← Parenting in the Screen Age - The Screenagers Podcast
Parenting in the Screen Age - The Screenagers Podcast
Raising Independent Kids: The Issue of Phone Trackers with America's 'Worst' Mom (encore)
00:34:22
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- [00:00]
A
I can handle anything. And that's why it's an anxiety buster. Because the anxiety is the fear that you can't do something. Or if you do, you'll mess up. And if you mess up, it's the end of the world. And this has just proven all that wrong.
- [00:14]
B
Hello, I'm Delaney Rustin, primary care physician creator with Lisa Tabb of the four Screenagers movies. And this is the Screenagers podcast, a show about discovering the best ways to help our youth and and ourselves navigate our rapidly changing digital world. One concern I have, and I'm not alone, is that kids and teens aren't doing independent things as much as kids used to. Kids aren't going on their own to the neighborhood park or taking public transportation, spending time in a city if they live in a suburb. We're talking about a whole host of things and data backs this up. And this decline in autonomy comes at a cost. It means many kids aren't getting chances to feel anxiety and realize they can work through it less chances to build self efficacy and resiliency, to name just a few things. So why this drop in autonomous activities and what can we do about it? One issue is that it can be hard to convince our kids and teens to get off technology and go outside into the world to get to take some risks to explore. So even when parents want kids and teens to do things that take independence, it can be hard to make that happen.
- [01:29]
C
Then there's the other reality. Some of the blame falls on parents themselves. There's been this desire which makes sense to keep kids safe, which has a lot to do with the flood of frightening stories in the media, which really started back with things like missing kids being shown on milk cartons and the start of 24 hour news with the development of cable TV. And all of these things have fed into many parents decisions to restrict children's freedom out of loving concern. But how often has this gone too far and actually become a detriment? Particularly when we know the statistics of crime and things like kidnapping has gone way down.
- [02:11]
B
On today's show, we'll explore how parents can better assess the risks of granting children and teens more independence. We'll discuss why this freedom matters, strategies for encouraging hesitant kids and teens to embrace it, and the pros and cons of smartphones and smartwatches as they relate to young people navigating the world and building self efficacy. And to do that, I have a very special guest, Lenore Skenazy. She's the president of Let Grow, a nonprofit working with Schools, states, and parents to give kids more independence and free play. And she's the author of Free Range Kids. It's a fascinating conversation, and it begins with Lenore's story of the controversial parenting decision she made when her son was 9 years old that cast her into the spotlight.
- [03:03]
D
Lenore, thank you so much for being on the Screenagers podcast.
- [03:06]
A
Thank you.
- [03:07]
D
I want to start by just saying you are truly a person that I greatly admire both for what you do and for how long you've been doing it. So, so many campaigns and work that you do with schools and parents and the tools you have are incredible. But that's not how you started. You started as the famous worst parent
- [03:27]
A
in the world, a worst mom, right? Nobody cares about parents. Worst mom. Come on, let's get straight to the shame.
- [03:34]
D
Straight to the shame. And I want to hear you just briefly explain that, but also what happened and then how surprised you were when you started being on these news shows, how that transpired.
