Parenting Without (or at least with less) Fear
Lenore Skenazy has a new book, Free Range Kids : Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, reviewed at STATS (link from Arts & Letters Daily):
Skenazy shot to startled stardom when she allowed her nine-year old son to ride the subway alone, then wrote about it in her column in the New York Sun. Cue lights, camera, daytime talk shows. Skenazy was branded “America’s Worst Mom,” a title she now sports proudly, and one that has inspired her efforts to persuade other parents to give their children a taste of the freedom they had growing up “without going nuts with worry.”
Her central thesis is this: life is good, people are mostly good, and kids are both hardy and more capable than we think. In fact, she explains, we’re living in what is “factually, statistically, and luckily for us, one of the safest periods for children in the history of the world.” The problem is that everywhere we look, we’re told otherwise. Which is why, perversely, in the safest of times, we’ve become the most neurotic parenting generation in history.
I was thinking along these lines earlier this week. My 5yo son Drake is in a day camp, and one day a week the teachers take the kids to the neighboring water park. Drake’s been doing this for weeks, and loves it. Then a mother of a new kid wondered if there was adequate supervision. I had a brief moment of worry, then self correction–he loves it, there are teachers, and there are lifeguards. And, I like the break I get. Enough.
It’s hard enough to regulate my own tendency to worry. It’s even more difficult when other parents worry more, or when I get the stink-eye from other parents who clearly don’t think I worry enough.
I’m discovering a lot of life lately can be answered simply with, “Lighten up, already.” I’m trying to do just that.