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How Free Range Parenting Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of My
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
0:15
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you should
0:18
Speaker 1: know about kids. Can I see a right off the
0:24
Speaker 1: bat here? I presumed you would. All right, there's a
0:29
Speaker 1: couple of c o as I want to issue. One,
0:32
Speaker 1: we are not telling anyone how to parent their children, indeed, uh.
0:37
Speaker 1: And two we realized that the whole concept of free
0:42
Speaker 1: range parenting that will follow is comes from a place
0:50
Speaker 1: of extreme privilege. Yes, to be able to entertain the
0:55
Speaker 1: idea of free range parenting comes from a place of
0:57
Speaker 1: extreme privilege. Okay, I've Can I amend that or should
1:01
Speaker 1: I wait until we talk about that part to kind
1:03
Speaker 1: of amend it? No, you can amend it, so so
1:06
Speaker 1: to me, free range parenting, having the freedom to free
1:11
Speaker 1: range parent is what I saw it ties in with
1:16
Speaker 1: parenting that's already being done by people who might not
1:19
Speaker 1: have a choice. Are you saying that the the um,
1:23
Speaker 1: the the ability to choose whether you want a free
1:26
Speaker 1: range parent or not is privileged? Yes? Okay, Yes, agreed.
1:31
Speaker 1: I got you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and again we'll
1:33
Speaker 1: get into that, but um, well we'll get into that
1:36
Speaker 1: at the end, but I just want to just go
1:38
Speaker 1: ahead and lead that off because it's um a lot
1:40
Speaker 1: of privilege involved with being able to say, you know
1:44
Speaker 1: that you want to free range parent Are you going
1:46
Speaker 1: to Are you going to land one way or another
1:49
Speaker 1: on it on whether or not I support free range parenting? Yeah?
1:54
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean Emily, and I don't title it
1:57
Speaker 1: or say hey, I think we should do this as
2:00
Speaker 1: a style, but we, um, as it turns out, are
2:06
Speaker 1: sort of dabbling in free range parenting a bit as
2:10
Speaker 1: much as you can for a three and a half
2:11
Speaker 1: year old. So you're listening to your instincts. I've never
2:16
Speaker 1: read a parenting book, not knocking them, but I've never
2:18
Speaker 1: read one. And we parent by instinct, and our daughter
2:22
Speaker 1: has always had a lot of room to free play
2:25
Speaker 1: and explore and figure stuff out on our own and
2:29
Speaker 1: fall down and get back up and all that all
2:32
Speaker 1: that stuff. Okay, I'm reading between the lines. You guys
2:35
Speaker 1: haven't decided yet, all right, so ready free range parenting
2:40
Speaker 1: go okay, So, um, do you remember when we were kids,
2:46
Speaker 1: back when we used to hang out when we were
2:47
Speaker 1: kids mm hmm, and we would go ride bikes together
2:51
Speaker 1: at like UM sunrise. We had no idea where we
2:55
Speaker 1: were going to go, but it might involve a swamp,
2:58
Speaker 1: could involve a glacier. UM. There may have been like uh,
3:03
Speaker 1: rail riding hoboes that we shared lunch with. Who knows
3:07
Speaker 1: what the day was gonna bring, but we were up
3:08
Speaker 1: for all that and may or may not have engaged
3:11
Speaker 1: in any of that UM during that day. And then
3:14
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, around sunset, maybe a
3:17
Speaker 1: little later, depending on whether it was summer or not,
3:19
Speaker 1: we ride our bikes back home, say see you tomorrow,
3:22
Speaker 1: go to our respective houses UM, and then talk the
3:26
Speaker 1: night away on our soup cans that were connected by
3:29
Speaker 1: UM a rope. And that was our childhood, right we
3:33
Speaker 1: turned out. Sure, I have have talked about my childhood
3:37
Speaker 1: some growing up, but you know, I grew up in
3:38
Speaker 1: the woods basically on like a couple of acres of
3:42
Speaker 1: land with a creek and forest, not in a subdivision,
3:46
Speaker 1: but on a street with like seven houses in the woods,
3:50
Speaker 1: and my mother had a UM. We had this giant
3:53
Speaker 1: iron bell it's probably about eighteen inches across that on
3:57
Speaker 1: a mounted on a big um like a telephone and
4:00
Speaker 1: pole kind of right beside our driveway, and she would
4:04
Speaker 1: at the you know, when it was dinner time in
4:06
Speaker 1: the evening, she would go pull that bell and you
4:11
Speaker 1: could hear it from like a mile away. This the
4:13
Speaker 1: bell tolling. And that's when Scott and I were like,
4:17
Speaker 1: all right, we you know, it's time to go eat
4:19
Speaker 1: um after having been out all day long with zero supervision.
4:26
Speaker 1: And I had a great mom, Like, she wasn't neglectful.
4:30
Speaker 1: This is just how it was done. Yeah, were you
4:33
Speaker 1: a latch key kid? Um? I know your mom was
4:35
Speaker 1: a teacher, but did she stay at home with you?
4:37
Speaker 1: She didn't go back to teaching. She she quit teaching
4:40
Speaker 1: to raise kids and then started up again when I
4:43
Speaker 1: was like I feel like eighth or ninth grade or
4:46
Speaker 1: something like that. Okay, yeah, my mom took off until
4:49
Speaker 1: I was like six seven. I guess, like kinder no,
4:54
Speaker 1: maybe she's still around a kindergard I guess about first
4:56
Speaker 1: grade when I was when I started school and she
4:59
Speaker 1: was like, okay, I'm going back to nursing um. And
5:01
Speaker 1: then after that point, I was a last key kid
5:03
Speaker 1: for like the rest of my life. But I had
5:05
Speaker 1: like older sisters who would be home around the time
5:08
Speaker 1: I would, And but I had like my own key
5:11
Speaker 1: to my house that was just a couple of blocks
5:13
Speaker 1: away from my school, and I would walk myself or
5:16
Speaker 1: ride my bike myself, and then i'd be home by
5:18
Speaker 1: myself if my sister was doing something else for a
5:20
Speaker 1: couple of hours, until either my mom or my dad
5:22
Speaker 1: showed up. Um. And I think I turned out pretty
5:25
Speaker 1: well too, so that I even key. Ever, Well, you
5:29
Speaker 1: guys probably didn't lock your doors if your mom rang
5:31
Speaker 1: a bell on the telephone poll to call you in
5:33
Speaker 1: for dinner. I don't think we locked our door, okay,
5:36
Speaker 1: But but you were. You had free range literally of
5:40
Speaker 1: your your house, your yard, the woods around you. Um.
5:45
Speaker 1: But here's a really big caveat from what I've seen.
5:48
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people who are like um,
5:51
Speaker 1: who aren't familiar necessarily fringe free range parenting, assumed that
5:56
Speaker 1: we could have done anything we wanted and gotten away
5:59
Speaker 1: with it because we were we had overly permissive parents.
6:03
Speaker 1: That's not That's not the case for me, and I
6:05
Speaker 1: would dare say that wasn't the case for you as well.
6:07
Speaker 1: That we actually had plenty of rules and structure. We
6:10
Speaker 1: were just also given a lot of freedom to do
6:13
Speaker 1: things within that rules and structure, including geographic freedom right
6:18
Speaker 1: for sure. Okay, yeah, so that is what I thought
6:22
Speaker 1: all kids had up to this time. And I knew
6:25
Speaker 1: that there was like such things as piano and Mandarin
6:28
Speaker 1: lessons or um mandarin classes, that kind of stuff, like
6:31
Speaker 1: things that kids were taking more and more and they
6:33
Speaker 1: were really busy and stressed out, and they had like
6:35
Speaker 1: like um iPhones at age seven, that kind of thing.