- [03:45]
A
When our younger son was nine, he started asking me and my husband if we would take him someplace he'd never been before, here in New York City, where we live, and let him find his own way home by subway, which was not something our older son had asked. So we hadn't thought about this yet, but we decided yes. And so one sunny Sunday, I took Izzy is his name, to Bloomingdale's fancy department store and a fancy zip code, not necessarily a fancy subway station below, but the subway station is right below Bloomingdale's. And I left him there and I went home by bus. And he took this train and then a bus home. And he came into the apartment really proud, really happy. We were proud and happy. I didn't write a column about it, even though I was a newspaper columnist, because it didn't strike me as a big deal. But a few months later, when I had nothing to write about, I said, can I write about Izzy's subway ride? I have nothing else to say. And my editor said, yeah, go ahead. And so I wrote why I let my nine year old ride the subway alone. And two days later I was on the Today show, msnbc, Fox News, and npr, sort of describing what had happened, but also defending myself. And the most interesting part about that was that many of the interviews would go from, oh, why'd you do it? How was it? Was it fun? Did your son like it? To hypothetical. And it would go, okay, he came home, but what if he hadn't? And I was always stymied by that question. And it Took a really long time to finally realize that A. It wasn't a question, but also what was interesting is that they were taking a positive experience of a mom and a kid and a kid doing something on his own and turning it into a tragedy. In theory, like, it could have happened. Like, it was, like, just as likely that he would have come home and wouldn't have come home, and he just happened to come home. But what if he hadn't? It was just interesting the way the culture will take any raw material and turn it into a cautionary tale for moms who don't spend every single second supervising their kids.
- [05:41]
D
Were they blatantly saying the worst mom, or were they being nice and trying to shepherd you on and secretly shaming you?
- [05:48]
A
The first show I was on was the Today show. And what shocked me that time and no longer shocks me is that there was a lady sitting on the couch with me and my son, Ann Curry. So Ann Curry was nice, but then it turned out that the person sitting next to us was a child psychologist. She doesn't look at me. She looks at Aunt Curry and says, well, there's many other ways she could have done this safely. And I'm sputtering like. Like, if I didn't think it was safe, I wouldn't have done it. But the other ways, I could have followed him, like in a trench coat, you know, with. With a pipe and. And a hound with me, or I could have made him go with a bunch of people. And I. I don't even remember if I got it out or not. But it's like, it. It was safe and he was safe. And if I thought it wasn't safe, I wouldn't have allowed him to do it. I didn't do it at 3am I didn't do it when he was four years old. And I didn't think he needed a chaperone or a bunch of kids to be safe. He needed to be in a big city where he speaks the language. And we're always on the trains, we know how they work. And you can ask, he asked a stranger, am I on the right platform? The guy said, no, you're on the wrong platform. And then he got himself to the right platform. And so all of these things that he did were very exciting. But in a way, after a few times, it's mundane. You go, you wait for a train, you get on it. You're surrounded by a lot of people.
- [07:06]
D
Yes.
- [07:07]
A
You don't stand next to the, you know, the edge.
- [07:10]
D
You didn't know that they were gonna, in front of you, go, oh, that wasn't a good idea.
- [07:15]
A
No, no. And what they did the day before I was on, I went around with Matt. Taibbi's dad was a reporter for the Today show and so he took me and Izzy around and we filmed Izzy crossing the street or I don't remember, at his school or something. That was fun. And then the next day you get up really early and they take you into the hair and makeup and they're saying, oh, what do. What are you in for? And I explained, oh, I let my kid ride the subway and all the people, oh, we rem. The subway was so exciting. But. But then a bunch of them said, but of course, I would never do that today. And I thought, that's interesting. They're really proud of having ridden the subway as kids. They're reminiscing fondly about those days and they're at a news. I guess maybe that's the problem. They are in a news station and all you see is the horrible things and they seem to have no perspective on like, you know, I'm a real reporter and I worked at the daily news for 14 years and I know my crime statistics. And crime was going up in the 70s and 80s and 90s and it peaked in 90 and it was on a really steep slope down. And by the time I was letting Izzy ride the subway, which was 2008, it was like, you know, at a 50 year crime low. So they were going out when it was less safe. So why are they saying, but I could never do that.
- [08:31]
D
Now, just in brief, then, how did you decide to start a whole movement around it? It was a slow progression with a blog. You kept writing. I know you're a reporter.
