up in trouble with with the authorities. So it's a sticky, sticky situation that we're in. Two it is, and you know, again, it

depends on your kid. It depends on where you live. Like in my brother's neighborhood, Uh, if I live there, I would let my kid go out and do what she wanted when she was like seven. It's just so safe and kids are everywhere on their own doing stuff, very much like it was when we were kids. At my house, I live next to a super scary busy street. Like I would never let her out of the front of my house, but even at three and a half, we let her go in the backyard by herself and

do stuff all the time. Right, Um, I mean just this past weekend, I uh, she was out in the backyard and with the dogs, and I went out about half an hour later and she was walking through the garden with a watering can singing we will Rock You. And I was like, all right, everything's fine. But again, she's in my enclosed backyard. I wasn't sweating it. I would um, I would never just open the front door and be like, go have fun. Memorial drives right there, sixty.

But that's the point. It's all context, you know, Like you would have had to have worked up to that point. She would have had to have shown you that she was able to be trusted with that busy street, and maybe she'd be sixteen before you would. But that's that's the point. It's all. It's all, it's context, you know. Yeah, you know. Again, just do the best you can. It's hard. There a thousand ways to do it, and everybody thinks

their way is the right way. Also, just before we sign off, I want to say I did mean to pick on kids who take cello lessons. Cello is, by the way, my favorite stringed instrument, which means it was the one that was easiest called the mind. That's why I kept bringing up the cello. So all of you out there learning cello, hats off to you because that's my favorite string instrument. Yeah what if what if Yo Yo ma had just been free planning? All right? But I'll bet yo Yoma did free play. A bet he

did both, and if he didn't, I'll bet he regrets it. H. If you want to know more about free range kids will just go on the internet and start reading because there's a lot about it. And since I said that, oh, also, there's a pretty good article on how stuff works you can read too. Since I said that, it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this, uh desert flooding. Hey, guys,

listen to the podcast this morning on Desert Survival. I live here in Phoenix, Arizona, and have for nineteen years, and the flash flood issue is real even in metro Phoenix. Um, they have a stupid motorist law here and that's capitalized and end quotes. Um. She said, and she said after and during her heavy rains, a lot of washes fill with running water. A lot of the washes have been paved. Barriers will be put up when they flood, even if

the water is only a few inches deep. But there's always someone who decides that their sub or truck is hefty enough to get through, and their rescue is always on the nightly news because they have to pay for it. They actually have to pay for the cost to their rescue. Uh. Sometimes these stare deevils don't fare too well. Um. Actually, lives have been lost in less than a foot of moving water in a watch. Yeah, I believe that I've heard six inches. Yeah, and she Teresa Henburry closes by

saying this, I do so enjoy your podcast. Nice, Thank you, Teresa. We do so enjoy your emails too. Yes, I like the way she put that. Yeah. Um, if you want to be like Teresa, impresses with your verbal or written dexterity. We love that kind of stuff. You can go to stuff you Should Know dot com and you can look us up on the social links. You can also send us a podcast like Teresa did to stuff podcasts at I heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is

a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H