6:39
Speaker 1: But I still thought that this happened, and I was
6:43
Speaker 1: really shocked, about as shocked as I've ever been in
6:46
Speaker 1: researching an episode of stuff you should know to find
6:49
Speaker 1: that that is not the case. That not only does
6:52
Speaker 1: has this been kind of squeezed out by other activities,
6:54
Speaker 1: it's actually become criminalized behavior by society at large, the
7:00
Speaker 1: parents who were raising children today. I was blown away
7:04
Speaker 1: to find this out. I really legitimately didn't know. Yeah,
7:08
Speaker 1: I mean, and getting back to the activities, you know,
7:11
Speaker 1: I played some soccer in high school and then I
7:13
Speaker 1: did like church sports, which there's not a lot of.
7:16
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we did like maybe one basketball
7:18
Speaker 1: practice a week, um, and so it wasn't like everyday
7:21
Speaker 1: practice and stuff like that. I never took lessons of
7:24
Speaker 1: any kind. Uh, like I taught my self guitar and
7:27
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So like, I I don't think I
7:30
Speaker 1: literally ever had a structured post school activity in my life. Yeah,
7:38
Speaker 1: did you say church sports? Yeah, I played church softball
7:42
Speaker 1: and basketball. Did like everybody win every game? No, it
7:46
Speaker 1: was actually fiercely competitive. Okay, I'm just kidding. No, no,
7:50
Speaker 1: no it was. It was it was legit like we
7:52
Speaker 1: had a pretty good basketball team and in the league
7:54
Speaker 1: was pretty impressive too. But um, yeah, I don't, I don't,
7:58
Speaker 1: I don't never signed it. I never had a class.
8:00
Speaker 1: Like the idea of my mom having been like, all right,
8:04
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take you to your violin lesson and then
8:07
Speaker 1: on the weekends we have gymnastics and uh whatever else
8:12
Speaker 1: people are doing these days, was just just we didn't
8:16
Speaker 1: do that. She was just like, go play, right. So,
8:19
Speaker 1: so there has been and we'll talk about all the
8:20
Speaker 1: reasons why, but there has been a movement away from
8:23
Speaker 1: the kind of childhood we had a very pronounced one. Um.
8:27
Speaker 1: If you if you look at you know, culture is
8:30
Speaker 1: a pendulum swinging one way or another. It has swung
8:32
Speaker 1: very far the opposite way to where kids lives are
8:37
Speaker 1: structured um down to the minute, where they have actual
8:41
Speaker 1: calendars and schedules that they have to keep up with
8:44
Speaker 1: because they have so many things going on. Um and
8:48
Speaker 1: and there has come about in reaction to that, uh,
8:54
Speaker 1: an antithesis basically, and it is nothing more than letting
8:59
Speaker 1: kids grow up the way that you and I did,
9:02
Speaker 1: um and then and it has become so novel in
9:07
Speaker 1: the face of of the world and the culture that
9:09
Speaker 1: we have in raising kids in the United States now
9:12
Speaker 1: UM that it has its own name. It's a movement.
9:15
Speaker 1: They have to go to court to defend themselves. It's
9:17
Speaker 1: so weird. But really, if you strip it down and
9:19
Speaker 1: look at it, all they're doing is raising their kids
9:22
Speaker 1: the way you and I and and Jerry I'm sure
9:25
Speaker 1: was raised. Well yeah, I mean to a certain degree, um.
9:29
Speaker 1: But the whole idea, and it's not just like I
9:31
Speaker 1: want you to grow up the way I did. It's
9:34
Speaker 1: what it really is is an argument that says, you
9:36
Speaker 1: know what, kids will grow up healthier and happier. Uh
9:42
Speaker 1: if they have freedom to play and they have freedom
9:44
Speaker 1: to fail and freedom to um get in a playground,
9:48
Speaker 1: scrap and to work it out with another kid on
9:51
Speaker 1: their own and figure things out for themselves. They will
9:54
Speaker 1: end up better people because of this. It's not oh,
9:57
Speaker 1: I'm lazy or I have nostalgia for my childhood. It's uh.
10:01
Speaker 1: And and you know, there's a lot of research into
10:03
Speaker 1: this now or some research that says, no, what we're
10:06
Speaker 1: doing is is trying to make better future adults by
10:11
Speaker 1: not hovering over my child scheduling them to death and um,
10:17
Speaker 1: you know, every time they fall, run over, pick themselves
10:20
Speaker 1: up and like and you know, rock them to sleep,
10:24
Speaker 1: you know if they get a boo boo. Right, So
10:27
Speaker 1: I sound so judgy. I don't mean that. Well, let's
10:30
Speaker 1: let's just take a second. Let's take a break real
10:32
Speaker 1: quick and like connect ourselves and then we'll come back
10:34
Speaker 1: and we'll really get into what free range parenting is. Well,
10:37
Speaker 1: now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
10:41
Speaker 1: to learn a thing or two from Josh, Damn, Chuck.
10:45
Speaker 1: It's stuff you should know, all right, stuff? Okay, Chuck?
11:06
Speaker 1: So I think you demonstrated something that is um has
11:09
Speaker 1: made free range parenting very unpalatable to a lot of
11:14
Speaker 1: a lot of parents who don't raise their kids that way.
11:17
Speaker 1: And that it seems to be a reaction, um, almost
11:21
Speaker 1: an in your face to some people reaction or judgment
11:25
Speaker 1: of um, that helicopter style parenting where you're always kind
11:29
Speaker 1: of around your kid there, Um, their entire life is
11:32
Speaker 1: very structured and supervised, including playtime. UM, and that free
11:36
Speaker 1: range parenting is meant to be a reaction to that.
11:38
Speaker 1: And in some ways it is a reaction to that,
11:40
Speaker 1: but it also stands on its own. And if you
11:42
Speaker 1: step back and look at it and look at free
11:44
Speaker 1: range parenting not as a reaction to helicopter parenting, but
11:48
Speaker 1: as its own thing, is its own philosophy for how
11:51
Speaker 1: to raise a kid, and you strip away like the
11:53
Speaker 1: judginess and all that stuff. It holds up to me.
11:56
Speaker 1: And like you said, there's been a lot of um,
11:58
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot more study recently, but the
12:01
Speaker 1: whole thing really started back in two thousand eight, um,
12:05
Speaker 1: by a journalist. It wasn't a child psychologist, It wasn't
12:08
Speaker 1: a child development psychologist, it wasn't a child development, child analyst, psychologist,
12:14
Speaker 1: none of those things. I made that last one up,
12:17
Speaker 1: by the way. It was a journalist named Leonor's Skenazi. Yeah,
12:23
Speaker 1: so she was a New York mom. And in two
12:26
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, she wrote a column for The New
12:29
Speaker 1: York Sun called Why I let my nine year old
12:32
Speaker 1: ride the subway alone. She was in a store one
12:34
Speaker 1: day in Manhattan and her son had been badgering her
12:38
Speaker 1: to be able to ride the subway and bus back
12:41
Speaker 1: home by himself. And finally one day she said, all right, great,
12:46
Speaker 1: let's do this. Here's a subway map, here's a subway card,
12:50
Speaker 1: here's twenty bucks. Um, here's some change for a pay phone. Um,
12:55
Speaker 1: have at it. The kid made it home. Uh, and
13:00
Speaker 1: he said he was quote ecstatic with independence. Yeah. And
13:06
Speaker 1: like she got a lot of blowback from this from
13:09
Speaker 1: like the judgment goes both ways. I mean there were
13:11
Speaker 1: people that said it was neglect and abuse for her
13:15
Speaker 1: to do this and let her kid ride the subway alone.
