[00:00:00] Lenore Skenazy: I’m not a non-nervous parent. I’m a nervous parent, and I desperately want my kids to outlive me, and I want them to be safe, and I want them to be happy, and everything that anybody wants. Somehow, I just didn’t think that they were in danger every time they left the house. I didn’t think they needed a security detail.

[00:00:21] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show, and I am so delighted to have Lenore Skenazy join me today. I’ve been waiting for this for a year.

[00:00:37] Lenore: Ooh.

[00:00:37] Gretchen: I read her book Free-Range Kids a year ago. I laughed, I cried, I was enthralled. You must read it. That’s not why we’re here today.

[00:00:48] Lenore: That’s one of the reasons we’re here. That’s a great–

[00:00:49] Gretchen: [crosstalk] Yes, absolutely.

[00:00:50] Lenore: That’s a great book. Go on.

[00:00:52] Gretchen: It is a great book. It’s terrific. What I loved about it is I think I might have been you in a little bit of secret, as far as letting my kids free range, and I didn’t even know that’s what I was letting them do. I am delighted to welcome you today. We’re going to have an epic conversation. Lenore, will you please be so kind as to introduce yourself?

[00:01:17] Lenore: Me, I’m Lenore Skenazy, rhymes with crazy. I am the president of Let Grow, which is a non-profit that’s promoting childhood independence. I founded the book and the blog, and the movement Free-Range Kids, which says basically our kids are just a lot smarter and stronger, and just better than our culture gives them credit for. Our culture is always telling us that our kids are fragile, that they can’t handle anything, that everything bad equals trauma, even if it’s tiny. Really, I feel like we have a culture that’s undermining our confidence in our kids, which then undermines our kids’ confidence in themselves. I’m just trying to say, we’re breathing it in. It’s not our fault. It’s out there, but it’s driving us crazy.

[00:02:04] Gretchen: I completely agree with you, and I’m really excited to have the opportunity to discuss this in a little bit more depth. I know that you have dug into this with a journalist’s eye for detail, and I am excited to have this conversation. Lenore, where shall we begin? Because boy, this is like eating an elephant with a spoon.

[00:02:27] Lenore: My personal story begins many years ago when I let my nine-year-old ride the subway in New York City, where we live, and I wrote a newspaper column, Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone. Two days later, I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR, defending myself. Then I started the Free-Range Kids blog because I felt like my message wasn’t getting out, which is I’m not a non-nervous parent. I’m a nervous parent, and I desperately want my kids to outlive me, and I want them to be safe, and I want them to be happy, and everything that anybody wants. Somehow, I just didn’t think that they were in danger every time they left the house. I didn’t think they needed a security detail. I think that’s what put me out of step with the culture. Maybe it’s because I’m older, but I remember walking to school when I was five. That’s a long time ago. Then, actually, when I got to the corner, the crossing guard was 10. That was back in the day when we used to think that kids could walk by themselves, and 10-year-olds were not only competent to walk by themselves, but could even stop traffic and help younger kids. It upsets me as a reporter who can see that the crime was going up until the early 90s, and then it’s been going down. Boy, I was just reading another article like we’re on record, 2025 could be the lowest crime rate on record in America. I know that seems impossible to believe. You just have to look at the FBI statistics. 2024 was really good too. Things went up a little during COVID, but then they went back down following this general trend. To act as if we’re in 1993 when the murder rate was 10 times what it is today doesn’t make sense if you want to open the door and feel gratitude that we are living in never perfectly safe times, but pretty safe times. If you know that independence is not a crazy thing to choose for your kids, it’s something very healthy and helpful. I know what my kid needs. I know what I had. I know what helps kids thrive is a sense of independence, which leads to competence, which leads to confidence, and I want to give that to my kids. All I’m saying is you can be very safety conscious and still giving your kids more independence than we usually do today.

[00:04:49] Gretchen: I just came off of a conference this past weekend, huge conference here in Florida, lots of kids, lots of parents. I was amazed at the number of parents who you could see them become visibly upset when they couldn’t have eyes on their children. I wonder what that does to kids to feel so fragile that you can’t be out of your parents’ sight. You did an extensive amount of research when you wrote Free-Range Kids. What I loved about it is you gave us all that research with a great sense of humor.

