Raising free range kids

Let's bring it back into fashion

This photo was originally posted by Lenore Skenazy on Twitter. I retweeted to say that I used to flip from the top bar of a similar jungle gym during recess in the late 90s, and no one stopped me.

I was born and raised, until age 11, in a small town in the Midwest. The town is a 45-minute drive from the state's largest city, but still felt secluded and rural. It has four elementary schools (one of which is out in the country and takes students from a neighboring town), one middle school, and one high school, and when I was growing up in the town, approximately 12,000 people lived there. The town had few subdivisions or apartment complexes, and sidewalks led you nearly anywhere you wanted to go. The town center had small mom and pop shops, and the outskirts housed the big box stores and chain restaurants.

I had a great childhood living in that town. I was what one would now call a free range kid. 

I walked to school starting in kindergarten, accompanied by a fellow schoolmate three houses down. The school was a short two blocks away, with crossing guards at every intersection. 

I learned how to ride my bike in the local cemetery, which sounds a bit creepy, but was a peaceful place to ride with a small hill and many roads and alleys. Once we were seasoned riders, my brother and I would go on our own to visit the graves of our relatives. 

We also spent afternoons searching for tadpoles in the nearby creek and doing flips on the school's jungle gym after hours. And when I was bored after school, I'd accompany my friend on her paper delivery route.

During weekends, my brother and I road our bikes downtown to the local collectibles shop in search of baseball cards to add to our collections; then, we'd hit up the pharmacy for a cherry or vanilla Coke. Sometimes I'd go check out what the local library had to offer by way of book readings and competitions.

We loved to ride to the public park and pool during the summer, where I learned to swim, do back flips, and took my first pencil jump off the diving board. We earned our spending money setting up a lemonade stand at the nearby stop sign, which we immediately spent at the local IGA grocer on our favorite candy. 

This was the 1980s and early 1990s, not the 1950s, as you might be imagining.

I wonder if it's possible for my daughter to enjoy the same sort of childhood. Story after story tells of parents being reported and arrested for allowing their children to do things on their own, like walk home from school. But the role of a parent is to prepare their child to be an adult. Allowing children to do things on their own, discovering and exercising their independence in their neighborhood and community, when and where appropriate, is a primary ingredient to raising capable and resilient adults. I would not be the adult I am had I been more sheltered as a child, and I don't want my daughter to be sheltered either.

Certainly, where one lives does play a role in how much independence a child can be afforded. In 5th grade, my family moved to a suburban area, which provided less opportunities to exercise independence. We lived in a subdivision, which was easy to navigate on one's own, and we did. But once you left the subdivision, sidewalks disappeared and traffic increased, making it nearly impossible to ride your bike to a local shop without risk of colliding with a car. In such an environment, our ability to learn independence decreased. 

Because of how suburbs are structured, free range life is less feasible compared to rural towns and urban cities, but I venture to guess that the small town I grew up in, which hasn't changed much since I lived there, has less free range kids today. The culture has changed—there is a greater abundance of shows to watch and video games to play, for instance—and fear has certainly risen among parents and subsequently their kids. Plus, parents who want to let their kids do things on their own outside of the house often don't have the support of neighbors or other parents in the community. The more kids that are outside, the more opportunities kids have to engage in child-led rather than adult-led activities, and if outdoor play and exploration is not prevalent or supported by the community, there are less opportunities for kids to learn independence.

Maybe the tide will turn by the time my daughter is able to play outside on her own and explore our neighborhood, and communities will rediscover the value of childhood independence. Or maybe we'll have to move. It seems I will have to be intentional about where we live and the company we keep. As a loud and proud proponent of raising free range kids, I will likely have to seek out and befriend others with the same values and show doubters that childhood independence is possible and not scary.

Who’s with me?!