13:17
Speaker 1: Oh oh yes, Yeah. If you had to divide the
13:20
Speaker 1: two sides up and start weighing which one was a
13:22
Speaker 1: little judge e er, you would definitely your hand would
13:25
Speaker 1: be much lower holding um the helicopter parents side for sure. Um. Yeah.
13:30
Speaker 1: If you're a free range kid proponent or you raise
13:33
Speaker 1: your kids following that, there's a whole burden, whole social
13:38
Speaker 1: burden that you have in addition to the burden of
13:40
Speaker 1: raising your kids that you have to put up with
13:42
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, and I should point out to real
13:45
Speaker 1: quick that it all depends on upon your kids too.
13:47
Speaker 1: I don't think there are any sweeping generalizations. Um my
13:51
Speaker 1: daughter has always been very, um just instinctively kind of
13:56
Speaker 1: safe and smart about stuff. Um, other kids in her
14:00
Speaker 1: class are just like a little wild banshees, and I
14:04
Speaker 1: would probably be a lot more um worried if she
14:08
Speaker 1: was the kind of kid who has an instinct to
14:11
Speaker 1: like jump out of a tree, um instead of like
14:14
Speaker 1: back down very slowly out of a tree. So right,
14:17
Speaker 1: it's all It's all different depending on your kid, you know,
14:20
Speaker 1: or a kid who like can't seem to shake being
14:22
Speaker 1: totally fascinated with matches or knives or something like that. Yeah. Yeah,
14:26
Speaker 1: I think that was a really good point. Like it's
14:28
Speaker 1: you shouldn't sweep or generalize, but I think that's an
14:31
Speaker 1: even larger point to people should be left to raise
14:34
Speaker 1: their children, um how they see fit. Yeah, given a
14:39
Speaker 1: certain amount of um trust invested in the parents that
14:43
Speaker 1: the parent isn't going to harm the kid or let
14:46
Speaker 1: harm come to the kid because that's their parent, right right. Okay,
14:51
Speaker 1: So this whole thing started with Lenora Skins, and like
14:53
Speaker 1: you said, she got a lot of blowback, but she
14:56
Speaker 1: also got a really positive response to an ex actually
14:59
Speaker 1: parlay the whole thing from that New York sun Um
15:03
Speaker 1: article into a blog that she called free Range Kids.
15:06
Speaker 1: So from what I understand, she coined the term free
15:09
Speaker 1: range kids and started writing about this stuff. And at
15:13
Speaker 1: first a lot of it was just like it's it's good.
15:17
Speaker 1: It's on its face, it's obvious that this is how
15:19
Speaker 1: you should raise a kid. You know, kids need play,
15:21
Speaker 1: they need to learn how to pick themselves back up
15:24
Speaker 1: when they fall down. Um. And not only that, you're
15:27
Speaker 1: doing a disservice to your kid when you pick them
15:29
Speaker 1: up after they fall down, um, because they're not learning
15:32
Speaker 1: how to get back up themselves. Uh. And over time
15:36
Speaker 1: it kind of went as people became more and more
15:39
Speaker 1: enamored with her philosophy or this whole free range kid's idea. Um.
15:44
Speaker 1: More child psychologists started weighing in and the whole movement
15:48
Speaker 1: kind of took the shape and they figured out that
15:52
Speaker 1: for a parent to kind of see the light as
15:55
Speaker 1: they as far as they were concerned, they had to
15:59
Speaker 1: first change just the mindset about what kind of world
16:02
Speaker 1: they were raising a kid in, because if you're a
16:05
Speaker 1: free range kid parent, um, you probably don't feel as
16:10
Speaker 1: threatened by the world in general as say a helicopter
16:13
Speaker 1: parent would. Um ounce for ounce, Yeah for sure. UM.
16:19
Speaker 1: I mean when when when parents have experimented with this,
16:22
Speaker 1: the the changes that they've seen and their kids have
16:25
Speaker 1: been pretty striking. Um if anecdotal. UM. There's this one woman,
16:30
Speaker 1: Dana Bloomberg. She's a school counselor in suburban Chicago. And
16:35
Speaker 1: we should also point out depends on where you live
16:37
Speaker 1: as well. If you live in a very safe suburb
16:40
Speaker 1: or way out in the country, it's a little different
16:42
Speaker 1: than a kid like in the middle of the city
16:45
Speaker 1: or something like that. But she gave her kid a
16:48
Speaker 1: lot of free range um starting in the second grade,
16:52
Speaker 1: and got some neighborhood parents involved and letting their kids
16:55
Speaker 1: do it. And they said, before you know it, they
16:57
Speaker 1: had this little, you know, little gang of kids kind
17:00
Speaker 1: of touring around the neighborhood, are on their own, and
17:03
Speaker 1: she's getting all these texts from these different parents, UM
17:06
Speaker 1: saying like what a big change has happened, Uh, in
17:10
Speaker 1: their own kid. One parent even said it was life
17:13
Speaker 1: changing for her daughter, gave her a nuisance of confidence,
17:16
Speaker 1: and um, that's sort of what the free range thing
17:20
Speaker 1: can look like. But like you were saying, it all
17:23
Speaker 1: comes down to a squashing appearance fear, the biggest fear,
17:28
Speaker 1: which is my child will get abducted, or my child
17:33
Speaker 1: will get um uh, there will be a sexual predator
17:37
Speaker 1: to target my child, or heaven forbid, my child will
17:40
Speaker 1: get kidnapped and murdered. Right, because you can understand and
17:45
Speaker 1: it's really tough to fault somebody who doesn't want their
17:48
Speaker 1: kid wandering around by themselves because they're afraid that something
17:53
Speaker 1: really bad is going to happen to their kid. So
17:56
Speaker 1: kind of the first step to um, to adopting like
18:00
Speaker 1: a free range kid attitude, is to adjusting how you
18:04
Speaker 1: see the world. Um And they think they think that
18:08
Speaker 1: with there are several things like if you it's really
18:11
Speaker 1: fascinated me. I love cultural changes, especially when we can
18:14
Speaker 1: point to different things, seemingly unrelated things that all kind
18:18
Speaker 1: of converge and has changed the world in ways you
18:21
Speaker 1: never think of that seems to have happened to produce
18:25
Speaker 1: today's helicopter parents or at least to produce the level
18:29
Speaker 1: of fear, the climate of fear that the world is
18:32
Speaker 1: an inherently dangerous, brutal um, sadistic place. That that where
18:37
Speaker 1: children have no call to be wandering around themselves. UM.
18:42
Speaker 1: That that is actually you can trace that back to
18:45
Speaker 1: a convergence of things that have happened starting in like
18:48
Speaker 1: the late seventies and early eighties. UM. And in particular
18:51
Speaker 1: there was some high profile UH child murder cases basically
18:58
Speaker 1: UM that all kind of took place between nineteen seventy
19:01
Speaker 1: nine in Night one, and those really changed a lot
19:05
Speaker 1: of parents minds about things. Yeah. Um. In New York,
19:10
Speaker 1: the very sad story of six year old Eaton pats
19:13
Speaker 1: Um disappeared and was later found out to have been murdered. UM.
