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- [00:00]
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- [00:49]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
This.
- [00:49]
Elise Hu
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- [02:27]
Lenore Skenazy
You'Re.
- [02:27]
Elise Hu
Listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. What happens when we let kids take risks and solve problems on their own? This question led journalist and founder of the Free Range Kids movement, Lenore Skenazy to embrace the title she had been given online of quote, America's worst Mom after she shared the story of allowing her nine year old son to ride the New York City subway alone. In a follow up conversation to her 2025 talk released a few weeks ago, Lenore spoke with TED curator Whitney Pennington Rogers to dig further into why it's so important to raise independent kids in today's tech heavy, safety obsessed age. There are so many thorny topics that we parents have to confront as we parent kids these days. And that's why I'm really excited to ment another show I'm hosting called Raising Us. It's a podcast from a kids company called A kids company. This is their first parenting podcast and it's for parents to help us talk to our kids about topics like gaming, social media, puberty, the environment, democracy. Like I mentioned, a lot of thorny topics and all of these topics couldn't be better connected with the overarching point that Lenore Skenazy makes in her conversation with Whitney.
- [03:50]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
Here they are. You actually you start your talk by mentioning that you have been called America's worst mom after you let your nine year old ride the New York City subway alone and you embraced that title. Oh, wow. Maybe not initially, but so I mean, when you look back at that moment, what do you think struck a cultural nerve?
- [04:21]
Lenore Skenazy
Yeah, so he's 27 now. So I've been thinking about it for a while and I think two things struck a nerve because I looked at older columns of mine where I had let my kids play in the courtyard without me. I let them take elevators without me. I let them go. They're two boys, let them go to the men's room without me, obviously. And nobody cared about any of those columns. So I think by writing about my kid taking the subway by himself, it was basically the subway. New York City subway does not have a great reputation and people think it's hell. And why would you send your kid down to hell, at least without you? And then I think it wasn't just me saying, you know, kids need independence. It was me actually doing it pedal to the metal. And the fact that he loved it, I think was also maybe just interesting. It wasn't something that we did because he should do it, he should learn, he should be toughened up. It was just he wanted to take the subway by himself. He. And we let him. It's like, oh yeah, kids have things that they want to do on their own and maybe we should listen to them and see what happens. So. But I think it's the subway.
- [05:26]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
Yeah, well, I mean, and all these years later, it's still something that people are still, it seems like, obsessed with and concerned by this idea of letting kids go on their own. And so could you, I guess, talk a little bit about this for those people who are new to your work? What exactly does Free Range Kids mean?
- [05:45]
Lenore Skenazy
I knew you were going to ask, and frankly, I've been asked this for a while, and I. I never have a great pithy explanation, but it is basically believing that kids can do some things on their own, the way most of today's parents and certainly the grandparents remember as kids. What, what's strange about childhood today is the fact that kids do almost nothing on their own. And I. I have some statistics. We did a. A study with the Harris people, the Harris Pol people, and they majority of kids age 8 to 12 have rarely or never walked around their own neighborhood without an adult. More than 50% had never gone to another aisle at the grocery without an adult. 25% weren't allowed to play on their own front lawn. So it's like, why have a front lawn, you know, if kids aren't allowed there? So also, there was this really amazing piece done, and I know it's the Daily Mail, but nonetheless, the Daily Mail did an incredible story several years back, and it was called How Children Lost the Right to Roam in four Generations. And it interviewed. It had a map, but it interviewed a great grandpa 88. What had he done as a kid? He'd gone six miles in any direction. And then the grandpa, 66, had gone about a mile to the fishing hole, and the mother, who was in her 40s, had walked half a mile to school, and her son, who was 8, was not allowed. And I can't remember if it's not allowed off his block or not allowed off his yard, but the. The map that showed this just showed really childhood shrinking. And Free Range Kids is trying to make it easy, normal, and legal to. To widen that again, to trust kids with some independence. And, and that's what Let Grow, the nonprofit that Grata Free Range Kids is working on.
- [07:40]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
And we'll definitely talk more about some of the work you're doing with Let Grow. But before we get into that, I'd love to just keep going on this thread around how independence for children has really begun to shrink. Why do you think modern parenting has become so focused on safety and control?
