Free Range Kids

An interesting debate has erupted on the Internet. A New York Sun columnist wrote an article about how she let her 9-year-old son go an adventure by himself in New York City. He wanted to be left somewhere in the city and allowed to find his own way home. So, she gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call. He made it home happy and "ecstatic with independence."

I happen to think this mother deserves an award, but she's been getting email that ranges from critical to calls she get turned over to child welfare officials.

We've become a country of cowards, particularly when it comes to each other. We'll let our kids play sports, ride skateboards, command their own ATVs and ski jets, go hunting, and ride in cars (the most dangerous activity of all), but if a parent allows their child to walk to school or take a subway, suddenly the parent is crazy. Why is it that we can accept risks so easily with some activities, but when the risk comes to trusting each other, suddenly any risk is too much?

Lenore Skenazy, the NY Post columnist, said she trusted her kid to find his way home, but if he didn't, "I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, 'Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.'" To Ms. Skenazy, other adults are people to be trusted and not shadowy threats to her children--how might this attitude benefit a child as they grow into adulthood?

Many of the people who wrote to Ms. Skenazy cited headline-making cases of abducted children. But how rare are those? Maybe we've done a disservice to parenting in our country with the media's obsession with the very rare occurrence of child abduction.

Another part of the problem is that the organizations created to deal with societal problems increasingly compete for attention and your contributed dollars with hyper-frightening language that doesn't give the entire story. The home page of the Amber Watch Foundation says child abduction and molestation is a "problem of massive proportion" and includes a helpful countdown indicating how many children have been abducted since you arrived at the site.

This sort of hyperbole causes parents to recoil in terror and hermetically seal their kids into their homes, but a little more digging shows the true scope of the problem. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the U.S. Department of Justice reports that 797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing in a one-year period, but more than half a million of these were kids that ran away. Over 200,000 were victims of family abductions, and less than 60,000 were victims of non-family abductions. Of those 60,000, just 37% were abducted by a true stranger--the rest were abducted by friends and other people known to the victim.

And, despite our hyper-awareness of kids who disappear at the hands of strangers, the U.S Department of Justice tells us that just 115 stereotypical kidnappings occurred in a recent year studied. This is defined as abductions perpetrated by a stranger or slight acquaintance and
involving a child who was transported 50 or more miles, detained overnight, held for ransom or with the intent to keep the child permanently, or killed. Of children taken by non-family members, 90% were returned within 24 hours and over 99% were returned alive.

By way of comparison, 2,173 children under the age of 15 were killed in a car accident in 2006. And if you include those up to age 20, that figure skyrockets up to 7,831. Based on these figures, we clearly should pass a law preventing parents from transporting their children in cars, right? (Or perhaps we shouldn't let kids drive until their over 20 years of age?)

Obviously, any child assaulted or kidnapped is one too may, but why are parents so obsessively worried about everyone else when the greatest risks are sitting in their own garage--their car, the skateboard, the bike, and the basketball? (More than 775,000 children and adolescents ages 14 and under are treated in hospital emergency rooms for sports-related injuries each year, and in 1998, nearly 200,000 children and adolescents ages 5 to 14 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for basketball-related injuries.)

The part that is often missing from the parental equation is the "benefit" part of a risk/benefit equation. Parents are angry at Ms. Skenazy because of the "what if" quotient: "How would you have felt if he didn’t come home?” a New Jersey mom of four asked her. But is that the only relevant question? Why didn't the same mother ask "How did you feel that your kid grew in confidence that day?" Or, "How did you feel that your child matured more into adulthood in that afternoon than in entire months?" Or, "How did your relationship with your child strengthen because you demonstrated trust and faith in his abilities?"

The reason we strap our children into cars despite the danger is that we have no choice--there is a benefit to driving our kids around, so we accept the risk. Why is it so hard to see the benefits to our children of gaining a little independence, confidence, and experience in the world?

Perhaps the reason I feel so strongly is that I can actually recall the first time my parents trusted me to make my way home through the city. I was probably 14 at the time, and I needed to get home from a music lesson 10 miles from my home. I was in the center of the city, and I needed to get back to my suburban home. I was anxious (since I was used to being chauffeured from place to place), but it was an exciting experience.

True story: The day was cloudy and threatening, and I hadn't brought an umbrella. I was waiting for the bus and began to get wet. I stood there for about three minutes getting damp and cursing myself for poor planning before realizing I was standing within the reach of a lawn sprinkler. I moved out of the sprinkler, thus learning a valuable life lesson that day (or at least giving me a story to tell 30 years later.)

BTW, I got home safe and sound.