19:19
Speaker 1: John Walsh very famously his son Adam. UM, he's the
19:22
Speaker 1: one that does all the TV shows now. I think
19:24
Speaker 1: he's on the Hunt on CNN now and really made
19:27
Speaker 1: this his life's work. But his son Adam disappeared, uh
19:31
Speaker 1: and died in nineteen eighty one. UM. Obviously the Atlanta
19:34
Speaker 1: child murders UM from seventy eight one, and this all
19:40
Speaker 1: converged around the same time, Like you were talking about this,
19:44
Speaker 1: these these strange things aligning UM cable news coming out
19:48
Speaker 1: seeing Inn was launched in nineteen eighty, So all of
19:50
Speaker 1: a sudden, you have parents that are getting this kind
19:55
Speaker 1: of constant flow of fear from the news about their children.
19:59
Speaker 1: Right Because so if if a um prior to cable news,
20:03
Speaker 1: twenty four hour news, UM, if something happened to a
20:07
Speaker 1: kid somewhere in in some state, maybe if it were
20:12
Speaker 1: just particularly egregious or outrageous, um or everything was kind
20:16
Speaker 1: of set up in just the right way, it would
20:18
Speaker 1: capture the attention of the national media and you would
20:21
Speaker 1: hear about it around the country. But that was really
20:24
Speaker 1: really rare. And then second to that, the other place
20:27
Speaker 1: that you would hear about child abductions, child murder, murders,
20:30
Speaker 1: horrific like accidents that befell a child would be locally,
20:34
Speaker 1: right like on your local news that maybe maybe expanded
20:38
Speaker 1: to a region, maybe the state, but it was pretty localized.
20:42
Speaker 1: And so if statistically something like that happened fairly rarely,
20:47
Speaker 1: you weren't going to hear about it very often, And
20:49
Speaker 1: so in your mind it was a pretty rare thing,
20:52
Speaker 1: and you weren't afraid of the world in general. But
20:54
Speaker 1: what a lot of commentators and a lot of UM, well,
20:57
Speaker 1: some of the people I ran across some research UM
21:00
Speaker 1: propose is that with cable news, that potential pool of
21:06
Speaker 1: horrible things that befell kids to talk about um expanded
21:10
Speaker 1: to the entire nation, not just local, not just regional
21:13
Speaker 1: or even state, but the whole nation. So now all
21:15
Speaker 1: the bad things happening to all the kids around the
21:17
Speaker 1: nation was potential news fodder. And so when you were
21:20
Speaker 1: watching CNN, it seems like every other story was about
21:23
Speaker 1: a kid who had been abducted and killed, or sexually assaulted,
21:28
Speaker 1: or any number of horrible things. And there's really no
21:32
Speaker 1: way to put it other than that that kind of
21:34
Speaker 1: stuff keeps people glued to their televisions, and so it's
21:37
Speaker 1: really in the best interests of news networks like CNN
21:42
Speaker 1: to feed people that, because while you're glued to your television,
21:46
Speaker 1: you're also glued to the ads that they showed too.
21:48
Speaker 1: And so from this model came a climate of fear
21:52
Speaker 1: that a lot of people point to is like, this
21:54
Speaker 1: is the source, and it's not just CNN. CNN gets
21:56
Speaker 1: pointed to because it was the one that started at all.
21:59
Speaker 1: That is Ted Turtor who came up with this and
22:01
Speaker 1: started the first twenty four hour cable news network. But
22:05
Speaker 1: all cable news is guilty of this, and became guilty
22:07
Speaker 1: of it pretty quickly because that's the model of cable news.
22:11
Speaker 1: Um And because cable news laid that foundation and showed like, oh,
22:16
Speaker 1: you've got that kind of you can really make some revenue.
22:19
Speaker 1: Nightly news tried its best to resist that kind of thing,
22:22
Speaker 1: but it kind of had to follow suit a little
22:24
Speaker 1: bit too, so it would become more sensational from the
22:26
Speaker 1: eighties onward as well, not nearly anything like cable news,
22:30
Speaker 1: but compared to how it had been before, it was
22:33
Speaker 1: much more sensationalized because it was following the cable news model.
22:36
Speaker 1: And all that put together created the foundation of why
22:40
Speaker 1: people are just scared to death about the world because
22:43
Speaker 1: we we think that it's way more dangerous than it
22:46
Speaker 1: actually is, because the statistics are inflated by hearing about
22:51
Speaker 1: this stuff all the time. Yeah, and there's another couple
22:54
Speaker 1: of things that contributed that um Skins has pointed out. One,
22:58
Speaker 1: we live in what you dubs and expert society, So
23:02
Speaker 1: again on cable news or on social media, like everywhere
23:05
Speaker 1: you turn, there's another expert coming out with a new
23:08
Speaker 1: book they're trying to sell basically telling you how you're
23:11
Speaker 1: doing it wrong as a parent, how you should do
23:13
Speaker 1: it um. And then the whole fact that we live
23:16
Speaker 1: in a very litigious society. Now, so what if I
23:21
Speaker 1: want a free range parent my kid and they go
23:23
Speaker 1: down and get their friend um out of the house
23:26
Speaker 1: and their riding bikes and one of them gets hurt,
23:29
Speaker 1: Like their parents gonna sue me because my kid went
23:32
Speaker 1: and lured them into the mean streets. Right, Well, yeah,
23:36
Speaker 1: that was another thing that happened, Chuck. In the seventies,
23:38
Speaker 1: the idea of negligence became really big, and there was
23:41
Speaker 1: what's called like a tortue revolution to where you went
23:45
Speaker 1: from well you know your kid was your kid didn't
23:48
Speaker 1: know your the the other kid's arm was gonna get broken,
23:51
Speaker 1: so you can't get sued for that. To know that
23:53
Speaker 1: was negligent, and we're going to allow that and more
23:55
Speaker 1: and more case law expanded to to to make people
23:59
Speaker 1: think like lay yours because of it too. Dude, when
24:02
Speaker 1: you were a kid, was I mean that must have
24:05
Speaker 1: been a thing, because did you ever have the lawsuit
24:08
Speaker 1: threat from another child? Yeah? That was such a thing
24:11
Speaker 1: like yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna kick your butt or whatever.
24:14
Speaker 1: It's like, oh yeah, well my dad's gonna sue you
24:16
Speaker 1: for all the money you got. That's right, he's a dentist.
24:21
Speaker 1: That's so funny, man, to think back in the seventies,
24:23
Speaker 1: these children threatening lawsuits on Yeah, I'd forgotten about that
24:27
Speaker 1: for like ripping their shirt or something. Any number of
24:30
Speaker 1: things could could generate yea. Um. But in the end,
24:35
Speaker 1: Skins says, and this is I think a pretty relevant quote.
24:39
Speaker 1: She said, all of this stuff combined has convinced parents
24:42
Speaker 1: that they have to be both omniscient and omnipotent um
24:46
Speaker 1: because of fear, and monitor every single move that your
24:49
Speaker 1: kid makes. So, uh, let's take a break and we're
24:53
Speaker 1: gonna come back and talk a little bit about the
24:55
Speaker 1: the facts about whether or not your kids are really
24:58
Speaker 1: in danger out on the streets. After this, Well, now
25:01
Speaker 1: we're on the road driving in your truck. Want to
25:05
Speaker 1: learn a thing or two from Josh can Chuck. It's
25:09
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, all right, shot alright, Chuck. So um,
25:31
Speaker 1: like we're saying to to not be just scared to
25:34
Speaker 1: death because you're letting your kids say walk home from
25:38
Speaker 1: the park or something like that. Unsupervised, you you have
25:42
Speaker 1: to go through a change in mindset, like you have
25:45
Speaker 1: to stop seeing the world is a very very scary place.