- [07:58]
Lenore Skenazy
It's my favorite topic. And we don't have 24 hours. We just have one. I would say that the change really began in earnest in the 80s and into the 90s. And a couple things changed back then that were significant. One is that we got cable television in the 80s, which meant that we suddenly had a 24 hour news cycle, which had never been the case before. And of course, if you have to keep people glued to the screen for all those hours, you have to find very compelling and I would say very upsetting content, as we've learned from later on with the Internet. And so that's when we started to sort of obsess about stranger danger. And also there were two very high profile kidnappings in New York, my city, in 1979. A boy named Eitan Pates was taken from a bus stop and never seen again. And what was interesting about that case, aside from utter tragedy, is that the working assumption on the part of the public at the beginning was that some lovelorn lady had seen this cute little kid and taken him home to raise as her own. So we weren't thinking at all about predators. And predators then were like lions and owls. And so it was only gradually, as word got out, maybe from the police and from the news, that, well, maybe it wasn't a lady, maybe it wasn't taken home to raise that. People became just shocked that there would be this weird and horrible and disgusting and upsetting crime. And then when it happened to Adam Walsh was taken from outside of a Sears In Florida in 1982, there was a miniseries done on him that broke all ratings records. And you know, the news and the media are there to make money, right? Not just to inform you and help you, but really to make money. And when they saw that this is what really captivated audiences the most, they said, get me more of these. Don't get me, don't steal more children, get me more content like this. Because this, the, the appetite for this has been unending. And we know that because to this day, Law and Order, I think, has been on for like 25 or 30 years. And every day people are tuning in to see just the most depraved and upsetting crimes. And you know, you breathe these in and gradually your, your lungs fill with this despair. And what seemed to be, you know, almost unheard of in the Aton p case in 1979 becomes something like the. The same Harris Pole interviewed parents and what was it? It was 50% of parents. No. When asked what would happen if there were two kids age 10, 10 double digits playing at the park together, what is likely to happen and 50% of the parents said they were likely to be kidnapped. That's, that's wildly out of whack with reality, thank God. But that's the result of this constant drumbeat of terror and despair that we are marinating in, thanks to the media.
- [10:59]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
So when we think about this, then, now everyone has decided, keep them close, don't let them roam. As you know, as you say, what are, what are some of the hidden costs of this, of overprotective parenting for, for both parents and kids?
- [11:14]
Lenore Skenazy
Well, let's talk about kids first. And I feel bad because my TED Talk was really funny and now we're getting really somber. But the sad thing for kids is that they are sad. They are getting anxious and depressed. And we all know this, but people think it's since COVID or since phones or whatever, since no Child Left Behind. It's really been decades in the making. One of my Let Grow co founders is a man named Peter Gray. He's a professor of psychology at Boston College, and he did a big, long study that was published in the Journal of Pediatrics two years ago. It showed that over the decades from the 50s to now, as kids, independence, ability to roam, problem solve, play on their own, has gone down, their anxiety and depression have been going up. He argues that it's not just correlation, it's causation. And you can sort of understand that because if you were in a job and you were micromanaged all the time, and somebody was saying, whitney, why don't you try it this way? Whitney, that's good, but maybe you want to think about this. Whitney, will you have this to me by 502 today? Nobody wants to be micromanaged, and childhood has become micromanaged. The other thing Peter Gray explains, which I think is really right, is that there's something called an internal locus of control versus external locus of control. And when external is when somebody else is deciding how you spend your day and whether you're doing it good enough and gives you all this feedback and tells you what you're going to do next. And internal is when you feel like, you know, I really feel like going and looking for bugs today, or I just want to get better at my free throws or I'm going to go on my skateboard. When you have an intrinsic internal locus of control means an intrinsic, so hard to say desire to do something, and you go and do it, you feel like you can handle things even if you fall off the skateboard, even if you don't find a bug, which would be Odd. So when you have this feeling like, I can handle things and people trust me, and if things go wrong, I'm going to be able to figure out how to make them better, you feel great. You're on top of the world. And we have taken most of that out of children's lives because we're so worried about them that we do everything with them and for them. And as a result, they're sort of. There's. You know, they're like. They're like, in the passenger seat of their lives while we very smart, helpful people are driving them to something that's going to be really important for them, especially if they're trying to get into college.
- [13:40]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
And I love. In the talk, and I promise we're gonna. We are gonna come away from some of the somber stuff to. And in the talk, you say that I did it myself. Are both childhood magic words and the original anxiety buster. Yeah.