[00:05:29] Lenore: Right. That I’ve lost, alas. That’s what happens when you’re on the same topic for 17 years. Yes. There was a really interesting piece written in the Journal of Pediatrics that came out in 2023. It said that as over the decades, not just since COVID and not just since the iPhone, but over the decades from the 50s to the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, as kids, independent mobility, getting themselves to school, walking around town and free play, just playing, not in a soccer uniform for a coach, but just like, “Hey, guys. I got a mitt, you got a bat,” as that has gone down over the decades, kids’ anxiety and depression have been going up.

I think what we have even in the last 10 years or so, thanks to tracking technology, has become a self-fulfilling loop, which is that parents are able to see everything their kids do. A lot of regular schools send home like how the kid behaved in school that day and what their grade was on the Spanish quiz. I’ve seen preschools that send home, almost like a NASA detailed report on, like “9:57, child peed, 10:52, peed again. I hate to tell you what happened at 12:27, but another element entered, it’s like number one and number two.” It’s like, why are we getting it? Then it even has the exact time that the kid at 12:13, lunch eaten, all the apple slices, and most of the chicken nuggets.

Maybe they don’t give you the exact number of chicken nuggets. I feel like we’re getting so much information on everything our kids are doing, seeing, eating, reading, walking, how many steps they took, how far they went, what second they entered the door, did they get on the school bus, what moment they entered the school. I was talking to a pastor’s wife the other night. I was like, “In the Garden of Eden, the thing that gets humanity in trouble is they eat a certain fruit. That fruit is from the tree of knowledge. They start getting information, and things are bad.” I feel like we are just gobbling, like it’s been mashed into applesauce and we’re sucking it out of those little pouches now.

We’re getting so much information about every aspect of our kids’ childhood that we feel like, “Oh, that doesn’t seem perfect, and that seems a little worrisome, and maybe I should step in.” We keep stepping in, and then that makes us think we have to step in more because then we’re close to them and we watch like, “Oh, she didn’t share the shovel in the sandbox, or he should have gotten a B and he got a B-.” The more information you have, the more worried you become. The more information you think you need, the more worried you become. I’m blathering, but I think you see that there’s a cycle here. We know too much about our kids, and the answer is to know less.

[00:08:28] Gretchen: It does become a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, does it not? I was thinking in preparation for our conversation today, I remember reading a book called The Face on the Milk Carton.

[00:08:40] Lenore: Ah, yes.

[00:08:41] Gretchen: That was such a wild– I look back on that and I look at how my attitude changed about my own safety in that period of time. I had a mother whose picture was in the dictionary next to overprotective. Maybe my pendulum swung a little bit the other way because I wanted to give my kids as much experiential learning as possible. My kids were homeschooled, but I also vividly remember a neighbor down the street who drove past my house one day and called and said, “Do you realize the boys are on the roof?” I said, “I set the ladder up so they could get up there. They’re running a science experiment.” She thought I was crazy.

[00:09:26] Lenore: What was the science experiment?

[00:09:27] Gretchen: It was something to do– They had made an anemometer to measure wind speed, and it wasn’t working terrifically from the yard. I said, “Go up on the roof and see if it will give you better readings.” That was a 5-year-old and an 11-year-old.

[00:09:46] Lenore: Wow. You are way braver than me. Let the record show.

[00:09:50] Gretchen: As a parent now, I’m grateful. My six kids are adults. My youngest is soon to be 20 next month. How do we change our perspective so that we can give kids a little bit more latitude so they can learn on their own, so they can grow into having a confidence in themselves. I think that’s what you’re saying with this connectedness of care, we’re creating anxiety.

[00:10:20] Lenore: Let me start out by just quoting Wendy Mogel. She’s the one who wrote The Blessings of a Skinned Knee. She was before the rest of us, recognizing that letting go a little was really good for the parent and for the kid. The thing she said that resonated the most with me was that– It was mean. She said, “Don’t be surprised if sometimes you feel like your kid’s friends are a little smarter or nicer or better than yours.” She said, the reason, and we all feel a little guilty when we recognize that in ourselves, but the reason is that when you look at anything closely, really closely, you see the flaws.

