Parents, You Can Stop Helicoptering

A new Utah law means they no longer need to fear the cops if they let kids walk to school alone

By Lenore Skenazy, March 29, 2018
 

If you send your kid out to play in the park for an hour, or buy a carton of milk, or even walk to school, guess what? If you’re in Utah, you won’t get arrested for negligence. Woo hoo!

You don’t have to worry about a trial, fines, mandatory parenting classes, jail time or even losing custody, all thanks to a new law passed unanimously by the Utah Legislature and signed this month by Gov. Gary Herbert. It goes into effect in May. It’s called the Free-Range Parents Law, named after the movement I started, Free-Range Kids.

I’m the New York mom who let her 9-year-old ride the subway alone and wrote a column about it for the late, great New York Sun. That was 10 years ago April 1 (and no, it wasn’t a joke). Two days later I found myself on NBC’s “Today” show, MSNBC, Fox News Channel and National Public Radio. The hosts all asked the same question: “But Lenore, how would you have felt if he never came home?”

Well, I did have a spare son at home. But seriously, that very question was the reason parents were going crazy with worry. Paranoia about abduction by strangers—among the rarest of crimes—was the whole reason kids were being supervised every second. The No. 1 cause of death for children is car accidents. Yet you don’t hear talk-show hosts saying: “Oh my God, you drove your son to the dentist? How would you have felt if you got T-boned by a truck?”

I started the Free-Range Kids blog the weekend after the media firestorm, to explain that I am all for safety. I love helmets, car seats, seat belts. If you’re having a baby, my shower gift is a fire extinguisher. But I let my son go out into the big wide world without me because that’s what kids, certainly 9-year-olds, have been doing since the beginning of time.

It’s good for them. When you’re on your own, you develop curiosity, bravery and self-reliance. I am almost positive that you, dear reader, spent part of your own childhood—the best part, most likely—running around your neighborhood, hanging out with friends, playing games, riding your bike, and staying out till the streetlights came on. If that was in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s, it was actually less safe then than it is now. The crime rate today is back to what it was before color TV. And it’s down not because we’re helicoptering kids. The crime rate against adults is down too, and we don’t “helicopter” them—at least once they’ve finished college.

If it wasn’t negligent for our parents to let us play outside when the crime rate was higher, it certainly shouldn’t be considered negligent now, should it? Yet somehow it is.

Over the years I have received many emails from parents, usually moms, usually time-stamped around 3 a.m., that go something like this:

“Dear Lenore, I am shaking. Today I let my child [go to the park / walk to the pizza parlor / wait in the car for three minutes], and someone called 911. Now Child Protective Services is coming to investigate me. I love my children more than anything. They are my whole life. Are they going to be taken away?”

- Kari Anne Roy of Austin, Texas, let her 6-year-old son play about 150 feet from her house. A lady marched him home, rang the bell, and yelled at Ms. Roy for not supervising him. The stranger also called the authorities. A week later, Child Protective Services arrived to interview each of Ms. Roy’s kids separately. Her 8-year-old daughter was asked if she’d seen movies with people’s private parts—something she’d never heard of. “Thank you, Child Protective Services,” said Ms. Roy.

- In Evanston, Ill., Julie Koehler was driving her three daughters, 8, 5 and 4, to a bouncy house when she stopped at Starbucks . She let the girls wait in the van for three minutes and returned to find a cop threatening to have her kids taken away. A Child Protective Services worker arrived the next day and demanded the girls be examined by a doctor for signs of abuse.

- Wallingford, Conn., mom Maria Hasankolli overslept one morning and her son missed the bus, so he decided to walk the two miles to school. When police were alerted to an 8-year-old outside on his own, they raced over, drove him the rest of the way, then went to his home and arrested Ms. Hasankolli—in handcuffs.

The Utah law redefines neglect to exclude letting kids walk to school, play outside, remain briefly in a vehicle under certain conditions, stay at home as a latchkey kid, or engage in any “similar independent activity.” It adds that children should be of “sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm,” which could leave the door open for overzealous officials. But clearly the law leans in the direction of giving Free-Range parents the benefit of the doubt.

In America, we keep talking about how we need to raise a generation of kids who are smart, resilient problem-solvers ready to take on the chaotic, robotic economy ahead. We can’t do it by standing always by their side, solving all their problems.

It is not negligent to believe our kids are ready for the childhood independence that made us who we are. It is negligent to deprive them of it.


Ms. Skenazy is president and co-founder of the new nonprofit Let Grow.

http://archive.is/nfvdb