WEBVTT - How Free Range Parenting Works 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:03.400 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of My 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:12.240 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:15.120 I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:18.119 there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you should 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:24.759 know about kids. Can I see a right off the 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:29.319 bat here? I presumed you would. All right, there's a 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:31.240 couple of c o as I want to issue. One, 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:37.280 we are not telling anyone how to parent their children, indeed, uh. 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:42.120 And two we realized that the whole concept of free 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:50.320 range parenting that will follow is comes from a place 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:55.120 of extreme privilege. Yes, to be able to entertain the 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:57.920 idea of free range parenting comes from a place of 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:01.320 extreme privilege. Okay, I've Can I amend that or should 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:03.760 I wait until we talk about that part to kind 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.560 of amend it? No, you can amend it, so so 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:11.319 to me, free range parenting, having the freedom to free 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:16.520 range parent is what I saw it ties in with 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:19.600 parenting that's already being done by people who might not 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:23.440 have a choice. Are you saying that the the um, 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:26.720 the the ability to choose whether you want a free 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:31.200 range parent or not is privileged? Yes? Okay, Yes, agreed. 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:33.759 I got you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and again we'll 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:36.760 get into that, but um, well we'll get into that 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:38.160 at the end, but I just want to just go 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:40.800 ahead and lead that off because it's um a lot 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:43.600 of privilege involved with being able to say, you know 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:46.839 that you want to free range parent Are you going 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:49.080 to Are you going to land one way or another 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:54.120 on it on whether or not I support free range parenting? Yeah? 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:57.400 Uh yeah, I mean Emily, and I don't title it 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:00.160 or say hey, I think we should do this as 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:05.400 a style, but we, um, as it turns out, are 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:10.160 sort of dabbling in free range parenting a bit as 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:11.680 much as you can for a three and a half 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:16.120 year old. So you're listening to your instincts. I've never 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:18.799 read a parenting book, not knocking them, but I've never 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:22.440 read one. And we parent by instinct, and our daughter 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.600 has always had a lot of room to free play 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:28.680 and explore and figure stuff out on our own and 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:32.320 fall down and get back up and all that all 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.800 that stuff. Okay, I'm reading between the lines. You guys 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:40.800 haven't decided yet, all right, so ready free range parenting 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:44.120 go okay, So, um, do you remember when we were kids, 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:47.480 back when we used to hang out when we were 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:51.520 kids mm hmm, and we would go ride bikes together 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:55.400 at like UM sunrise. We had no idea where we 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:57.800 were going to go, but it might involve a swamp, 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:02.360 could involve a glacier. UM. There may have been like uh, 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.079 rail riding hoboes that we shared lunch with. Who knows 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:08.840 what the day was gonna bring, but we were up 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:11.119 for all that and may or may not have engaged 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:14.520 in any of that UM during that day. And then 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:17.079 at the end of the day, around sunset, maybe a 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:19.240 little later, depending on whether it was summer or not, 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.519 we ride our bikes back home, say see you tomorrow, 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:26.040 go to our respective houses UM, and then talk the 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:28.760 night away on our soup cans that were connected by 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:33.000 UM a rope. And that was our childhood, right we 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:37.200 turned out. Sure, I have have talked about my childhood 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:38.480 some growing up, but you know, I grew up in 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:42.440 the woods basically on like a couple of acres of 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:46.800 land with a creek and forest, not in a subdivision, 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:49.200 but on a street with like seven houses in the woods, 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:53.800 and my mother had a UM. We had this giant 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:57.440 iron bell it's probably about eighteen inches across that on 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:00.080 a mounted on a big um like a telephone and 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:04.280 pole kind of right beside our driveway, and she would 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:06.440 at the you know, when it was dinner time in 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:11.120 the evening, she would go pull that bell and you 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:13.800 could hear it from like a mile away. This the 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:17.440 bell tolling. And that's when Scott and I were like, 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:19.320 all right, we you know, it's time to go eat 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:25.320 um after having been out all day long with zero supervision. 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:29.760 And I had a great mom, Like, she wasn't neglectful. 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:32.880 This is just how it was done. Yeah, were you 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:35.320 a latch key kid? Um? I know your mom was 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:37.039 a teacher, but did she stay at home with you? 