- [08:41]
A
Well, I didn't set out to start a movement. I set out to set the record straight. I thought, well, I'm a writer. So I started a blog that weekend and I called it Free Range Kids to say my side, which is, I love safety. I want my kids to live long after I am dead. I want them to be safe until then. I am scared of cars. I believe in helmets. I believe in mouth guards and extra layers and all sorts of safety things. Not only seat belts, but car seats. And in New York we didn't have a car, so I would drag a car seat with me. That's like. I'd say I'm almost fanatically safety conscious, but because I'm sort of rational, I know that cars are. The number one way kids die is as car passengers. They don't die walking to school, and they don't die talking to strangers and they're not picked off the street by men in white vans. So I just wanted to set the record straight and explain that we've really gone in a weird direction. If we all, at that point, you know, this is 18 years ago, we all remember walking to school and getting on our bikes after school and maybe going to the store and not only remember doing that, but we remember it as foundational. Like it was the fun that we had was with our friends after school, not with mom just taking us to a lesson and then watching the whole lesson and then discussing it on the car ride home. And so if we remember this and it was important to us, and we're trying to give our kids the very best of everything, which all parents are doing across every demographic, they want to give their kids the best possible, then why weren't we giving them the thing we loved the most, which was trust and some independence and some free time
- [10:17]
D
and ability to grow? And let's talk more about the statistics briefly, because you and I both know that it's important to know, although it's not going to change, we're going to talk about real change. But what is the statistic? If a kid were to be outside on the street, how many. How long would it take for somebody to kidnap that child?
- [10:40]
A
Well, it takes a second, probably. But how long would it take for it to be statistically likely that somebody would come along, a stranger would come along, and take your kid off the street? Is it turns out to be, to make it statistically likely that that would happen, you would have to leave your child outside for 750,000 years. So I once got a letter that I just thought was the most profound. In a way. It said, I don't care if the odds are one in a billion. That's not a risk I want to take. And I thought, I'll never be able to explain to that person that that's actually not even considered risk by the time it's one in a billion, one in a million, one in a hundred thousand. It's not a risk. Risk has to pose some in this lifetime likelihood of happening, and it doesn't.
- [11:25]
B
A lot of the work we do with our four screenagers films is all about ensuring kids have lots of opportunities offline so they can pursue their independence. This work is often informed by studies that provide helpful insights and data about how parents can think about their role. One recent study was the Motts Children Study, which sought to find out how much independence parents thought their kids should receive versus how much they are actually giving their kids.
- [11:54]
A
And so they asked parents of kids age 5 through 11, do you want your kids to be independent? Yes. They all thought yes. Do you want to give them more independence? Yes. The vast majority said yes. But then they asked specific questions of the parents of kids aged 9 to 11. They said, well, would you let your kid that age play at the park with a friend? And the majority said no. Okay, how about walk to a friend's house? No. How about trick or treat? Like just trick or treat without an adult? No. And then my favorite one, 50% of the parents of kids aged 9 to 11 will not let their child go to another aisle at the store. And that to me is a smoking gun. Because a store, you can't have somebody taking a screaming 9 to 11 year old out of the store without somebody noticing. And also, like, by the time you're fantasizing about that, you've already gone off the rails. The more that your fear represents something that you'd see in the movies while you're popping the popcorn, the less likely it is to happen in real life. And there's almost no way that a tween could be taken out of the store without them protesting, without somebody noticing, without you knowing it.
- [13:09]
D
And we want to make sure what we're going to be saying is how helpful it is to be pushing yourself as a parent to say, go ahead and go get those things and then try to find me in the store. Like I might be moving on. Find me in the store. And you also mentioned media, which I'm so glad you did, because in our latest film, the fact that young people, kids and adults are seeing a lot of violent shows and video games, that their attribution bias is such that if a kid gets hit in the hall, just touched by accident, their brain is going to attribute that to more likely think that that kid was meant to do that.
- [13:48]
A
Really? Is that, is that what's happening?
- [13:50]
D
Yes, exactly. That's the research by Douglas Gentile that not only attribution bias goes up, but also the what your first reaction is going to be, you're more likely to get anger because you've practiced anger in the video games.