25:48
Speaker 1: And sometimes statistics can be actually kind of comforting. So
25:52
Speaker 1: the free range Kids movement has really, you know, made
25:56
Speaker 1: one of its um foundational support polls, and you think
26:03
Speaker 1: I would actually be getting better at this all this time,
26:05
Speaker 1: but but you stumble through something like anyway, they talk
26:11
Speaker 1: a lot about statistics and crime statistics related to kids
26:14
Speaker 1: in particular, and when you look at them in the cold,
26:17
Speaker 1: hard light of the day, UM, it doesn't seem like
26:22
Speaker 1: it's a very dangerous world after all. Right, if you
26:25
Speaker 1: look at the numbers, UM, the National Center for Missing
26:28
Speaker 1: and Exploited Children says that just one percent of the
26:33
Speaker 1: twenty seven thousand missing children cases are non family abductions,
26:39
Speaker 1: and that also includes like friends and acquaintances. So if
26:44
Speaker 1: you're talking about literally a stranger targeting your child and
26:49
Speaker 1: plucking them off a playground, it is exceedingly rare that
26:53
Speaker 1: that happens. And then so one percent is non family, right, right,
27:01
Speaker 1: But that also doesn't even break down like if it's
27:04
Speaker 1: a friend or an acquaintance of a family or something
27:06
Speaker 1: like that. It's a little strangers snatching your kid rarely, rarely,
27:10
Speaker 1: rarely happens. Yeah. So even even that, even including like
27:14
Speaker 1: friends of the family, um, somebody who's not a direct
27:18
Speaker 1: family member but known to the kid, a non stranger,
27:21
Speaker 1: that's two hundred and seventy kids that that happened to
27:23
Speaker 1: in two thousand, seventeen out of twenties seven thousand, I think, um,
27:29
Speaker 1: which is that's awful for those kids that they were kidnapped, right.
27:32
Speaker 1: There's that's That's another thing too, is when you throw
27:34
Speaker 1: out statistics like this, it's really easy to be like,
27:36
Speaker 1: see that was it, um, But you don't want to
27:39
Speaker 1: do that because to those two hundred and seventy families
27:42
Speaker 1: that that's that's all that matters. And that's really important
27:45
Speaker 1: to remember as well when we're kind of tossing out
27:47
Speaker 1: these statistics too. Yeah, and not to make light of
27:51
Speaker 1: family abductions, which is you know ninety one percent of abductions, Uh,
27:57
Speaker 1: those are horrific and traumatic as well. We're just talking
28:00
Speaker 1: about the bare bones of like the fear that if
28:03
Speaker 1: I let my kid go to a park as strangers
28:04
Speaker 1: going to pluck them right, right, so, so and so
28:08
Speaker 1: even that even if you look at its twenty seven
28:10
Speaker 1: thousand out of all the kids in the United States
28:13
Speaker 1: in two thousand seventeen, seven thousand of them were went
28:16
Speaker 1: missing in two thousand seventeen, and the vast majority of
28:19
Speaker 1: them ran away. So, if you're worried that your kid
28:22
Speaker 1: is going to get plucked by a stranger, specifically out
28:25
Speaker 1: of a park somewhere, because you let them go to
28:28
Speaker 1: the park with the free range parenting, people are saying,
28:31
Speaker 1: if you look at the statistics, the chances of that
28:33
Speaker 1: are so small that it's actually not worth limiting your
28:38
Speaker 1: kids freedom of movement because of that outlier possibility. It
28:42
Speaker 1: just doesn't. It's just a disproportionate response to that risk,
28:47
Speaker 1: is what they're saying. Right. Um, if you want to
28:51
Speaker 1: talk about the worst thing that you can imagine, which
28:54
Speaker 1: is UM, a child murder Uh. From nineteen eighty to
28:59
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, UM statistics about murders of children under
29:04
Speaker 1: five years old, Uh, sixty percent of the time the
29:08
Speaker 1: parents are the ones who did it, um, followed by
29:13
Speaker 1: so that's total or male acquaintances. UM, So like you know,
29:20
Speaker 1: mom's boyfriend or something like that, Uh seven percent or
29:24
Speaker 1: other relatives. So only three percent of all murders of
29:27
Speaker 1: young children are strangers. Right, So again and again, dressing tanks.
29:34
Speaker 1: We're addressing the fear of strangers doing something to your child,
29:39
Speaker 1: not making light of these other statistics. And there are
29:42
Speaker 1: parents out there who are like, good, that's enough. That's
29:44
Speaker 1: the fact that it happens to one kid makes me
29:46
Speaker 1: want to protect my child and make sure that they
29:49
Speaker 1: don't do that. Okay, you're the parent, You're you're raising
29:52
Speaker 1: your kid in that that way. I understand, um, But again,
29:56
Speaker 1: what the what the free range kids people are saying
29:59
Speaker 1: is like, like, is it really worth that? Like what
30:03
Speaker 1: what about that is? Is? I mean, is it really
30:06
Speaker 1: worth that kind of a response, And we'll get to
30:09
Speaker 1: we'll get to that, because you could say, like, if
30:11
Speaker 1: there were no negative aspects of of completely ensconcing your
30:15
Speaker 1: kid in protection, then the free range kids advocates wouldn't
30:19
Speaker 1: have anything. They could be like, Okay, well whatever, that's
30:22
Speaker 1: what you're doing with your kid. But there's suspicions that
30:25
Speaker 1: the that actually is detrimental to the development of a kid,
30:29
Speaker 1: protecting them from everything at all costs. And I think
30:33
Speaker 1: that's one of the big other Um foundational platform post
30:39
Speaker 1: tenants of the free range kids thing that one was
30:47
Speaker 1: for showing off. Uh, alright, so building on that, um,
30:52
Speaker 1: like you, like you were saying, like they're there, There
30:55
Speaker 1: has to be like in order to get a parent
30:58
Speaker 1: on board with a free range parting lifestyle. It's not
31:01
Speaker 1: just I want to be lazy or I want to
31:03
Speaker 1: go back to my childhood. Um, it's a parent who
31:06
Speaker 1: thinks there are actual benefits to doing so, and that
31:09
Speaker 1: that outweighs the risk, like you were saying, of the
31:12
Speaker 1: three percent, uh chance or the one percent to the
31:15
Speaker 1: point five percent chance that something's gonna happen to my
31:18
Speaker 1: kid if they're on their own. Um, there is evidence,
31:22
Speaker 1: and it's growing and growing evidence that all these efforts
31:26
Speaker 1: to schedule all these activities for your kid are overlooking
31:31
Speaker 1: one big fundamental element of raising a healthy, well adjusted
31:37
Speaker 1: child that seems to be getting lost more and more,
31:40
Speaker 1: which is something called free play. Um. The American Academy
31:44
Speaker 1: of Pediatrics has a report out that said that free
31:48
Speaker 1: play promotes social um. Sorry, social, it's the saying, uh,
31:55
Speaker 1: social emotional, cognitive, language, and self regulation skills that build
31:59
Speaker 1: executive function and a pro social brain. And play is
32:03
Speaker 1: fundamentally important for learning twenty one century skills like problem solving, collaboration, creativity,
32:10
Speaker 1: uh and executive functioning skills that are critical for adult success. Right,
32:14
Speaker 1: And they threw that last one in to be like, well, okay,
32:17
Speaker 1: maybe plays good, but it's not going to help them
32:20
Speaker 1: in life, and they're saying, yes, it will actually help
32:22
Speaker 1: them in life, and that by keeping them from playing,
32:25
Speaker 1: you're basically creating a little adult from from the nursery.