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:40.320 She didn't go back to teaching. She she quit teaching 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.400 to raise kids and then started up again when I 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.839 was like I feel like eighth or ninth grade or 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:49.359 something like that. Okay, yeah, my mom took off until 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:54.200 I was like six seven. I guess, like kinder no, 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:56.520 maybe she's still around a kindergard I guess about first 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:58.960 grade when I was when I started school and she 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:01.760 was like, okay, I'm going back to nursing um. And 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:03.600 then after that point, I was a last key kid 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:05.480 for like the rest of my life. But I had 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:08.560 like older sisters who would be home around the time 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.520 I would, And but I had like my own key 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:13.919 to my house that was just a couple of blocks 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:16.000 away from my school, and I would walk myself or 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:18.120 ride my bike myself, and then i'd be home by 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:20.520 myself if my sister was doing something else for a 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:22.640 couple of hours, until either my mom or my dad 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:25.640 showed up. Um. And I think I turned out pretty 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:29.400 well too, so that I even key. Ever, Well, you 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:31.520 guys probably didn't lock your doors if your mom rang 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:33.359 a bell on the telephone poll to call you in 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:36.520 for dinner. I don't think we locked our door, okay, 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:40.120 But but you were. You had free range literally of 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:45.320 your your house, your yard, the woods around you. Um. 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.159 But here's a really big caveat from what I've seen. 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:51.320 I think a lot of people who are like um, 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:56.200 who aren't familiar necessarily fringe free range parenting, assumed that 0:05:56.240 --> 0:05:59.560 we could have done anything we wanted and gotten away 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:03.280 with it because we were we had overly permissive parents. 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:05.520 That's not That's not the case for me, and I 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:07.760 would dare say that wasn't the case for you as well. 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.960 That we actually had plenty of rules and structure. We 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:13.760 were just also given a lot of freedom to do 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:17.760 things within that rules and structure, including geographic freedom right 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:22.560 for sure. Okay, yeah, so that is what I thought 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:25.719 all kids had up to this time. And I knew 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:28.400 that there was like such things as piano and Mandarin 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:31.600 lessons or um mandarin classes, that kind of stuff, like 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:33.480 things that kids were taking more and more and they 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:35.560 were really busy and stressed out, and they had like 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:38.280 like um iPhones at age seven, that kind of thing. 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:42.760 But I still thought that this happened, and I was 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:46.320 really shocked, about as shocked as I've ever been in 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:48.840 researching an episode of stuff you should know to find 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:51.840 that that is not the case. That not only does 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:54.640 has this been kind of squeezed out by other activities, 0:06:54.839 --> 0:07:00.240 it's actually become criminalized behavior by society at large, the 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:04.160 parents who were raising children today. I was blown away 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:08.039 to find this out. I really legitimately didn't know. Yeah, 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:11.320 I mean, and getting back to the activities, you know, 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:13.320 I played some soccer in high school and then I 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.400 did like church sports, which there's not a lot of. 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:18.440 I mean, I think we did like maybe one basketball 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:21.560 practice a week, um, and so it wasn't like everyday 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.640 practice and stuff like that. I never took lessons of 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:27.840 any kind. Uh, like I taught my self guitar and 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:30.400 all that stuff. So like, I I don't think I 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:38.520 literally ever had a structured post school activity in my life. Yeah, 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:42.280 did you say church sports? Yeah, I played church softball 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:46.640 and basketball. Did like everybody win every game? No, it 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.560 was actually fiercely competitive. Okay, I'm just kidding. No, no, 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:52.760 no it was. It was it was legit like we 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:54.800 had a pretty good basketball team and in the league 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:58.480 was pretty impressive too. But um, yeah, I don't, I don't, 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:00.840 I don't never signed it. I never had a class. 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.000 Like the idea of my mom having been like, all right, 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:07.280 I'm gonna take you to your violin lesson and then 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:12.640 on the weekends we have gymnastics and uh whatever else 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:16.640 people are doing these days, was just just we didn't 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.200 do that. She was just like, go play, right. So, 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:20.960 so there has been and we'll talk about all the 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:23.360 reasons why, but there has been a movement away from 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:27.560 the kind of childhood we had a very pronounced one. Um. 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:29.920 If you if you look at you know, culture is 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:32.720 a pendulum swinging one way or another. It has swung 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:37.040 very far the opposite way to where kids lives are 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:41.240 structured um down to the minute, where they have actual 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:43.719 calendars and schedules that they have to keep up with 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:48.800 because they have so many things going on. Um and 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:54.760 and there has come about in reaction to that, uh, 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:59.080 an antithesis basically, and it is nothing more than letting 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:02.280 kids grow up the way that you and I did, 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:06.960 um and then and it has become so novel in 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.880 the face of of the world and the culture that 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:11.920 we have in raising kids in the United States now 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:14.640 UM that it has its own name. It's a movement. 