- [14:05]
A
Oh, that's interesting.
- [14:07]
D
And as well as you're more likely to have aggressive fantasies, so there's a lot of, they're not the overt, you're not going to become a shooter or anything like that. But there are ways this violence. And in the same way parents Watching these intense shows with games, et cetera, and just kind of take it lightheartedly. It does have an impact, and therefore we are seeing the world through a much more afraid lens. So we both agree that all of these things are impacting parents. And what was shocking to me to learn through your work is how many states actually have these laws that make it worse that are saying you can't let your kid be alone. And I just wonder to some degree, obviously there's. I don't mean the extreme case, but do you want to just give a little bit of voice to what we're also dealing with at a legal.
- [14:59]
A
So it turns out that states are pretty ambiguous when they define neglect. And they usually define it as something like parents must provide proper supervision. And my idea of proper supervision was obviously letting my kid ride the subway and other people's proper supervision might not be. And so that leaves the door wide open for the state to exercise its discretion or even just one caseworker who comes and has been summoned because somebody saw a child walking outside or playing or whatever. And so in 2018, Utah became the first state to pass what they called back then a free range parenting law. And it said that kids have the right to be out and about on their own, to walk to school, to play outside, to stay home alone for some decent amount of time. And it's not neglect to let kids have that kind of independence. So that passed. And then since then, we sort of refined the message to be that neglect is when you put your kid in obvious and serious danger, not anytime you take your eyes off them. A three year old wandering on the highway, if you knew that, of course, yeah, anything like that, that's just obvious, right? Or you leave your kids home, six and seven years old, no food in the fridge for a weekend, crazy stuff like that. That neglect is actually just too amorphous. And really what we're about is when neglect becomes abuse, that's when it's bad. And so what our law that we now call the reasonable childhood independence law says is that putting your kid in serious, obvious danger is neglect. And nothing less than that is. And that has passed in seven states since Utah, so eight altogether. And this year we're working in about, I'd say half a dozen states to make sure that it passes there too. And it doesn't always pass. Sometimes somebody on a committee doesn't like it or whatever, but when it does pass, it's had bipartisan sponsors in almost every state. And in five states it passed unanimously because it's not a Democrat or Republican thing. It's no parent should have their parenting decisions second guessed unless they're putting their kid in danger.
- [16:57]
D
One of my mentors has said something to me that helped me in raising my kids, which is an ongoing job even in their 20s, is people do not mature in preparation for responsibility, but rather as a result of it.
- [17:11]
A
Oh, I'm writing that down. That's really great.
- [17:13]
D
And my kids have grown up hearing that over and over. And our parenting was such that we were all about giving them lots of opportunities on their own. And I wonder if giving kids in my work as a doctor, dealing with a lot of teens with anxiety and mental health struggles and parents who are very anxious even when the kids aren't, the benefits are so immense for them to get that sense of self efficacy for them to know that when things don't go well, they still can try to fix it and that we have trust in them. That might not work out, but we trust that they'll figure out something and boy will they learn a lot. Sometimes it's not even that we have fear. We're just like, we don't stop and realize we think so much about school and academics and learning. We lose track of the immense learning of being a human on this planet. That is happening all the time. How are the ways that you talk to parents? Kind of on a similar vein, here's
- [18:16]
A