- [13:59]
Lenore Skenazy
Yeah.
- [13:59]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
Could you say more about that? You know, what role does. Does risk taking and independence play in sort of raising resilient children?
- [14:08]
Lenore Skenazy
I'd say it plays a huge role. And you probably remember this from your own childhood, something that you did yourself that you thought was a little scary or you're still proud of to this day. Sometimes I ask people, what did you do as a kid that went really wrong? And I'll just tell you one quick story, which is I was at an education conference of some sort, and one of the ladies told me that when she was a kid, she and her friends were riding their bikes down this. I'm sure it seemed like an incredible mountain. It was probably just a little hill, but it was covered with pine needles. And when she went down, you know, it was really slick and fast. And so she's going down, and she's holding onto the handle brakes, and. And she goes to break because she's at the bottom. And the handlebars came off the bike. So suddenly it's like. Like a cartoon. And she had a split second to decide what to do, and she threw herself into a bush, right? And she got all scraped up, and it was okay. And she put the handlebars back on. She kept doing it. And I said, well, you know, well, what'd you tell your parents? And she's like, I didn't tell my parents. And then when other people in the audience started telling stories, like this kid, this one guy, I think it was a principal, got lost on, like, some family hike, and he had to actually hitchhike back to where they were. And of course, he didn't tell his parents. And some guy played Mumbly Peg, which is the stupidest game on earth, where you throw a knife at each other's feet. And of course, somebody's foot got hurt. And they, like, hid the fact that they were taking him up to the bathroom to wash off his foot and get the blood down the drain and put on a band aid. Oh, he's fine, just taking a shower, you know. And none of them had told their parents. And when I said why, it was because they didn't want their parents to know and then therefore take away their independence. So their independence was just innately so important to them that they were treasuring it and protecting it. And they were doing two things at once. They were protecting their independence. And they were saying to themselves, look what I can handle. And anxiety is the opposite of that. Anxiety is when you worry like, oh, you know, this seems hard. What if I mess up? If I mess up, it'll be terrible. I'll be embarrassed. And if I'm hurt, it will be forever. So I might as well not do it. I have to tell you, Nike just changed its slogan, like last week. And while they're keeping just do it, they, they added the new slogan, why do it? Like, why do it? And it's a recognition that kids are so afraid of messing up because they're watched all the time. So there's high stakes. You're always being judged, you're always being protected, and you have a chance to see how much you can do. So you finally just go, well, why do it? You know, I'll look stupid. Maybe somebody puts my, you know, a reel on Instagram, maybe I feel bad about myself, maybe I'll get hurt. And so if Nike is recognizing a pervasive passivity in kids even wanting to play, I mean, Nike is about playing, right? Then something has gone awry. And so if you're asking what's the problem in the culture, it's that we're taking the childhood, the child out of childhood and replacing it with adult oriented adult run activities and adult supervised activities to the point where kids are like, okay, it's yours, tell me what to do, I'll do it. But otherwise, why? Why do it?
- [17:26]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
Well, okay, we've set the stage now for why this thing. Thinking about this and having these conversations with yourself and your children, your community is really important. And our member audience is so eager to hear you share more about how we actually do this. So I'm going to integrate in some questions that we're getting from the members but before we get there, if you could just, I guess, start us off with your simple small steps for how people can practically begin to give their kids more freedom without feeling reckless.