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:17.400 They have to go to court to defend themselves. It's 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:19.680 so weird. But really, if you strip it down and 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:22.400 look at it, all they're doing is raising their kids 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:25.040 the way you and I and and Jerry I'm sure 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:29.400 was raised. Well yeah, I mean to a certain degree, um. 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:31.480 But the whole idea, and it's not just like I 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:34.360 want you to grow up the way I did. It's 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:36.920 what it really is is an argument that says, you 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:42.080 know what, kids will grow up healthier and happier. Uh 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.320 if they have freedom to play and they have freedom 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.800 to fail and freedom to um get in a playground, 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:51.040 scrap and to work it out with another kid on 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:53.920 their own and figure things out for themselves. They will 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:57.400 end up better people because of this. It's not oh, 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:01.480 I'm lazy or I have nostalgia for my childhood. It's uh. 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:03.560 And and you know, there's a lot of research into 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.600 this now or some research that says, no, what we're 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:11.439 doing is is trying to make better future adults by 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:17.400 not hovering over my child scheduling them to death and um, 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:20.720 you know, every time they fall, run over, pick themselves 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:23.840 up and like and you know, rock them to sleep, 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:26.760 you know if they get a boo boo. Right, So 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:30.520 I sound so judgy. I don't mean that. Well, let's 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:32.559 let's just take a second. Let's take a break real 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:34.880 quick and like connect ourselves and then we'll come back 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:37.880 and we'll really get into what free range parenting is. Well, 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.880 now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:45.200 to learn a thing or two from Josh, Damn, Chuck. 0:10:45.520 --> 0:11:06.640 It's stuff you should know, all right, stuff? Okay, Chuck? 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:09.640 So I think you demonstrated something that is um has 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:13.400 made free range parenting very unpalatable to a lot of 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.000 a lot of parents who don't raise their kids that way. 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.960 And that it seems to be a reaction, um, almost 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:24.480 an in your face to some people reaction or judgment 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:29.199 of um, that helicopter style parenting where you're always kind 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:32.560 of around your kid there, Um, their entire life is 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:36.560 very structured and supervised, including playtime. UM, and that free 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:38.640 range parenting is meant to be a reaction to that. 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:40.600 And in some ways it is a reaction to that, 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:42.720 but it also stands on its own. And if you 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:44.720 step back and look at it and look at free 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:48.480 range parenting not as a reaction to helicopter parenting, but 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:51.520 as its own thing, is its own philosophy for how 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:53.760 to raise a kid, and you strip away like the 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:56.840 judginess and all that stuff. It holds up to me. 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:58.880 And like you said, there's been a lot of um, 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:01.360 a lot of a lot more study recently, but the 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:05.559 whole thing really started back in two thousand eight, um, 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:08.360 by a journalist. It wasn't a child psychologist, It wasn't 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:14.240 a child development psychologist, it wasn't a child development, child analyst, psychologist, 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:17.200 none of those things. I made that last one up, 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:23.680 by the way. It was a journalist named Leonor's Skenazi. Yeah, 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:26.400 so she was a New York mom. And in two 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.280 thousand and eight, she wrote a column for The New 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:32.000 York Sun called Why I let my nine year old 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:34.840 ride the subway alone. She was in a store one 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:37.920 day in Manhattan and her son had been badgering her 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:41.040 to be able to ride the subway and bus back 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:46.720 home by himself. And finally one day she said, all right, great, 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:50.120 let's do this. Here's a subway map, here's a subway card, 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:55.520 here's twenty bucks. Um, here's some change for a pay phone. Um, 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:59.680 have at it. The kid made it home. Uh, and 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:06.040 he said he was quote ecstatic with independence. Yeah. And 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:09.040 like she got a lot of blowback from this from 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:11.839 like the judgment goes both ways. I mean there were 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:15.400 people that said it was neglect and abuse for her 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:17.480 to do this and let her kid ride the subway alone. 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:20.000 Oh oh yes, Yeah. If you had to divide the 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:22.400 two sides up and start weighing which one was a 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:25.400 little judge e er, you would definitely your hand would 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:30.480 be much lower holding um the helicopter parents side for sure. Um. Yeah. 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.839 If you're a free range kid proponent or you raise 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:38.080 your kids following that, there's a whole burden, whole social 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:40.440 burden that you have in addition to the burden of 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:42.200 raising your kids that you have to put up with 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:45.439 for sure. Yeah, and I should point out to real 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:47.559 quick that it all depends on upon your kids too. 