what I find helpful. So Let Grow is the nonprofit that grew out of Free Range Kids and we started in 2017 or 18. Jonathan Haidt came to me and said, kids are falling apart on campus. We want to make them more resilient from the get go. I loved Free Range Kids. Let's start a nonprofit together. And I said, okay, but we have to be devoted to action because being a thought leader and even suggesting great ideas doesn't work. The only thing that I've seen that changes parents is their own kids. So my statistics, oh, 750,000 years, your kid wouldn't be abducted. And kids get so much from independence. And when they're getting their riskometer screwed up, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah. But if you are gently nudged to let your kid do something before you even knew that they were ready, and maybe even before they knew they were ready and they come home and they've gone to the store, they walked the dog or they got themselves home from school, that jolt of pride is the only thing that rewires parents and it rewires the kids too. And so when we started Let Grow, John is A big. He always says a collective problem needs a collective solution. So we determined that we would go through schools for the most part, although our programs are also available for home use, whatever you want to call it. But at schools, we recommend that schools give kids the homework assignment we call the Let Grow experience. And it boils down to this. They get a homework assignment that says, go home and do something new with your parents permission, but without your parents, something that you want to do. And even kids who are anxious usually have something that they want to do. Maybe they want to be able to take the brownies out of the oven instead of you always doing it. Or they want to play at the park with a friend, or they want to order the pizza on the phone. There's always something new that they haven't done yet that's a little bit of a, of a step up. And when a parent is worried, like, oh, are they ready for this? I don't know, I feel so bad. But they are pushed to do it. It's collective action. Everybody is letting their kids do something new and the parents are comparing notes and the kids are comparing notes, and so they do it. And when you get the Let Grow experience, all our materials are free and there is a list of page after page after page of they can jump rope, they can climb a fence. There's just a bunch of activities in case you, you or your kid can't think of them. But there's, as we said, it's determined by the kid's interest and their neighborhood and their age, et cetera, et cetera.
- [20:38]
D
And with that, actually, you let parents know all the benefits. You do a lot of psychoeducation, we call it, but a lot of education, letting them know the psychology research around, all the benefits of having kids do all sorts of things independently that they haven't yet done. And in fact, some of the schools that you've worked with, they've done 20 times. I mean, they just, the benefits are so good. They just keep having this be the homework to do something that you haven't done. And how fantastic that the schools aren't freaking out about liability.
- [21:10]
A
It's determined by the kid and their parents.
- [21:13]
D
Exactly.
- [21:13]
A
It's not. The school says everybody has to go home and walk five miles, although I do think the five mile walk is a cool one. There was a middle school that had that as an assignment. And another assignment that I loved from that school was go someplace where you don't fit in and stick around.
- [21:27]
D
Ooh, excellent.
- [21:29]
A
Isn't that cool? Yes, that's so cool.
- [21:31]
D
The number one thing I've told my kids since they were little is learn to figure out who you can talk with and ask. And don't feel bad to cross the street if someone's acting weird. Never feel bad that you're letting them down or making them feel bad if you have that feeling. The vast majority of people are good and I would put them in situations where they get not have to, but get to talk to strangers, get to ask for help, get to ask for time, ask for directions, and what a gift. They could see how much that people wanted to help them.
- [22:14]
A
Not only is the world pretty nice and people want to help me, but if I screw up or if I'm confused or scared, I can still be okay. Is like, okay, then what's going to stop me from anything? You know, I just got wings, right? I can handle anything. And that's why it's an anxiety buster. Because the anxiety is the fear that you can't do something or if you do, you'll mess up. And if you mess up, it's the end of the world. And this has just proven all that wrong. You messed up, it wasn't the end of the world. It was kind of fun and you could do it again.
- [22:45]
B
One obvious area that I wanted to discuss with Lenore is around the use of technology when it comes to giving kids the kind of freedom she's advocating. Screenagers isn't after all about being anti technology. It's about figuring out how technology can be in kids and adults lives in the healthiest ways possible. So I wanted to discuss the pros and cons of kids having an Internet connected watch or phone when they're away from home.