- [18:00]
Lenore Skenazy
Yeah, first of all, it's not reckless to give your kids some freedom. I would argue that it's reckless not to give them some freedom for the reasons we've already discussed. But I recognize that it is hard in a culture that says, like there are schools that won't let the kids get off the bus at the end of the day unless a parent is there to walk them home. And it could be two blocks, it could be two houses. I was actually giving a talk in, I have no idea where I was, but the audience members told me that their school, the bus stops at each person's house and drops them off at the end of the driveway. And you still have to come out of your house to get the kid. You can't wave from the window. You have to come down and get them. So this is a culture that is demanding a level of safety and supervision and help for the kids that is just off the charts. So I don't blame parents for being helicopters because the culture is recommending it and sometimes often enough demanding it. And so Skechers shoes for kids, they now have a hole underneath the insole where you can put a tracking device. I mean, that's how normalized constant supervision has become. But the way to fight it is, the easiest way to change anything is collectively. If we're all afraid to send our kids outside, what are the other parents going to think? Is it too tough? Is it too soon? Is my kid too, too spacey? Is to have everybody doing it at once. And so that's why Let Grow, the non profit that grew out of free range kids, recommends that schools give kids a homework assignment called the Let Grow experience. It's free, where every kid gets the homework that says go home and do something new on your own with your parents permission, but without your parents. And then we give a list of giant, you know, giant, you can climb a tree, you can make pancakes, you can walk to the store, whatever it is. But if everybody is doing it, all the third graders are, you know, getting themselves to their guitar lessons or picking up the milk for dinner. You're not the crazy mom letting them do it. And all the kids are talking to each other and all the parents are talking to each other and you've renormalized letting go. But, but letting go is not just good because, okay, they're getting a little independence. Maybe they're less anxious. Letting go is really important because it rewires you, the parent. Because when you see your kid come back from that errand and they got the milk or. I was just talking to a lady today. Who was I talking to right before you? I'm losing my mind. But she let her kid go into the grocery and get the things for dinner. And he came out. He was six. He came out with only cookies, Right. And I was like, I agree with that. I think that makes a great dinner. But she was a little disappointed, but also so proud because he'd gone in and he came out and he said, I think I got the exact change, didn't I? And then they're looking over the change and you, the parent, it's like the Grinch. Your heart grows three sizes when you see your kid do something on their own. And that's the only solution. You almost have to let your kid go a little before you're totally ready. Because you will be ready when they come home. And they will come home. And if they screwed up, that's okay too, because then you realize it's okay, he got a little lost or he only bought the cookies and that's okay too. And you just have to realize that this level of supervision and hyper vigilance is new and unnecessary. And it's not only a burden to a kid, it's a burden to you because it has made your job as a parent watching every single second. You know you can't send them to get the bananas. That's too much to ask of any parent. You know, the birth rates are going down. And I think maybe one unspoken reason, maybe even subconscious reason is that it's becoming such a drag. You have zero time. Parents today are spending way more time with their kids than our parents spent with us because they think they have to be there to knit every signups and to watch every play date and to eat every piece of pizza at every party.
- [21:54]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
But one thing you touched on just now as well is this, this idea of getting other people involved to talk about with let grow how you have this assignment for schools where they can have encourage children to be more independent.
- [22:09]
Lenore Skenazy
Yeah.
- [22:09]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
And so we have a question actually from, from Lori C. You know, if she just as a single, as a parent and not somebody who can influence what's happening in her actual classroom, in her child's classroom, she says, what advice do you have for parents who want to give their kids more freedom but maybe feel judged by other parents or family members? How can they help bring other people along on this journey, the family member's.
- [22:31]
Lenore Skenazy
A little harder, but. But I would say find a friend. I've heard of parents who, like, you know, two women go and sit at Starbucks and they send their kids to the other end of the strip mall and here's $10. Go buy something at the Dollar store or go pick up the dry cleaning. We'll be here. It's really much easier for your kid and for you. You're distracted because you're talking to your friend and your kid has somebody to do something with. I mean, everything's more fun with a friend. So I'd say find a couple of people who want to practice this with you. All the stuff at Let Grow is free, so I'm gonna. It's Let Grow. I'm just gonna say that we have the four weeks to a Let Grow kid kit. And it's like the first week is like, have kids start doing stuff for themselves that you've been doing for them. You know, whether that's tying their shoes or getting them out the door, or let them bake cookies and they take them out of the oven themselves. Imagine that. And then the next week is getting around the neighborhood and then there's like, do something with a friend. And I have no idea what the fourth week is, but you'll find it out. And. And another thing that somebody once recommended to me, there's two cool things. One is