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:51.480 I don't think there are any sweeping generalizations. Um my 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:56.200 daughter has always been very, um just instinctively kind of 0:13:56.240 --> 0:14:00.199 safe and smart about stuff. Um, other kids in her 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:04.960 class are just like a little wild banshees, and I 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.720 would probably be a lot more um worried if she 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:11.360 was the kind of kid who has an instinct to 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:14.520 like jump out of a tree, um instead of like 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:17.480 back down very slowly out of a tree. So right, 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:19.760 it's all It's all different depending on your kid, you know, 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:22.520 or a kid who like can't seem to shake being 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:26.960 totally fascinated with matches or knives or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:28.680 I think that was a really good point. Like it's 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:31.480 you shouldn't sweep or generalize, but I think that's an 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:34.480 even larger point to people should be left to raise 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:38.960 their children, um how they see fit. Yeah, given a 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:43.880 certain amount of um trust invested in the parents that 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:46.800 the parent isn't going to harm the kid or let 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.960 harm come to the kid because that's their parent, right right. Okay, 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:53.640 So this whole thing started with Lenora Skins, and like 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:56.360 you said, she got a lot of blowback, but she 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.240 also got a really positive response to an ex actually 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:03.000 parlay the whole thing from that New York sun Um 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.640 article into a blog that she called free Range Kids. 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:09.640 So from what I understand, she coined the term free 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:13.480 range kids and started writing about this stuff. And at 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:17.240 first a lot of it was just like it's it's good. 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:19.640 It's on its face, it's obvious that this is how 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:21.880 you should raise a kid. You know, kids need play, 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:24.280 they need to learn how to pick themselves back up 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:27.440 when they fall down. Um. And not only that, you're 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:29.680 doing a disservice to your kid when you pick them 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:32.480 up after they fall down, um, because they're not learning 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:36.400 how to get back up themselves. Uh. And over time 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:39.240 it kind of went as people became more and more 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:43.760 enamored with her philosophy or this whole free range kid's idea. Um. 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.880 More child psychologists started weighing in and the whole movement 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:51.760 kind of took the shape and they figured out that 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:55.760 for a parent to kind of see the light as 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:59.080 they as far as they were concerned, they had to 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:02.600 first change just the mindset about what kind of world 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:05.240 they were raising a kid in, because if you're a 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:10.600 free range kid parent, um, you probably don't feel as 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:13.760 threatened by the world in general as say a helicopter 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:19.040 parent would. Um ounce for ounce, Yeah for sure. UM. 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:21.880 I mean when when when parents have experimented with this, 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:25.480 the the changes that they've seen and their kids have 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:30.320 been pretty striking. Um if anecdotal. UM. There's this one woman, 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:35.520 Dana Bloomberg. She's a school counselor in suburban Chicago. And 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:37.280 we should also point out depends on where you live 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.080 as well. If you live in a very safe suburb 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:42.160 or way out in the country, it's a little different 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:44.960 than a kid like in the middle of the city 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:48.000 or something like that. But she gave her kid a 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:51.280 lot of free range um starting in the second grade, 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:55.720 and got some neighborhood parents involved and letting their kids 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:57.680 do it. And they said, before you know it, they 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:00.440 had this little, you know, little gang of kids kind 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:02.960 of touring around the neighborhood, are on their own, and 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:06.040 she's getting all these texts from these different parents, UM 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:10.639 saying like what a big change has happened, Uh, in 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:13.000 their own kid. One parent even said it was life 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:16.000 changing for her daughter, gave her a nuisance of confidence, 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:20.680 and um, that's sort of what the free range thing 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.120 can look like. But like you were saying, it all 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:28.720 comes down to a squashing appearance fear, the biggest fear, 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:33.600 which is my child will get abducted, or my child 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:37.000 will get um uh, there will be a sexual predator 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:40.120 to target my child, or heaven forbid, my child will 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:45.439 get kidnapped and murdered. Right, because you can understand and 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:48.040 it's really tough to fault somebody who doesn't want their 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:53.600 kid wandering around by themselves because they're afraid that something 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:56.160 really bad is going to happen to their kid. So 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:00.760 kind of the first step to um, to adopting like 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:04.479 a free range kid attitude, is to adjusting how you 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.960 see the world. Um And they think they think that 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.080 with there are several things like if you it's really 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:14.360 fascinated me. I love cultural changes, especially when we can 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:18.640 point to different things, seemingly unrelated things that all kind 0:18:18.640 --> 0:18:21.480 of converge and has changed the world in ways you 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:25.200 never think of that seems to have happened to produce 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:29.240 today's helicopter parents or at least to produce the level 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.280 of fear, the climate of fear that the world is 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:37.760 an inherently dangerous, brutal um, sadistic place. That that where 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:42.600 children have no call to be wandering around themselves. UM. 