My son, at age six, free ranging with a friend.

My son, at age six, free ranging with a friend.

If you’ve escaped the internet for the last week maybe you missed this one. The internet has been abuzz with reaction to the piece on Salon.com. I’ll give you the short version: a sane and rational parent decides to leave a child in the car, in cool weather for five minutes. Time was tight, she ran in, she ran out while her son who was primed to throw a raging fit, instead contentedly played on an ipad in a locked car. An on-looker took the law into her own hands and filmed the entire situation and notified police who later caught up with the woman well after the even took place and led to long-strung out legal wrangling. The woman was wrenched at the potential legal ramifications of her choice; she may have lost custody of her children, but ended up taking a parenting class and doing volunteer work to satisfy the court; the real punishment was the emotional drama that caused her and her family to question what they had considered rational parenting.

My first thought was, Wow, how did she get in and out of her errand to buy wireless headphones for a plane trip in five minutes? Perhaps it was at Radio Shack, because no one could get in and out of Target in five minutes. I may not have gambled on Target, but if it was Radio Shack, that could have been me.

I have been that parent. If I’m at a quick in and out store, say the dry cleaners, dropping a package on the counter at UPS, shoving books in the outside slot at the library where I can glance over and see the kids in the car within 10 yards from me, sometimes I leave them. My kids are nine and five and I trust that they won’t explode in my 1-5 minute absence. And my quick errand will be so much faster,and my kids will be so much happier because they got to stay in the car with their books. Plus they are so pleased with themselves to be independent enough to handle themselves in those few minutes, they beg for it.  While it seems like a win-win, I am also terrified of the would-be good neighbor/child advocate type that disagrees with my choices and calls the authorities to back up his or her opinion.

In an age of helicopter parenting its getting easier to look like a negligent parent by letting your kids operate without you hovering over them. I love my kids and want them to be safe, but I also worry that not letting giving them clearance to fly out my watch will clip their wings. I certainly didn’t have that fear as a child. I ran around even freer than I allow my own kids to do now. I played outside in the drainage pit and open dirt well past my house without supervision all the time. In fact I remember being the one in charge of all the other neighborhood kids playing with me at the age of nine. I was eight when I rode my bike a mile or two to a friend’s house (in the middle of the street, sidewalk riding was for babies) when I fell and broke my arm. My mother probably freaked out a bit when my friend rode back to tell her I was unconscious,; a kind neighbor rushed to pull me and my bike out of the street, then sat watching over me, waiting until my mother came. Yet, my mother let me go, because she trusted me and ever time excepting that one I was more than fine.

My parents believed in free-range parenting. And even though the norms of era that I raise my kids in demands I do so in a lesser fashion, I still do. However my fears in letting my kids fly are not just for them, but the on-looks of others who think my choice to let them go (as much as is age appropriate- we are still testing the waters with each child) is not a carefully-weighed one.  While can’t speak for every parent in every situation, I know that ‘s not true for me. If you want to watch lazy parenting, come to my house when I’m sick or I’m writing to meet a deadline- that’s when things get really get going.  But not when I’m worried about the battle of encouraging independence and trying not to invite the shame of strangers or a visit from the police.  No, I plot my plays carefully; I tell the kids to sit on the floor in the back of the car where the windows are tinted and on-lookers can’t look in on them while I drop off the cleaning, and let them free range at our back yard creek until they are tall enough to not worry the neighbors at down the street at the neighborhood park.

There’s a time to hold them close and a time to let them go, but its trickier to do that than it used to be.

Note: the term free-range parenting comes from the book, Free-Range Kids, by Lenore Skenazy, which I have not read, but I have been through her blog by the same name.

How about you, were you a free-ranged child? How do you let children experience independence and still pass as a protective parent?

 


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