School-Age Kids Free to Play Unsupervised?

An article a few months ago in the Los Angeles Times talks about how a woman named Lenore Skenazy of New York City gave her son the freedom to "play" freely and how she set off a maelstrom of criticism for it.

For the LATimes editorial Click here

For the original article by Lenore that set off the firestorm Click here

Heaven knows how I'd be persecuted if people in the States really knew the freedoms we've given our kids since moving here! After our first year in Costa Rica we came back to Milwaukee for the summer and rented an apartment downtown. It was a ball for all of us to be in such an urban environment after so much jungle! But we brought with us our newly-cultivated freedoms.

One day the kids were bored (no jungle to roam!). So, similar to the woman profiled in the article above, Steve and I gave them (ages 8, 9 and 11 at the time) one of our cell phones, $20 and the suggestion of exploring the lakefront park down the street and perhaps visiting the nearby children's museum (which Steve and I were active in helping to found when we lived in Milwaukee and with which our kids were very familiar).

We received our first check-in phone call at the appointed time. "Hi Mom and Dad. We're at the Art Museum." "Really? Why not the children's museum?" "They wouldn't let us in without adults." "But the ART Museum does??" "Yes. We're checking out the exhibit on comics."

Later, we received an update call letting us know that they'd enjoyed the exhibit and were now having lunch on the museum's terrace (they had to split a sandwich because the $20 didn't get them very far!). They bummed around the park area, then came home at the agreed upon time.

Clearly, I'm in the camp of Skenazy, whose website states, "We believe in safe kids. ... We do NOT believe that every time school-age children go outside, they need a security detail." (Check out Skenazy's website, FreeRange Kids which is all about giving kids the freedom to be.)

The author of the LA Times article cites statistics to back up Skenazy: "We parents have sold ourselves a bill of goods when it comes to child safety. Forget the television fear-mongering: Your child stands about the same chance of being struck by lightning as of being the victim of what the Department of Justice calls a 'stereotypical kidnapping.' And unless you live in Baghdad, your child stands a much, much greater chance of being killed in a car accident than of being seriously harmed while wandering unsupervised around your neighborhood."

When someone we know (all info expunged to protect her...and us, from her!) with children of similar ages heard the story of our kids' afternoon excursion, she was dumb-founded and gave us a piece of her mind about how ridiculously irresponsible we were as parents. We actually had felt very pleased with ourselves, seeing that experience as an indicator of how we were raising such independent and responsible kids.

What do you think?