Right now, we are looking at our kids so closely as we were just talking about, that we see everything that they’re doing that’s a little risky or a little dumb or not nice or not optimal, and so we want to step in. When we step in, first of all, we stopped the learning that was going on when they were trying this thing that was a little too hard for them or that they weren’t doing perfectly, because now we’ve done it for them.

As we all know, the experiential learning requires the experience as opposed to the parent having the experience. The opposite, if you can take a step back, that’s the only thing I’ve seen that actually changes parents and kids. Let Grow was started about eight years ago because Daniel Shuchman, who was chairman of an organization that fights for free speech, was talking to Jonathan Haidt, who most recently wrote The Anxious Generation. They were seeing–

[00:11:50] Gretchen: Which I’d have to admit the hardest book I have read in probably the last five years. I had to eat it in small bites, but boy, it was worthwhile reading, but it was tough.

[00:12:02] Lenore: Then you get to the happy chapters at the end, which are the ones I got to help him with. One was for parents and one was for schools. The idea behind both of those chapters is that in a culture that has said you must be with your kids at all time– There are schools that won’t let children get off the bus unless there’s a parent waiting at the bus stop to walk them home, whether that’s 2 feet away, 2 houses away, or 2 miles away. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The parent has to be there.

When John and Dan were talking to each other about kids on campus feeling very fragile, feeling that when a speaker came to campus that they disagreed with, instead of thinking, “I’m going to go and raise my hand and say, ‘I read a study that says the opposite,’ or instead of protesting that this guy is dumb, out there you’re allowed to protest, you’re allowed to have free speech.” The kids felt so unsafe that they demanded that the speaker not even come to campus or that they have a safe room that they could go to, a safe space, or a trigger warning. Also that the kids on campus were availing themselves of the counseling services more.

I love the fact that there is less shame about the idea of needing a therapist or needing some counseling or needing some help. That’s really good. I am sad that the numbers of kids who feel they need this keep growing. The problems that they’re talking about seem often less upsetting than you would have expected, like a mouse in the dorm or an argument with your roommate, which are parts of life. God, there’s a lot of mice here. Yuck, but I’m not going to the therapist. Anyways, so John and Dan were talking about this fragility in these kids on campus, and they said, “Trying to make them open-minded and curious and excited about things at age 18, 19, 20 is a late-stage intervention.

Why don’t we try to start out kids with a more open mind and more curiosity and more confidence about, like, I can handle, I can talk to people I disagree with. I can be open to new ideas and not feel I’m threatened.” John had read Free-Range Kids, and he was raising his kids free range. He said, “Let’s do something with Lenore.” They came to me and they said, “Let’s start a nonprofit.” I said two things. One is we have to bring in Peter Gray, who is a psychology professor at Boston College who writes about the importance of mixed-age free play. What happens when kids are just playing on their own, and they are arguing and they’re figuring out what to do.

We brought him in, and we decided that Let Grow was not going to care about thought leadership. We were all thought leaders. Woo hoo, doesn’t matter. In my case, thoughts go like this: “Oh, Lenore makes a lot of sense. Oh, I had such a good time when I was a kid. Oh, I love playing outside. We played up till the street lights came on, but what if I kept my kid outside? What if something terrible happens to her? Oh, my God. It would be all my fault. I could never live with myself.” No, that’s the circle. I just heard it so many times. I’ve lectured for 17 years around the world. Everybody, “Oh, yes, great. I agree, I agree.” No, nothing would change.

Let Grow was founded to be an action-oriented– All we care about is action. The action that really helps parents breathe freely again and exalt in their child’s development and bravery, and readiness for the world is you have to actually put the cart before the horse. By that, I mean you have to gently push the parents to let go of their kid, like you were seeing at this conference, before they’re ready to, because it’s only by letting go and then having the kid come back and they got the milk for dinner or they walked the dog or they meant to get the bread, but somehow they got candy bars instead, or they forgot to get their change or they got lost on the way home.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a wild success or a silly failure. Either way, you realize letting go felt scary and then fantastic. We are as hardwired as we are to worry. We’re hardwired to be thrilled when our kids do something on their own. That’s a joy that our culture has leached out of us by saying you have to be with them all the time. Let Grow in schools, which I realized I’m talking to the wrong audience here, but when we have schools do the Let Grow experience, it’s everyone in the school gets the same homework assignment, all the kids, go home and do something new on your own with your parents’ permission, but without your parents.