- [23:11]
A
We think it's going to provide us peace of mind. And what's interesting is that I think that's a big lie in that once you start thinking that your kids are only safe because you know exactly where they are whenever you want to know, you've almost cauterized the development of trust, right? I mean, the thing that really gives you trust is faith. Faith that your kids are going to be okay without you. Faith that they're not lying to you, faith that they have some wherewithal. And once you replace faith with your own control and knowing where they are, your own peace of mind being the most important thing. I think that you have stopped the development of something that would serve you both really well, which is trusting that they're going to be okay, that you trained them well, that the neighbors are pretty decent. I mean if you live in a terrible, terrible, dangerous neighborhood, I'm very sorry that you live there. But we've sort of replaced trust with omniscience. And I describe this like long windedly. And I'm probably going to do it again, long windedly in a piece for John Height's Substack, which is called after babble. And there's. The idea of. The idea of attachment theory is that you want to be securely attached to someone. You know, a parent, a nanny, an uncle, somebody that's really important to you. And that starts in, you know, early childhood. And as the kid gets a little older, say they're three years old and they're toddling away, they look back and there's mom smiling. And so that allows them to go a little further because they know that if they get scared by the dog, back they go to mom and everything's okay. And the whole idea of child development is that you keep getting a little further, a little further, until you're around the corner and you don't see your mom, but she's in your heart or she's in your head and you know that she still loves you, that she's still there, that you're going to be okay. And even if you screw up, she's going to take you back in her arms. And that develops this real sense of, you know, independence while still being attached emotionally, I would get, I guess, or relationship wise, And what happens with phones, or so it seems to me, and this is just a theory, is that you never separate. You never have to know that you're on your own. But when you need it, you can come back to your mom, because your mom is there the second you want to call her. And at the same time, the parent. We never think about a parent in attachment theory. We think about the kid growing up and becoming this independent, self sufficient, autonomous and actualized human being. But the parent has to become that too, to the point where they can let the kid go and still be able to live with themselves without falling apart and without being terribly anxious. And when there's no light between you and the kid, you're always together because you can always call them. Are you okay? How was Spanish class? I'll be two minutes late. Hold on. There's no chance for either the parent or the kid to develop the trust that, okay, she's late, but she'll be here. Or if she's really late, I'll get a ride home with my friend or I'll ask somebody else for help. So having a phone or another way of constantly being followed and in touch with your parent, I think changes everything. However, I live in the real world and I know that at this point, because these devices are available, it's really hard to opt out of them to say, you know what? Ignorance really is bliss. Lenore said, so I'm not going to track my kids. I'd say the first choice, if you had a choice, would be a walkie talkie because it doesn't do anything other than mom, I'm at Jenny's house or whatever. Second choice would be a dumb phone or a flip phone. But once again, that still allows you to be in constant touch. But at least it's not tracking. Your kids need to see that you trust them. And in the 60s, which I actually remember, there was a poster that always said, if you love something, let it go. And I thought, like, that's dumb because then like the bird is gone or whatever. But it is true, if you love something, let it go and it will still be part of you and it will come back to you. Because that's the relationship. Not because you don't need to track them the way we used to only track felons on work release, which was knowing their every move and where they were because we did not trust them.
- [27:58]
D
And I want to just reiterate trust. We really mean, we want to make sure our kids know that we trust that they have the foresight to if you need to reach me, you go to the school office or if I need to reach you, I will call them. And the plan after school is we're going to teach executive functioning. It's a very emotional thing for parents in terms of some are just, no, I'm giving my 10 year old the phone because I want them to reach me at all times. I wonder for you with your son Izzy at that age, if you could put yourself now back then, do you think you would have wanted him to have a smartwatch, some sort of watch where he could text you? And I'm seeing you shake your head.
- [28:38]
A
It was back in the era when you could carry a phone and people said, did you give him a cell phone? And I said no, because I was sure that he would get home and not sure that the phone would get home, which turned out to be true years later. He's just forgetful kid. So that was already considered part of my quote unquote crime or America's worst mom was that. But I did give him quarters and that back then there still were some payphones around. So I wanted him to have a way in an emergency to be able to contact me, but not for me to always know where he was and not for him to easily call him. Okay, Now I'm on 34th Street. Okay, now I'm crossing 2nd Avenue. I didn't need a granular account.