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:44.960 That that is actually you can trace that back to 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.320 a convergence of things that have happened starting in like 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:51.800 the late seventies and early eighties. UM. And in particular 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:58.040 there was some high profile UH child murder cases basically 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:01.840 UM that all kind of took place between nineteen seventy 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:05.800 nine in Night one, and those really changed a lot 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:09.720 of parents minds about things. Yeah. Um. In New York, 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:13.120 the very sad story of six year old Eaton pats 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:18.960 Um disappeared and was later found out to have been murdered. UM. 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:22.960 John Walsh very famously his son Adam. UM, he's the 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:24.720 one that does all the TV shows now. I think 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:27.440 he's on the Hunt on CNN now and really made 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:31.479 this his life's work. But his son Adam disappeared, uh 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:34.800 and died in nineteen eighty one. UM. Obviously the Atlanta 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:40.240 child murders UM from seventy eight one, and this all 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:43.879 converged around the same time, Like you were talking about this, 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:48.280 these these strange things aligning UM cable news coming out 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:50.800 seeing Inn was launched in nineteen eighty, So all of 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:55.719 a sudden, you have parents that are getting this kind 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:59.679 of constant flow of fear from the news about their children. 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:03.800 Right Because so if if a um prior to cable news, 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:07.639 twenty four hour news, UM, if something happened to a 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:12.000 kid somewhere in in some state, maybe if it were 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:16.320 just particularly egregious or outrageous, um or everything was kind 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:18.480 of set up in just the right way, it would 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:21.520 capture the attention of the national media and you would 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:24.040 hear about it around the country. But that was really 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:27.040 really rare. And then second to that, the other place 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:30.520 that you would hear about child abductions, child murder, murders, 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:34.440 horrific like accidents that befell a child would be locally, 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:38.560 right like on your local news that maybe maybe expanded 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:42.240 to a region, maybe the state, but it was pretty localized. 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:46.719 And so if statistically something like that happened fairly rarely, 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:49.040 you weren't going to hear about it very often, And 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:51.880 so in your mind it was a pretty rare thing, 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.280 and you weren't afraid of the world in general. But 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.600 what a lot of commentators and a lot of UM, well, 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:00.600 some of the people I ran across some research UM 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:05.879 propose is that with cable news, that potential pool of 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:10.679 horrible things that befell kids to talk about um expanded 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:13.400 to the entire nation, not just local, not just regional 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:15.760 or even state, but the whole nation. So now all 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:17.800 the bad things happening to all the kids around the 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:20.639 nation was potential news fodder. And so when you were 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:23.520 watching CNN, it seems like every other story was about 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:27.560 a kid who had been abducted and killed, or sexually assaulted, 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:32.160 or any number of horrible things. And there's really no 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:34.280 way to put it other than that that kind of 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:37.440 stuff keeps people glued to their televisions, and so it's 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:42.480 really in the best interests of news networks like CNN 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:45.960 to feed people that, because while you're glued to your television, 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:48.199 you're also glued to the ads that they showed too. 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:52.280 And so from this model came a climate of fear 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:54.360 that a lot of people point to is like, this 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:56.880 is the source, and it's not just CNN. CNN gets 0:21:56.960 --> 0:21:59.719 pointed to because it was the one that started at all. 0:21:59.800 --> 0:22:01.679 That is Ted Turtor who came up with this and 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:04.919 started the first twenty four hour cable news network. But 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:07.399 all cable news is guilty of this, and became guilty 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:10.679 of it pretty quickly because that's the model of cable news. 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:16.600 Um And because cable news laid that foundation and showed like, oh, 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:19.320 you've got that kind of you can really make some revenue. 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:22.320 Nightly news tried its best to resist that kind of thing, 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:24.120 but it kind of had to follow suit a little 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:26.800 bit too, so it would become more sensational from the 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:30.280 eighties onward as well, not nearly anything like cable news, 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:32.840 but compared to how it had been before, it was 0:22:33.119 --> 0:22:36.160 much more sensationalized because it was following the cable news model. 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:40.720 And all that put together created the foundation of why 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:43.919 people are just scared to death about the world because 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:46.520 we we think that it's way more dangerous than it 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:51.399 actually is, because the statistics are inflated by hearing about 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:54.520 this stuff all the time. Yeah, and there's another couple 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:58.480 of things that contributed that um Skins has pointed out. One, 0:22:58.560 --> 0:23:01.800 we live in what you dubs and expert society, So 0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:05.480 again on cable news or on social media, like everywhere 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:08.400