Then we give a giant list. You can climb a tree, go to the store, go to the skate park, whatever it is. You can even do this on your own, and you can certainly do it with some friends or if you’re in any kind of group, whether that’s a book club or a church group or the people at the library that you see all the time. Everybody has their kid do something new on their own, and everybody gets this jolt of like, “That was so fun, so much easier than I thought. I feel so great, and look how proud my kid is that that’s what releases you enough to do it again.”

Then the kid goes a little farther, or they do it a second time, and you’re a little less nervous. They do it a third time, and you forgot to look up. Of course, they’re walking the dog. That’s their job now. It seems like this fear, like you were talking about at this conference, is so icy thick, like ready for ice fishing, like you have to drill, drill, drill down, and that’s how thick the fear is. It turns out that the fear is really this thin layer, and you can crack it with one or two times of letting your kid do something on their own, and then comes the thaw, and then comes the joy.

[00:17:48] Gretchen: I think I understand. For me, it has always been that way. My 18-year-old planned a trip to Italy by himself with a couple of friends last year. He also went to Las Vegas to see a concert in the sphere-

[00:18:09] Lenore: Oh, the sphere, how cool.

[00:18:10] Gretchen: -when it had first opened. He, as an 18-year-old, was doing that on his own, and my friends were like, “Are you crazy?” I said, “No, I raised him to be independent. These are my expectations.” I have a 26-year-old who’s about ready to go hike the Continental Divide Trail from end to end. He’s going to be gone for five and a half months.

[00:18:30] Lenore: Oh, my God.

[00:18:31] Gretchen: My mother would have given birth to kittens if I had suggested something like that. Maybe it’s a little bit different of a culturation, but does it also come from the fact that it’s harder for us to even get kids off the sofa now than it was when I was raising my children?

[00:18:52] Lenore: Yes. There’s so many factors that led to this insular childhood. Certainly, most recently, there’s phones. I also think of phones as like, we were already denying kids the chance to walk to the store or to go out and play till the streetlights came on. Then we gave them a portal. I always think of like Narnia. Remember the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. The portal happens to be a phone, and that’s where they can go and hang out with their friends, play games, go on quests, find out new things, flirt, laugh. At least they have this place to go, which is an alternative world where they can be kids again.

The other Let Grow initiative, besides the Let Grow experience, sending the kids home with the homework, go outside and do something on your own, is we ask schools, and it can be homeschool associations, it can be libraries, to stay open for this mixed-age, no phones, free play. What you have there is, you have a critical mass of kids, because it’s school, so some of them stay. You have some adult there, but they are tasked with being a lifeguard. They just are there, crouching with an EpiPen, but they don’t organize the games, they don’t solve the arguments, they’re just there in case of emergencies. Then you put out loose parts, or the kids put out loose parts. They can bring them from home. An old typewriter, and cardboard boxes, and balls, and chalk. God, I was just talking to a lady who did this for a week with high school students. They had a one-week in-school break, and they could do anything they wanted. You could learn crocheting, you could learn video making, and some of the kids just wanted to play. She was worried because these kids were 15, and she thought they barely played. They’ve been in travel soccer their whole lives.

She had the brilliant idea of also mixing them with, I think it was like first and third graders, I’m not exactly sure how young the youngest kids were, but the older kids were, I think sophomores in high school, or sophomores and seniors. You don’t need to learn how to play any more than you need to learn how to go down a slide. It is instinctive. You see this thing, you want to go from here to here on your butt. That week of playing, they made up games, they didn’t like the game they made up, they changed it. At first, it was going to be everybody off the island, and then they wanted everybody on the island. Then she was so smart.