Free Play Fridays. And I actually just heard of a kid who organized Free Play Friday in his neighborhood. He went around, he put postcards in everybody's mailbox, and it said, Friday afternoon, like at 3 o', clock, 3 to 6, or 3 to 5. How about all the kids? No, grownups don't come. Grown ups meet at Locust park or whatever, and we'll just see what happens. We'll just play. And he didn't know if anybody was going to come, and I wish I could remember where he was. Anyways, to his Delight and surprise, 20 kids showed up. And the mom sent photos. And it just looked like, you know, it looked like the Peanuts gang, you know, minus Lucy. But it was just kids in the park. Some of them were playing with a ball and some of them were doing whatever. And it's just so great. I mean, it fills your heart as much as it's fulfilling for kids. So that's one idea. Free Play Fridays. Just, you know, use a list, serve, use nextdoor, use Facebook and say, how about we all send our kids to the park on Fridays and Fridays because it leads into the weekend and maybe they'll do it again on their own for the rest of the weekend. And the other thing is this one mom in California started what she called a friendship club. And that was she found her son had like three or four friends in the neighborhood. And she contacted them and she said, how about we form a friendship club? Which in my day would have just been called normal life. Where if my kid, I mean, really all of this stuff is just like, aren't we all just trying to recreate our childhoods? But anyway, if my kid knocks on your door and your kid is free, you know, is, is, you know, Cynthia home or is, you know, Oliver home? Yes. Okay. Then they come in. They don't have to organize a play date beforehand. You're not going to see this as an imposition. I'm not using you as a babysitter. Or maybe I am, but you can do the same with me. And so then the kid has like three or four doors that he can knock on anytime, you know, any time of the day, I would say. And they can go play outside, they can play in the lawn, the front lawn, the back lawn, they can go to the park. And that just sort of re knits the neighborhood too. And I also think one of the things Peter Gray always says is that kids are not attracted just because there's a sidewalk and a tree outside. They're attracted by other kids. And once you have some kids playing in the neighborhood, and I've seen this, then other kids start joining them. Once you have a couple kids walking to school, other kids start joining them. So you just want to sort of reseed S E E D the neighborhood with kids and you do that with a little bit of planning with the other parents.
- [26:07]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
I love all of these ideas. And we have so many other questions about different people within the community and how they can be involved in this. So there's a few members who are curious about how grandparents can support. So Richard R. For instance, says, do you have any suggestions on how to constructively help our children, let their own children grow without risking undermining their trust in us as caregivers.
- [26:30]
Lenore Skenazy
I feel for grandparents because a lot of us can remember this free range childhood and then we see the kids scheduled within an inch of their lives. I'd say maybe you just happen to leave the. Peter Gray had a great TEDx talk about how free play is just so formative for kids. And so maybe if you help the parents see without lecturing them, this free time is not stupid, wasted time, interstitial time between the important time of chess, soccer and school. But it's when they're learning how to make a friend, how to compromise, how to explain an idea, how to be creative. Parents are very concerned about every aspect of their kids lives and if they see that free play, unsupervised, free play, is actually educational and will get their kids ahead, then it becomes something that's sort of speaking their language. Another thing that's really helpful is when we did this Harris poll, we were asking kids about their phone use as well as their independence. It turned out that, you know, parents are very, very concerned about phones and screens. So this is a way to speak their language about that, which is that when the kids were asked, These are kids 8 to 12, given the choice of how to hang out or play with your friends, would you rather just play with them old fashioned way, you know, outside, no agenda, no adults watching, just figure out what to do, have fun that way or would you rather be in an organized activity, you know, like soccer or travel, baseball or you know, piano recital, ballet, or would you rather be online with them playing games, you know, or just socializing or scrolling, you know, together? What would you, what would you prefer to do? And the vast majority, the overwhelming majority was free play. They just want to be with their friends and, and then second choice was the organized activity and third choice, the distant third was being online. So I know we all complain like kids are glued to their screens. That's all they want to do. You know, once they get it, it's like heroin. But they wouldn't be on them as much if they had an alternative. So if the grandparent is talking to their child, who's a parent, who's worried, and they don't want them to be on the iPad all the time and they want to restrict their screen use, which a lot of parents do, understandably the phrase that we use. Jonathan Haidt is one of the other co founders with me of Let Grow and he also wrote the Anxious Generation. And one of the things we say is if you want to take away the screen, you have to open the door. So opening the door becomes not just something that I think is good, but it's an alternative to the phone based childhood that is worrisome.
- [29:31]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
Omar B. Asks about how you can tell the difference between sort of healthy independence and maybe pushing a child into a stressful situation before they're ready. Are there, I guess, are there some signs that we should look for in the child to know that this is the right thing you're doing?
