Mom Lenore Skenazy urges parents to loosen up: Take your kid to a park, and leave 'em there!

[Valin]

NY Daily News:

Katie Nelson
5/19/10

She's either the coolest mom on the block - or the craziest.
A Queens woman on a crusade against overprotective parents is declaring this Saturday an independence day of sorts for the scooter set.
Lenore Skenazy, an author and former Daily News columnist, is urging parents to take their kids to a park - and leave them there alone.

And a lot of New Yorkers think she's out of her tree.
"Never in a million years would I do something that stupid," said Carmen Javier, a Park Slope mother of 8-year-old Juan.
"When the kid turns 18 - fine. Until then you watch them."

Skenazy sparked lively debate two years ago when she put one of her sons, then 9, on the subway and told him to head home.
Since then, she has written a book called "Free Range Kids" and now is trying to launch "Take Our Children to the Park...And Leave Them There Day."
The goal, she says, is teaching youngsters independence and social skills - within limits.

"I'm not saying we should leave our toddlers outside with no food," she said. "I'm suggesting taking our kids to a park in our neighborhood so they can meet more children."
Skenazy, who lives in Jackson Heights with Morry, 14, and Izzy, 12, says her kids are cooped up inside because no one is allowed to play outside alone.
"It's about breaking the ice for one day to get kids out to meet each other so this can become a normal thing," she explained.

(Snip)

Maybe it's Skenazy who needs to have her head examined?
Dr. Alan Hilfer, chief psychologist at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, says a 7-year-old shouldn't be left alone in a backyard, much less a park.
"Even if they have been taught well at a young age, their judgment and their tendency to think too impulsively sometimes interferes with them being able to make the right decision," Hilfer said.
He thinks unsupervised adventures should start with dry runs in the sixth grade and progress incrementally.
Janice Reynolds, 32, the Brooklyn mother of a 10-year-old boy, thinks Skenazy has the right idea. "New York has too many crazy, overprotective parents," she said. "There's something wrong when kids can't just play with kids."

Park officials took a neutral stance.
"There is no real hard and fast rule as much as use their best judgment to what's appropriate," said Eugene Patron, press director at Prospect Park.
"Children need to be out in nature, but young ones should be supervised."

[pollyannaish]

I swear—If the parents of yesteryear were bringing up kids like they did back in the day they'd be arrested. My brother and I used to roam all over the place when we were kids and so did my husband and his brother.

 

We weren't buckled up in the car, we lived in houses with lead paint and asbestos, we stayed home alone. We rode our bikes on the streets and played on monkey bars, swings without seatbelts and merry-go-rounds. We loved teeter-totters.

 

There were train tracks that ran next to our playground, which was also surrounded by "gasp" streets. But there was no fence. We didn't put sunscreen on before we headed out to play.

 

When I was in high school, about a third of the boys had gun racks in the back of their trucks and GUNS in the racks. Nobody thought anything of it.

 

What's amazing to me is that the "safer" we try to be, the less safe we feel. It's as if we've scared ourselves to death. The irony is that when we coop ourselves up and shut ourselves off from the world, we are making ourselves more vulnerable. Statistics show you are much, MUCH more likely to be the victim of someone you know than someone you don't know. It's terribly ironic and a crying shame.

 

And as a parent, I've fallen victim to this mentality. I feel that I've done my children an injustice over the years, and it's really a shame.

[Valin]

I swear—If the parents of yesteryear were bringing up kids like they did back in the day they'd be arrested. My brother and I used to roam all over the place when we were kids and so did my husband and his brother.

 

We weren't buckled up in the car, we lived in houses with lead paint and asbestos, we stayed home alone. We rode our bikes on the streets and played on monkey bars, swings without seatbelts and merry-go-rounds. We loved teeter-totters.

 

There were train tracks that ran next to our playground, which was also surrounded by "gasp" streets. But there was no fence. We didn't put sunscreen on before we headed out to play.

 

When I was in high school, about a third of the boys had gun racks in the back of their trucks and GUNS in the racks. Nobody thought anything of it.

 

What's amazing to me is that the "safer" we try to be, the less safe we feel. It's as if we've scared ourselves to death. The irony is that when we coop ourselves up and shut ourselves off from the world, we are making ourselves more vulnerable. Statistics show you are much, MUCH more likely to be the victim of someone you know than someone you don't know. It's terribly ironic and a crying shame.

 

And yet some how you managed to survive....AMAZING!

 

And as a parent, I've fallen victim to this mentality. I feel that I've done my children an injustice over the years, and it's really a shame.

 

 

It would appear you are not the only one, otherwise this article would not have been written.

 

 

I'm just glad I got the chance to be a kid in the 50's, if you stuck around the house to long someone would find something for you to do....cut grass, wash the car, wash dishes, take in the laundry....ICK!

[pollyannaish]

 

I'm just glad I got the chance to be a kid in the 50's, if you stuck around the house to long someone would find something for you to do....cut grass, wash the car, wash dishes, take in the laundry....ICK!

 

This STILL happens to me if I hang around the house too long.

[Pepper]

Don't tell anybody,

but mowing lawns for some spending money in skool

gasp, ready ??

my lawn mower

didn't

have

a kill switch on it.

 

[righteousmomma]

pollya

 

re your:

What's amazing to me is that the "safer" we try to be, the less safe we feel. It's as if we've scared ourselves to death. The irony is that when we coop ourselves up and shut ourselves off from the world, we are making ourselves more vulnerable. Statistics show you are much, MUCH more likely to be the victim of someone you know than someone you don't know. It's terribly ironic and a crying shame.

 

I heard this woman on Fox this morning and she said that (Surprisingly to me) crime was higher back in the 80s than today???

 

I totally see her point. And I was one of those probably overprotective parents though my two did play around our neighborhood in Ft. Worth and I never worried. I remember once letting my 8 year old son walk from school down the street to a friend's house ALONE. (Only he unknowingly had me "tailing" him in my car )

 

re your:

I swear—If the parents of yesteryear were bringing up kids like they did back in the day they'd be arrested.

 

Yesterday I heard this "expert" on Fox say that the mother who had her sheriff friend play act that he was going to put her 5 year old in jail for lighting matches was practicing child abuse --EMOTIONAL TRAUMA-- because she was trying to scare the kid as a lesson and anyway, she wondered what kind of parent would allow a 5 year old to have any contact with matches in the first place!