She did a before-and-after study, asking kids the week before, “How many friends do you have? How anxious are you? How much do you dread getting up in the morning?” These are New York City private school kids. There’s a lot of dread. Then she mentioned it at the end, and like, they’d made new friends, of course, because they’d met these little kids. Also, they’d been in this new group of whoever wanted to play. The easiest way to feel like you have some worth in the world, have some cool ideas, make friends, have a reason for getting up in the morning, is free play, is fun time with your– This is for me, this is my free play today. I knew I was going to get to talk to you.

I was excited, today’s not going to be boring, I get to talk to somebody, yay. If you keep the schools open for that kind of free play, it turns out that kids love it more than their phones. I heard of one guy who started a– We call it a Let Grow Play Club. I don’t care what you call it. If you call it that, then our donors know that Let Grow Play Clubs are growing around the country. Anyways, this one was in Jakarta for some reason. The guy who was running the school, the headmaster, started a Let Grow Play Club five days a week. His own kids came, and for the first three days, they both sat on the bench like this, because they couldn’t go home and play with their phones.

Then by day four, they were so bored that they started playing. Now, of course, nobody misses their phones, because they have what they were programmed by Mother Nature to want, which is time in a group, different ages, playing, and not on two dimensions. You got all five senses going. Friends that you see again– We did a study once of asking kids, “Would you like playing online better or in real life?” One kid poignantly said, he likes video games, but when he takes off his headset, there’s no one there. This way, a play club it’s so simple. Whatever else you were going to do after school, offer this as well. Whatever else you were going to have, you’re going to have a knitting club at the library, you’re going to have a book of the week club at the library, also have free play. It’s just like giving kids food.

[00:23:31] Gretchen: I can’t believe we’re at the top of the hour. What-

[00:23:33] Lenore: Oh, yes.

[00:23:34] Gretchen: -words would you have for our listeners today, Lenore? This has been so much fun. I can sit and listen to you forever.

[00:23:42] Lenore: People always say that. I always think that’s like, “Lenore, you really talk a lot. Here, we’re calling this an end.” My words are of empathy, which is that it is hard to stay hopeful and positive in a culture that’s constantly this din of doom, that something terrible will happen to your kid, and it’ll all be your fault, and you will never forgive yourself if, and then fill in the blank. Then they fill in the blank every day with every possible disaster. I hope we can together reject this culture that’s driving us crazy. The way we do it is by believing in each other, believing in ourselves, believing in our kids.

Also, I wanted to start a petition, like Promising Grace. If something bad does happen, if something terrible happens to your kid, my first reaction won’t be like, “Gretchen, that’ll show you.” It should be, “There but for the grace of God go I, and my heart goes out to you, and we will never understand how this universe works,” as opposed to, “If you were a better mom, you’d be smiling today.” I want us to all give each other the benefit of the doubt.

[00:25:00] Gretchen: Yes. Yes. I think those are very wise words. Lenore, I want to thank you for spending this hour with us.

[00:25:05] Lenore: Oh, so fun.

[00:25:06] Gretchen: You have provided us with enormous food for thought. I will make sure that the Let Grow website and your book, and Jonathan’s book are all included in the show notes.

[00:25:17] Lenore: Oh, great.

[00:25:17] Gretchen: [crosstalk] If you’re willing, I’d love to include your study guide because I think I might have hit on something that I want to get some homeschool moms to do.

[00:25:25] Lenore: You know what? I got to find how do you write away for the study guide? I’ll give you the link because then, at some point, someday, I’ve gathered all these email addresses. I’ve done nothing with them, but someday I will. I want those email addresses, and I’ll definitely send you the link.

[00:25:41] Gretchen: Terrific. That would be amazing and awesome. Lenore, thank you so much for your time. I know our audience can see how much virtue I found in getting the opportunity to talk to you, and I will look forward to being invited into our guests’ living rooms again soon. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. Lenore, I’m grateful. Thank you for the–

[00:26:03] Lenore: I’m grateful, too, Gretchen. Thank you so much.

[00:26:05] Gretchen: Alrighty. Bye-bye.

[00:26:06] Lenore: [crosstalk] Bye.

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