- [29:45]
Lenore Skenazy
I Think everything is stressful. At the beginning it was stressful trying to set up this camera today, like, oh, this is leaning this way and you look terrible. Get closer. And I mean, there's no such thing as a stress free existence. And I think one of the things that has happened to parents is they've been told that their kids shouldn't ever be frightened. You know, I mean there's, there's, there's people who are against Halloween because they're scary costumes, you know, fear and stress and a little bit of, you know, stage fright. They're all part of everyday life in childhood and in adulthood. And that doesn't mean you shouldn't face them and try them. And if things turns out so, I have to tell you. So independence is being used. I tell you this already. Independence therapy is a new thing which is giving kids, as you might think, some independence to do new things if they have a diagnosis of anxiety. A professor named Camilo Ortiz at Long Island University did a pilot study where he had four families. And he talked to each of the sets of parents first and found out what was bothering them most about their kids behavior. And one of them was they had a nine year old who wouldn't go upstairs or downstairs in his own house without a parent. And I thought that was the only family I'd ever heard of like that. And I've heard of other families since then. Anyways, when the next week comes for therapy, the kid comes with the parents. And Camilo normally would do cognitive behavioral therapy. I hear you're afraid to go upstairs and how about tonight you go up for five minutes, you know, I'll give you a watch, you'll time it and then you'll see if it was bad or good. And then we'll try it maybe seven minutes the next week. He doesn't mention anything about the kid's deficit or the parents worry. Instead he says, you're nine, I'll bet there's some things you're ready to do that you haven't tried yet. And then the kid says, are you kidding? I want to take the Long Island Railroad. I want to walk home by myself. And this particular kid who wanted to walk home by himself, his mom was so worried she took the day off work on the day that, the first day he was walking home anyways. And then it got more and more normal. But, but one of the kids wanted to take a city bus and, and she was afraid to sleep in her own bed, but she was willing to take the city bus. That was something exciting. For her. And when she was on the bus, her phone stopped working. And she was like, oh, no, you know, where do I get off? I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And she was, like, very frantic. And the lady sitting next to her saw, like, is there something the matter? Can I help? And she said, yes, I don't know where I'm supposed to get off. And the lady said, well, my phone works. Oh, you're, you know, you missed your stop. You have to get off the next one. You got to walk back a few blocks. And the girl said, thank you. And she did. And that night she slept in her own bed, which sounds like it's too pat and perfect to be real, but it really happened. And my whole point is that psychologists believe, A, that independence is important, but B, messing up is. Is great. When something goes wrong, that's when you realize, like, oh, I can handle this, or that wasn't the end of the world. And that is very freeing. I think that's the. I think that's the whole Nike idea too. Why do it? You might mess up. It's like, that's okay. That's part of the process. And once you realize that, that it's not doom, it's just a hiccup, then you are way more free.
- [33:07]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
You learn by doing, by experiencing things. I'd love to broaden this out a little more. So we definitely understand the benefits that you think exists for children and for parents to do this and others in schools and that sort of thing. But what's in it for everyone else? What is the benefit for the wider community for people without children by allowing children to have more freedom?
- [33:34]
Lenore Skenazy
I'm going to give you two different examples. One is the workplace. You know, eventually these children go off to work. And I can't be the only one who's hearing the stories about young people at work being very, I'd say, conscientious, but waiting for instructions. They've had so much instruction all the time that I've heard in schools. The kids wait to like, to fill out their name on a piece of paper. It's like, do I put my name on the left or the right? I've heard of schools where they say that a kid's. I hate, like, pencil drops to the ground, and they wait to be either for the teacher to come and pick it up or for them to be allowed to pick it up. They're so used to being programmed that they've sort of lost this get go. You know, what is it? Go get them spirit. And, and that's what we're hearing about at work too. You know, you have, you have good workers, but you don't have the entrepreneurs. You don't have this amazing American spirit of like, let me try this or this sounds crazy, but so in the workplace you want kids who have grown up, you know, tinkering and trying things that when NASA had its generation of, you know, boomers retire and they had these new kids coming in, they were great on computers and great at, you know, problem sets, but if there was ever an Apollo 13, they didn't know what to do when things went off script. So you want people who are growing up a little more scrappy, a little more self sufficient. One thing that's obvious is that when you do have kids back out in the neighborhood, I don't care if you have kids or not. I mean, my kids are old, but it's pretty sweet. You know, you see them out there, you hear some laughter, you hear some spats. It's just a neighborhood that comes back to life. And that's a lot more friendly and heartwarming than a neighborhood just completely tumbleweeds up and down the block because the kids are driven and then they're pulled into the garage and then they insert themselves into the, you know, into the house and it's time for the reading log. So if only for, you know, just the joy of having a very vibrant culture as opposed to a very locked down culture. And for the parents who are just so bored driving their kids everywhere, you.