32:29
Speaker 1: Which is interesting to be chucked because prior to the
32:32
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, when you were a kid, starting around age
32:35
Speaker 1: five or something, you you had a job, even if
32:38
Speaker 1: it wasn't around like your family's farm. Maybe you were
32:41
Speaker 1: helping out with um, the wash that your mom took
32:44
Speaker 1: in who knows. But then you like, there was no
32:46
Speaker 1: such thing as childhood really um, And then we moved
32:50
Speaker 1: away from that and we developed childhood. And now it
32:53
Speaker 1: seems like we're moving away from childhood. Now we're taking
32:56
Speaker 1: kids and they're not they're not working on the farm.
32:59
Speaker 1: We're making little CEOs and marketing directors and brand managers
33:03
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But they're they're losing their childhood
33:06
Speaker 1: in that bargain. As I think what they're saying, and
33:09
Speaker 1: from play specifically, play helps, but it helps also like um,
33:14
Speaker 1: just in and of itself for its own sake, but
33:16
Speaker 1: it also helps eventually down the road. It's an investment
33:19
Speaker 1: that will pay off, I think in terms that helicopter
33:22
Speaker 1: parents can understand. Yeah, there's another guy named Peter Gray.
33:26
Speaker 1: He's a developmental psychologist. UM. He has a book called
33:30
Speaker 1: Free to Learn and founded a nonprofit I believe with
33:35
Speaker 1: yes skins called Let Grow. UM little play on words there,
33:40
Speaker 1: and he basically says that, you know, if you look
33:43
Speaker 1: back to human evolution, um children, Uh, their education was
33:52
Speaker 1: through play with their peers. And if you look at
33:56
Speaker 1: um societies and cultures in the world today that um,
34:02
Speaker 1: I mean, how would you classify these cultures traditional societies?
34:07
Speaker 1: I'm not sure maybe, but they say that that children
34:10
Speaker 1: of these cultures that still play and explore freely. Um,
34:14
Speaker 1: if they're left to do that, they will do so
34:16
Speaker 1: into their teen years. UM. Like that is their natural
34:19
Speaker 1: instinct is to be among their peers, free playing, right,
34:22
Speaker 1: but so and so like, I think one of the
34:24
Speaker 1: problems that helicopter parents have with the idea of play
34:27
Speaker 1: is that like it's it's a waste of time the
34:29
Speaker 1: kid could be learning like cello or um, you know,
34:33
Speaker 1: doing math flash cards are like creating a better foundation
34:37
Speaker 1: for a better future for themselves, and that if they're
34:40
Speaker 1: not doing that, they're falling behind. And so what Peter
34:43
Speaker 1: Gray and some of his ilk are saying is like no, no, no.
34:46
Speaker 1: Play helps develop a child in ways that no other
34:51
Speaker 1: thing you could possibly come up with their supervisor get
34:54
Speaker 1: them to do can because this is what we've done
34:57
Speaker 1: all this time, and this is how we've built society
35:00
Speaker 1: is letting little kids play and figure things out on
35:02
Speaker 1: their own. And he says that if there's a parent around,
35:05
Speaker 1: if it's supervised, if there's a parent even within like
35:09
Speaker 1: eyesight er, ear shotter, you know there's a parent watching,
35:12
Speaker 1: it's going to be different. It has to be unsupervised,
35:15
Speaker 1: unstructured play so that the kids can be left to
35:18
Speaker 1: make up their own rules, can can be taught by
35:21
Speaker 1: the group that you know, actually, no, that's not really
35:23
Speaker 1: fair or it's not really cool to take the ball
35:26
Speaker 1: and go home because you aren't winning. Um, that's how
35:29
Speaker 1: you learn that stuff, and those are good things to learn.
35:32
Speaker 1: That makes you a more socially well adjusted kid than um.
35:36
Speaker 1: Probably learning Cello is going to well, yeah, I mean,
35:40
Speaker 1: you can try and teach your kid by showing and
35:45
Speaker 1: by telling as much as you can as a parent,
35:47
Speaker 1: and that is all valuable, But nothing will teach a
35:50
Speaker 1: lesson to a kid like learning it through experience with
35:54
Speaker 1: their peers. Right, And like I remember myself, you know,
35:58
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, Like the biggest lessons I learned,
36:01
Speaker 1: we're lessons that I learned among my peer group, you know,
36:06
Speaker 1: like tough, hard lessons that a lot of parents, I
36:09
Speaker 1: think try and even shield their kid from because it's
36:12
Speaker 1: tough stuff sometimes. But um, and you know, you don't
36:15
Speaker 1: want your kid to suffer traumas and things like that.
36:19
Speaker 1: But uh, and not to sound like a parent from
36:21
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, but that stuff does help build your
36:24
Speaker 1: child's character. And I mean, I guess that sounds of
36:28
Speaker 1: old school. What it does is it helps them learn
36:31
Speaker 1: how to regulate their emotions and how to fit in
36:35
Speaker 1: with their peer group, which is in turn going to
36:38
Speaker 1: be eventually just society at large. Right. It's funny you
36:42
Speaker 1: say that that sounds kind of fifties because this whole
36:45
Speaker 1: idea of like free range kids is kind of based
36:48
Speaker 1: on that philosophy of Dr Spock, who was like one
36:52
Speaker 1: of the first experts, one of the first child experts
36:55
Speaker 1: that America ever really paid attention to. And he wrote
36:58
Speaker 1: a book in nineteen forties called The Common Sense Book
37:02
Speaker 1: of Baby and Child, And he basically is saying all
37:05
Speaker 1: the stuff that free range kids parents say is like,
37:08
Speaker 1: let your kids play, Let your kids like learned through
37:11
Speaker 1: their own um, their own way of like exploring the world, like,
37:15
Speaker 1: let them take risks, UM, let them be themselves. Trust
37:19
Speaker 1: your instincts as a parent. And so that's what free
37:21
Speaker 1: ranch parents seemed to be kind of getting back to,
37:23
Speaker 1: is like the doctor spak Um school of thought. Benjamin Spock,
37:28
Speaker 1: not um, the other spok not live long in prosper Spot.
37:32
Speaker 1: Did he have a first name? Oh? I don't know, man,
37:35
Speaker 1: I didn't watch a Star Trek. I didn't either. Just
37:38
Speaker 1: lay it on a million people who are going to
37:40
Speaker 1: send the email we're waiting. Uh. There's something called the
37:44
Speaker 1: internal external locus of control scale UM. It's an odd name,
37:50
Speaker 1: but this is UM been around since the nineteen sixties.
