Lenore Skenazy On Childhood Independence, How Fear Spreads, And Why Free-Range Is Not Neglect

Elevate with Robert Glazer · Oct 20, 2026 · 1h 7m

Lenore Skenazy⁠ is the president and co-founder of ⁠Let Grow⁠, the nonprofit she started with Jonathan Haidt, Peter Gray, and Daniel Shuchman to make childhood independence easy, normal, and legal again. In 2008, she let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway home alone, wrote a column about it, and was promptly dubbed "America's Worst Mom" by the national media. She turned that firestorm into Free-Range Kids, the book and blog that launched a movement. A former New York Daily News columnist whose writing has appeared everywhere from NPR to Mad Magazine, her 2025 TED talk, "Why You…