- [35:46]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
Actually have influenced policy around giving kids freedom through, through let grow. In your talk you mentioned a new law, the reasonable childhood independence law that makes it legal for parents to let their kids go places alone. What more do you think we need from government and from our communities to make this cultural shift happen?
- [36:05]
Lenore Skenazy
Oh my. That's like. So the laws are great. And when I gave the talk, I think we had had eight states had passed the reasonable childhood independence law which says that neglect is when you put your kid in obvious and serious danger, not anytime you take your eyes off them. And it's great for the free range parents who want their kids to be wandering around and on their bikes like stranger things. But it's also great for parents living in poverty. If a mom is working two jobs and her kid comes home with the old fashioned latchkey, that's not because she's a neglectful mom. It's because she's a mom who realizes, look, my 8 year old can get herself a glass of milk or almond Milk now, I guess. And. And that's. And I can save on a babysitter, so that shouldn't be considered neglect either. So since the talk, the law has been passed in three more states. Georgia, Florida, and Missouri. And now it's being considered in eight more states. And maybe someday there will be federal legislation that says the same thing, which is that, you know, we don't want the laws right now. Say, if you see something, say something. And too many people don't know, like, what am I supposed to say? Say and see. And it's like they see a kid outside, sometimes they'll call 911 because they're just so unused to seeing kids outside again. So if. If the 911 operator could say, is the kid okay? Yeah, they're fine. They're, you know, they're. They're playing in the park or whatever. That should be the end of things. It should not go from there to any kind of investigation. So that's a great law, and hopefully it will be passed in all 50 states pretty darn soon. But more generally, I think we have to do this Grace thing where we see kids outside and we don't think, like, where's the mom? And we don't think. Somebody once wrote and said, well, so if your child is on a skateboard and they fall down in front of my house, I have to help them. And it's like, yeah, you do. If you see them, if you have a band aid, if you have a phone, you do have to help them. And I don't think of that as babysitting. I don't think of that as, like, some horrible mom who thrust her entire responsibility on you. I think of that as being part of a community. You're at the park. You know, a kid needs a band aid. You give them a band aid, not because it's an imposition, but because it's nice. You know, you're nice, and it's nice to be nice to a kid. You hope that somebody's nice to your kid or to you when you're older and you fall down. And so I think just giving everybody the benefit of the doubt as opposed to thinking the worst about them, that, you know, any guy at the park is a predator. Any kid at the park alone is, you know, somebody who's neglected by a terrible parent. Like, just giving people the benefit of the doubt is just a great way to live. It makes your life more fun. It makes you see the world in a better way. And it actually, you know, weirdly enough, there was A study done of people who tell their kids, you know, the world's a dog eat dog place and don't be a patsy and everybody's going to try to take advantage of you versus you know, most people are decent and you can trust and default to trust. And somehow they studied these two different groups of kids for years like into their middle age and they found that the ones the parents who raised the kids saying like everybody's bad, beware, you know, don't let your guard down, were doing it out of love. They thought that they were protecting their kids. But in fact those kids in middle age had worse relationships, worse health and less professional success. So I'm not exactly sure why, but you might as well default to trust.
- [39:37]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
Well, it's, I mean it's, I think so interesting to think about the role that communities are playing in all of this. And we have a question from Amy S. Who talks about a four and a six year old child children she has and how she lets her children roam outside of her home and often gets reactions from, from neighbors and is soon would like to see them go to the park two blocks away by themselves. And her question is what? Whether you have thoughts on how a strategy, a good strategy for a safe solo crosswalk, especially for kids on scooters. But I guess this is a question both for how parents can help their kids cross safely, but also what can communities implement to make this a better experience for everyone.