37:55
Speaker 1: It's a psychological indicator scale. UH. And these days, since
38:00
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, there's been a big shift in the
38:02
Speaker 1: scale and how teens report themselves and their internal control
38:07
Speaker 1: in today, teens report very little internal control over their
38:12
Speaker 1: own lives. And Gray believes and I think he's really
38:16
Speaker 1: onto something here that, uh, these high levels of anxiety
38:21
Speaker 1: and depression among kids these days has a lot to
38:24
Speaker 1: do with that, and the things is directly related to
38:27
Speaker 1: the decline and free play over the last you know,
38:30
Speaker 1: forty or fifty years, right, which I want to say
38:33
Speaker 1: like this, this is like one psychologist's opinion. It makes
38:37
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me, and I'm sure it
38:39
Speaker 1: does to a lot of people. But there's you know,
38:42
Speaker 1: this is not necessarily like like gospel truth or set
38:46
Speaker 1: in Stone. It's the jury is still kind of out,
38:49
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of evidence out there that that
38:51
Speaker 1: does seem like over protecting your kid can stunt them
38:55
Speaker 1: and um, emotionally or developmentally, and then letting them go
39:00
Speaker 1: be themselves and learn things on their own and learn
39:03
Speaker 1: that they can pick themselves back up and still survive
39:06
Speaker 1: and failure is not the worst thing in the world
39:08
Speaker 1: can actually help them develop. Um. This is it's just
39:13
Speaker 1: like we we routinely shoot holes in in social psychology
39:17
Speaker 1: stuff all the time, and we do it gleefully. So
39:19
Speaker 1: I don't want to like go the opposite way and
39:21
Speaker 1: just be like, but this one's right because we agree
39:23
Speaker 1: with you. Um, that's not necessarily the case, and I'm
39:26
Speaker 1: sure a lot of people disagree with it, but I
39:29
Speaker 1: tend to kind of favor that that mentality, probably because
39:32
Speaker 1: that's how I was raised. Yeah, And like I said,
39:35
Speaker 1: it does sound like um from the nineties say that
39:38
Speaker 1: failure breeds character, but you know, it really does. It's
39:41
Speaker 1: sort of a simplistic way to say it. But when
39:43
Speaker 1: you fail, you um hopefully learn something and build on that,
39:49
Speaker 1: and that does build character. Right. So one of the
39:53
Speaker 1: one of the things they call that is the dignity
39:56
Speaker 1: of risk, where you are showing your kid, I'm I'm
40:01
Speaker 1: letting you go figure this out on your own. Um.
40:04
Speaker 1: And and another big misunderstanding with free range parents is
40:08
Speaker 1: that that you just go from like zero to walking,
40:11
Speaker 1: you know, taking the subway in New York, Um, at
40:14
Speaker 1: the flip of a switch. That's not how it works.
40:17
Speaker 1: You you slowly build your kid up for this, you know,
40:21
Speaker 1: the big thing that you write an article about. But
40:23
Speaker 1: there's you know, dozens or scores or possibly hundreds of
40:27
Speaker 1: little little interactions that you're having to kind of make
40:30
Speaker 1: sure that your kid is up for this when they're
40:32
Speaker 1: finally when you decide they're finally ready to um. And
40:35
Speaker 1: it's not just like flipping a switch. It's very kind
40:38
Speaker 1: of thoughtful and protracted and um planned but not necessarily
40:42
Speaker 1: shared with the kid. That's planned, UM paying out of
40:45
Speaker 1: trust and so that the kid can show you, yeah,
40:48
Speaker 1: I'm ready for this, I know what to do. I'm
40:50
Speaker 1: not just gonna like ball up on the on the
40:52
Speaker 1: ground in the subway and and start crying until someone
40:55
Speaker 1: calls nine on one and the cops come get me. Well. Yeah,
40:58
Speaker 1: And I'm sure when she sent um her kid on
41:01
Speaker 1: on the subway home that very first time, it wasn't
41:04
Speaker 1: just like all right, here's the stuff, see you later.
41:06
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was a very serious talk like all right, dude,
41:10
Speaker 1: I trust you. I'm letting you do this. I know
41:13
Speaker 1: you know the way. We're gonna give this a shot. Um,
41:17
Speaker 1: don't if I see you on the news in the
41:19
Speaker 1: middle of time square like you're gonna be a big trouble. Um.
41:23
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was a lot of thought in talk
41:25
Speaker 1: that went into that, and uh, you know what, I'm saying, yeah,
41:28
Speaker 1: so totally, and kids get that stuff. You know, for sure,
41:31
Speaker 1: kids are smarter than people give them credit for a
41:34
Speaker 1: lot of times. I think, Um, it's interesting when it
41:36
Speaker 1: comes to the law because it's such a new thing. Um.
41:39
Speaker 1: In Utah last year in two thousand eighteen, became the
41:42
Speaker 1: first state to pass what was called a free range
41:44
Speaker 1: parenting law, where it basically was just sort of redefining
41:48
Speaker 1: what child neglect was. Uh. And in Utah, I thought
41:51
Speaker 1: I was gonna go the other way when I was
41:53
Speaker 1: reading this, but um, it actually went the way of
41:56
Speaker 1: sort of encouraging or being behind free parenting. The new definition,
42:02
Speaker 1: a parent cannot be accused of neglect just because their
42:05
Speaker 1: kid is going to a store by themselves that's down
42:09
Speaker 1: the street, or playing outside alone, or biking to school
42:12
Speaker 1: on their own, or at home without a parent there, Um,
42:18
Speaker 1: if they're a minor, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, I
42:21
Speaker 1: thought so too. Um, But most free range parents are like, oh,
42:24
Speaker 1: we don't want to live to you in Utah. So
42:26
Speaker 1: hopefully our states will all come up with similar laws
42:30
Speaker 1: that that decriminalize free range parenting, because in a lot
42:33
Speaker 1: of states, things like latch key kids are illegal, like
42:37
Speaker 1: you can have your kid taken from you if they
42:40
Speaker 1: are a latch key kid under a certain age. I
42:42
Speaker 1: think in Washington you have to be fourteen to be
42:44
Speaker 1: left at home alone like you, you could lose your kid.
42:48
Speaker 1: And so there's a real problem with trying free range
42:51
Speaker 1: parenting because part of this um helicopter parenting society is
42:56
Speaker 1: also helicopter villaging. But rather and picking up the phone
43:00
Speaker 1: and calling the parents whose kids you see wandering alone
43:05
Speaker 1: down the street like you used to would have done,
43:08
Speaker 1: now that people just call, pick up the phone and
43:10
Speaker 1: call the cops, and then the cops respond and they
43:13
Speaker 1: take the kid to child protective services and the parent
43:16
Speaker 1: has to go down and explain that they will never
43:18
Speaker 1: do this again and they're very very sorry, or else
43:21
Speaker 1: child protective services will take their kid from them because
43:24
Speaker 1: most states rule on what's called the best interests of
43:27
Speaker 1: the child, which is totally subjective, is completely not based
43:32
Speaker 1: in any actual case law. Necessarily, it's just does the
43:36
Speaker 1: child protective services person think that that the kid is
43:40
Speaker 1: is smart enough to walk from the playground to the house. No, okay,
43:44
Speaker 1: well we're taking your kid, maybe permanently, and so it's
43:48
Speaker 1: it's really risky to raise your kid this way, because
43:51
Speaker 1: people will call the cops if they see your kid
43:53
Speaker 1: walking down the street and real trouble your your parentship
43:59
Speaker 1: of your kid is in jeopardy at that moment, which
44:02
Speaker 1: has got to be one of the worst things that
44:04
Speaker 1: could possibly happen to a parent. Yeah, and this is
44:07
Speaker 1: where we kind of we get back to the place
44:09
Speaker 1: of like, this is a privilege. Has a lot to
44:11
Speaker 1: do with this, because when it comes to the law
44:14
Speaker 1: and children and child protective services, you are way more
44:17
Speaker 1: likely um to get a visit um from child protective
44:22
Speaker 1: services if you are poor, UM, or if you're a
44:26
Speaker 1: person of color or minority UM. Like, they may write
44:31
Speaker 1: an article about you in the local magazine praising you
44:35
Speaker 1: if you're like a white suburban parent of middle or
44:38
Speaker 1: upper middle class for letting your kid free range around.
