Free Range Kids

I just finished reading the book Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy. This is the mom who let her 9-year-old ride the subway alone from Bloomingdales home, and was subsquently skewered by the press for being "America's Worst Mom." Needless to say I loved the book. I remember spending hours and hours playing in the woods when I was a kid - there was an empty lot across the street that connected to some woods which connected to a cemetary (even cooler), and we used to climb around back there for hours with no parents hovering over us. I don't remember exactly how old I was at that point, but probably about seven. It bothers me that there's no equivalent place for Melina to play here - no wild places within walking distance.

But even if there were local wild places, times have changed. Pedophiles are hovering behind every other tree, right? Well, actually, they're not. Skenazy uses well-researched data to show that things are about as safe now for kids as they were when I was a kid roaming in the woods. (And guess what? There *were* pedophiles back then, but we didn't hear about them 24 hours a day on Fox news, and we didn't get alarmist emails from our aunts warning us to never park next to white vans...)

One statistic presented by Skenazy stood out for me: According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (the very same ones who put those scary pictures on milk cartons), the chances of any one American child being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are .00007 percent. If you *wanted* your child to be kidnapped, you would have to keep them outside unattended for - get this - about 750,000 years. A child is 40 times more likely to be in a fatal auto accident (not that that is particularly comforting, but how much do we worry about driving the car?).

And another interesting fact: people in other countries - even countries that are less safe - are not nearly as paranoid as we are. Kids in most countries walk to school - even without parents along! How's that for revolutionary? Playgrounds are unsupervised! And in Denmark, people routinely leave their kids in strollers outside restaurants while they eat. A Danish woman tried that in New York and almost got arrested.

Skenazy also presents well-reasoned arguments for letting your kids encounter germs, eat raw cookie dough, trick-or-treat on Halloween, play in the woods, and do other normal childhood activities that our culture regards with excessive paranoia.

All in all, this book was a huge breath of fresh air for me (the other women in my book club loved it as well). The only thing I didn't like about the book was that sometimes Skanazy seemed to pick worst-case examples as counterpoints to her arguments - examples that are too easy to dismiss if you don't know people who match them. I got the feeling that most of her examples came from wealthy Connecticut suburbs - definitely not Portland, where people tend to be slightly more laid back. I don't know anybody who won't let their kid walk three houses down to a neighbor's. However, I still got a lot out of this book. (And yes, I can hear my mom worrying that I'm going to let Melina walk across Portland alone or go on a three-day solo vision quest in the wilderness. Don't worry, mom. I know there are still bad people out there. And Melina is only four... the vision quest can wait until at least 12.)

To learn more about Free Range Kids and the movement it has inspired, check out their website.