- [40:25]
Lenore Skenazy
Yeah, well, first of all, I mean cars have existed for a long time and boy in kindergarten we were taught, you know, the, the school felt it incumbent upon itself to teach look left, look right, look left again. I have no idea why we had to look left and right and left again. Why don't just look left and right and go. But I would teach them that because Mrs. Tiksinski taught me that and so far I'm alive. Crosswalks are good if you can convince a neighborhood to put one in. I guess you talk to your, you know, your, your city council or whatever you have there. But you can't let perfect be the enemy of the good, I guess which is that if you have two kids together and they're holding hands and they're both looking left, right, left and there's no cars coming, they're listening for it and they're looking for it. They're humans, they, they can cross the street. One thing that Let Grow has done is that if you go to our site let grow.org I wish I had it with me, but we have a little a Little card. This isn't it. And it says kids can carry it with them. And it's the Let Grow license. It says, I am not lost or neglected. My parents know I'm out here. If you don't believe me, you know, you can call my mom. And here's some other. Our old, more aggressive card used to say, call my lawyer. Which a little much, but anyways, it just says. And it says, I know I can talk to. I can talk to people. I can't go off with anyone. I'm talking to you. And I'm grateful that you care that I'm safe, and that's why you're talking to me. So it sort of flips the person from like, where's your mom? To thank you for caring. This is the whole point. You're an adult in the neighborhood. You're worried for me. That's what I assume of most adults in the neighborhood, that they're looking out for me as opposed to, you know, they want to throw my mom in jail. So. And the other thing is going back to trying to create some. Some kind of collective thing, either via the school or you put the notes in everybody's mailbox. Let's have free Play Fridays. And then all the kids get used to coming to the park and looking both ways. And the parents get used to it, too. It is. Cars are my least favorite thing. I'm terrified of cars, but I live in a world where there are cars. And so, you know, when you've taught your kid and you've watched them a couple times, you know, very, you know, like, step back because there's a car a block away, and they want to wait for it to get all the way across the street. And you see that they're conscientious. I'd say by age 5, you can start trusting them.
- [42:56]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
Well, I love the idea of the cards that it feels like it's such a smart, easy way to help this process for everyone.
- [43:03]
Lenore Skenazy
Right? And they're free. They're free. You just download it.
- [43:06]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
Well, you know, there's so many challenges that we're facing in this time. You know, connected to technology. The world is just changing so, so rapidly. What gives you hope that we can raise a generation of more confident, independent kids despite all the things going on in the world?
- [43:24]
Lenore Skenazy
Well, I think the fact that people are recognizing. I mean, really the fact that we're talking here. I mean, I've been trying to get a ted talk for 17 years right here it is year 17, and legitimacy shines on this mess message that gives me a lot of hope. I mean, the fact that, you know, Ted invited me to speak and then here I am again today is that for a couple years, at the beginning of when I was starting my blog, the. The Free Range Kids Blog, I was voted by some organization, the most controversial blogger in America, or maybe mommy blogger. And, you know, I got this nickname, America's worst Mom. And I think that people are coming to see that, like, there's something to, you know, trusting your kids to do more on their own. That is. It's not crazy. It's actually organic. It's what they were. That's why they want to explore. That's why they go from crawling to walking. They want to, you know, they want to do more. They want to take on the world. And that when we step back, let grow slogan is when adults step back, kids step up. And so that gives me hope and. And tick tock. For God's sake. If it's a trend on TikTok, must be really important.
- [44:33]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
Well, Lenore, we are out of time and I feel like we could talk for so much longer about this there.
- [44:38]
Lenore Skenazy
I have to say, people always say that to me, and I think they're saying, like, my God, she just doesn't stop. How am I gonna get her to stop? I'll say, oh, we could talk, but we gotta say goodbye. So I understand, truly. We didn't.
- [44:49]
Whitney Pennington Rogers
We didn't hit on all my questions. We didn't hit on all the member questions. Thank you to the members for the. For submitting your questions. I'm sorry if we didn't get to yours, and thank you so much, Lenore, for. For taking the time to chat with us. This has been great and we're excited to see more of you in the ted TED space.
- [45:05]
Lenore Skenazy
Oh, my God, I'm excited too. And thank you, Whitney. And thank you, Ted.
- [45:13]
Elise Hu
That was Lenore Skenazy in conversation with Whitney Pennington Rogers for a TED membership event in 2025. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more@ted.com curationguidelines and that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little and Tanzika Sangmarnivang. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balaurazo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.
- [46:00]
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Elise Hu
In a world.
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EY Representative
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Elise Hu
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