44:42
Speaker 1: But um. In the case of like Deborah Harrold in
44:45
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen in South Carolina, UM, she wasn't like, oh,
44:49
Speaker 1: I want to be a free range parent. She's like,
44:51
Speaker 1: I am a working mom, and I work at McDonald's
44:55
Speaker 1: and I'm finishing a shift and my nine year old
44:57
Speaker 1: daughter is playing in a park nearby until I'm done,
45:00
Speaker 1: and and they sent her to jail for a night
45:02
Speaker 1: and took her daughter for two weeks away from her
45:05
Speaker 1: seventeen days. Yeah, so it is very much a case
45:09
Speaker 1: of privilege to even be allowed to do this without
45:12
Speaker 1: getting a visit from Child Protective Services. Right so, um,
45:16
Speaker 1: Skinazy and some of the other free range parents say, right,
45:21
Speaker 1: this is why we need laws that are much more
45:23
Speaker 1: common sense and decriminalize this kind of behavior and put
45:27
Speaker 1: the trust back in parents to know that their kids
45:29
Speaker 1: are smart enough, or if they think their kids aren't
45:31
Speaker 1: smart enough to be trusted with that kind of stuff,
45:33
Speaker 1: they wouldn't let them do that. Um. They argue that
45:36
Speaker 1: this would benefit everybody, whether no matter you know, whether
45:39
Speaker 1: you're a minority or um whatever, um socioeconomic status you have,
45:45
Speaker 1: which is which is true? That's a pretty it's a
45:47
Speaker 1: pretty sensible. Um, it's sensible. But I think that that
45:51
Speaker 1: kind of underscores the larger problem, which is, you know,
45:54
Speaker 1: like some people don't have the choice to to get
45:57
Speaker 1: childcare if the school suddenly canceled class, like you just
46:02
Speaker 1: can't afford it. What are you gonna do? And then
46:03
Speaker 1: your your work says, well, you can't bring them here,
46:06
Speaker 1: this is work You know what, what can you do?
46:10
Speaker 1: Hopefully you've raised your kid to a point where you
46:12
Speaker 1: can trust them to go play, you know, next door
46:15
Speaker 1: at the playground or something like that. But that doesn't
46:16
Speaker 1: mean that you're not gonna end up in trouble with
46:19
Speaker 1: with the authorities. So it's a sticky, sticky situation that
46:22
Speaker 1: we're in. Two it is, and you know, again, it
46:25
Speaker 1: depends on your kid. It depends on where you live.
46:28
Speaker 1: Like in my brother's neighborhood, Uh, if I live there,
46:32
Speaker 1: I would let my kid go out and do what
46:35
Speaker 1: she wanted when she was like seven. It's just so
46:39
Speaker 1: safe and kids are everywhere on their own doing stuff,
46:43
Speaker 1: very much like it was when we were kids. At
46:46
Speaker 1: my house, I live next to a super scary busy street.
46:51
Speaker 1: Like I would never let her out of the front
46:53
Speaker 1: of my house, but even at three and a half,
46:57
Speaker 1: we let her go in the backyard by herself and
46:59
Speaker 1: do stuff all the time. Right, Um, I mean just
47:02
Speaker 1: this past weekend, I uh, she was out in the
47:06
Speaker 1: backyard and with the dogs, and I went out about
47:10
Speaker 1: half an hour later and she was walking through the
47:12
Speaker 1: garden with a watering can singing we will Rock You.
47:18
Speaker 1: And I was like, all right, everything's fine. But again,
47:21
Speaker 1: she's in my enclosed backyard. I wasn't sweating it. I
47:24
Speaker 1: would um, I would never just open the front door
47:27
Speaker 1: and be like, go have fun. Memorial drives right there, sixty.
47:32
Speaker 1: But that's the point. It's all context, you know, Like
47:34
Speaker 1: you would have had to have worked up to that point.
47:36
Speaker 1: She would have had to have shown you that she
47:38
Speaker 1: was able to be trusted with that busy street, and
47:41
Speaker 1: maybe she'd be sixteen before you would. But that's that's
47:44
Speaker 1: the point. It's all. It's all, it's context, you know. Yeah,
47:47
Speaker 1: you know. Again, just do the best you can. It's hard.
47:51
Speaker 1: There a thousand ways to do it, and everybody thinks
47:54
Speaker 1: their way is the right way. Also, just before we
47:58
Speaker 1: sign off, I want to say I did mean to
48:00
Speaker 1: pick on kids who take cello lessons. Cello is, by
48:03
Speaker 1: the way, my favorite stringed instrument, which means it was
48:06
Speaker 1: the one that was easiest called the mind. That's why
48:09
Speaker 1: I kept bringing up the cello. So all of you
48:11
Speaker 1: out there learning cello, hats off to you because that's
48:15
Speaker 1: my favorite string instrument. Yeah what if what if Yo
48:19
Speaker 1: Yo ma had just been free planning? All right? But
48:23
Speaker 1: I'll bet yo Yoma did free play. A bet he
48:25
Speaker 1: did both, and if he didn't, I'll bet he regrets it. H.
48:29
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about free range kids
48:31
Speaker 1: will just go on the internet and start reading because
48:33
Speaker 1: there's a lot about it. And since I said that, oh, also,
48:36
Speaker 1: there's a pretty good article on how stuff works you
48:39
Speaker 1: can read too. Since I said that, it's time for
48:41
Speaker 1: listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this, uh desert flooding. Hey, guys,
48:48
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast this morning on Desert Survival. I
48:52
Speaker 1: live here in Phoenix, Arizona, and have for nineteen years,
48:55
Speaker 1: and the flash flood issue is real even in metro Phoenix. Um,
48:59
Speaker 1: they have a stupid motorist law here and that's capitalized
49:04
Speaker 1: and end quotes. Um. She said, and she said after
49:08
Speaker 1: and during her heavy rains, a lot of washes fill
49:11
Speaker 1: with running water. A lot of the washes have been paved.
49:14
Speaker 1: Barriers will be put up when they flood, even if
49:17
Speaker 1: the water is only a few inches deep. But there's
49:19
Speaker 1: always someone who decides that their sub or truck is
49:22
Speaker 1: hefty enough to get through, and their rescue is always
49:25
Speaker 1: on the nightly news because they have to pay for it.
49:28
Speaker 1: They actually have to pay for the cost to their rescue. Uh.
49:31
Speaker 1: Sometimes these stare deevils don't fare too well. Um. Actually,
49:34
Speaker 1: lives have been lost in less than a foot of
49:37
Speaker 1: moving water in a watch. Yeah, I believe that I've
49:40
Speaker 1: heard six inches. Yeah, and she Teresa Henburry closes by
49:45
Speaker 1: saying this, I do so enjoy your podcast. Nice, Thank you, Teresa.
49:52
Speaker 1: We do so enjoy your emails too. Yes, I like
49:55
Speaker 1: the way she put that. Yeah. Um, if you want
49:58
Speaker 1: to be like Teresa, impresses with your verbal or written dexterity.
50:03
Speaker 1: We love that kind of stuff. You can go to
50:05
Speaker 1: stuff you Should Know dot com and you can look
50:07
Speaker 1: us up on the social links. You can also send
50:10
Speaker 1: us a podcast like Teresa did to stuff podcasts at
50:14
Speaker 1: I heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
50:20
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50:23
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50:31
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