- [29:18]
D
Yeah, I mean for me, the reason I'm not a tracking type parent for teens with my teens and my film partner Lisa did work with her kids and she liked, they all liked to be able to the whole family track each other, just know where everyone was. It was convenient. And that can work for families. Absolutely. For me and my kids I would just wanted it more that we were communication. Where are you going to be? And if there's a problem, you let me know. And I don't want to be a police. Like are you really at that house? That didn't to me feel like it was breeding the trust that I wanted them to have. Even if they broke that trust, it's from a place of I trust that the world's safe enough. I trust you're going to figure out how to deal with a situation. And I trust that overall you, you don't want to be sneaking all sorts of stuff. And if you do, eventually it'll come out and we'll work on that together. Letting your kid know, can they ask people to use a phone if they really if something happened. And that overall, particularly in elementary school. So it's pretty well known what the plan is going to be before and after school. And there's a whole system set up to be able to be in contact.
- [30:23]
A
There was a Washington Post columnist who told me this story which was that her 8 year old was supposed to stay for after school, whatever activity, and something got wrong and he ended up getting into the carpool car with his friend. And the carpool mom thought okay, you know, and dropped off this boy at his house, not realizing no one was home and that the door was locked. And so he got there and it's like, oh, he didn't have a key cause he wasn't supposed to be home. And so he had to figure out what to do. And so he walked a couple blocks to this little grocery store in the neighborhood and he asked the nice couple, you know, will you please call my mom? And I think he had the number. And they called and the mom didn't pick up. Cause it's a number she didn't know and she's on deadline and so forget it. And so the couple was like, well, how about you do your homework so he did his homework and like, well, how about you have a snack? He has a snack. They keep calling, not answering. Okay, well, then the grocer said, well, how about you help me out now? And so finally they get through to the mom and they say, Hi, is this Mrs. Whatever W. Yes, it's her. It's like, well, do you know where your son is? Sure. He's at Chest. No, he's not. He's with us. We're at the grocery and he's here now. What?
- [31:34]
D
What?
- [31:34]
A
She was crazed with fear, and it's like even though she knew where he was. And so she, you know, leaves the post and she races over and she opens the door and there's her son with the grocer, and they're putting the meat on the shelves in the back there. And her heart melted. You know, it's like she was so proud of him, and he was so proud of himself because he had solved a problem, he'd done something in his neighborhood. She got to know these wonderful grocers. And what really, really makes us the happiest as parents is when our kids do something on their own, especially when they succeed or solve this any problem. Your heart grows three sizes that day, like the Grinch. And what we're depriving ourselves of by either being with our kids all the time or having some adult with them all the time, or watching them from afar via tracking or whatever you want to call it all the time is that joy. We don't get to see who they are. They don't get to see who they are. All our memories from childhood about when we're thrilled are generally not with our parents. And all our greatest joys about our kids are when we realize, like, look what my kid did without me.
- [32:57]
B
That was Lenore Skenazy. If you want to learn more about the Let Grow program and how parents and communities and schools can foster kids independence, visit letgrow.org and be sure to check out Lenore's book, Free Range Kids and her blog of the same name. As always, we'll have this information and the research from the episode in the show notes.
- [33:21]
C
What a gift that you chose to tune into the show today. The screenagers movement is all about doing this work together. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast to get each episode automatically. And the more subscribers, the easier it is for others to find us. And if you give it some stars, that helps even more. Check out screenagersmovie.com to get resources for each episode to learn about our four Screenagers movies and to find my weekly parenting blog, TechTalkTuesdays. Curious about a specific topic? Use the search bar to get answers from our many blogs and podcast episodes. Finally, I love hearing from you, so email me at delaneyscreenagersmovie.com what ideas do you have for future episodes? Today's show was produced by the following people me, your host, Delaney Reston, Lisa Tabb, Rebecca Tolan and Robbie Carver.