WEBVTT - Selects: How Free Range Parenting Works 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:03.280 Hey, guys, Josh here and for this week's select, I 0:00:03.360 --> 0:00:07.320 chose our April twenty nineteen episode on free range parenting. 0:00:08.200 --> 0:00:12.360 This was an episode that I initially approached with some preconceptions, 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:15.840 and they turned out to be quite wrong. I was 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:18.680 raised with quite a bit of freedom, and I assume 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:21.600 that parents still kind of raise their kids in that manner. 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:24.720 But it turns out that they don't, and even more 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:29.480 to the point, that's basically illegal these days. Fortunately, there's 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:32.319 a movement pushing back against that, and I'm all for it. 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:36.720 See what you decide in this great episode of Stuff. 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:36.879 You Should Know. 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:47.640 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:52.720 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:55.640 I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:58.600 there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff you should 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:00.520 Know about kids. 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:05.600 Can I CoA right off the bat here? 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:08.440 I presumed you would. 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:11.280 All right, there's a couple of coas I want to issue. 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:16.440 One, we are not telling anyone how to parent their children, indeed, 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:22.559 And two we realize that the whole concept of free 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:30.840 range parenting that will follow is comes from a place 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:35.679 of extreme privilege. Yes, to be able to entertain the 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:38.360 idea of free range parenting comes from a place of 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:39.400 extreme privilege. 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:42.399 Okay, Can I amend that or should I wait until 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:45.080 we talk about that part to kind of amend it. 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:46.120 No, you can amend it. 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.560 So to me, free range. 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:54.600 Parenting, having the freedom to free range parent is what 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:58.920 I saw it ties in with parenting that's already being 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:01.000 done by people who might not have a choice. 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:02.080 Are you saying that the. 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.720 Ability to choose whether you want a free range parent 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:08.840 or not is privileged? 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:09.919 Yes? 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:12.160 Okay, yes, agreed, I gotcha. 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:14.840 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and again we'll get into that, 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:17.640 but we'll get into that at the end. 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:19.720 But I just want to just go ahead and. 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:22.079 Lead that off because it's a lot of privilege involved 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:25.480 with being able to say, you know that you want 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:26.280 a free range parent. 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:28.919 Are you going to Are you going to land one 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:29.840 way or another on. 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:33.400 It on whether or not I support free range parenting? 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:35.640 Yeah? 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:38.120 Yeah, I mean, Emily, and I don't title it or 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:41.120 say hey, I think we should do this as a style, 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:47.880 but we, as it turns out, are sort of dabbling 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:51.160 in free range parenting a bit as much as you 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:52.840 can for a three and a half year old. 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.480 So you're listening to your instincts. 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:58.840 I've never read a parenting book, not knocking them, but 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.880 I've never read one. Parent by instinct, and our daughter 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:06.000 has always had a lot of room to free play 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:10.080 and explore and figure stuff out on our own and 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:13.360 fall down and get back up and all that stuff. 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.600 Okay, I'm reading between the lines. You guys haven't decided yet. 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:21.240 All right, so ready pre range parenting. 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:26.440 Go Okay, So do you remember when we were kids, Chuck, Yeah, 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:28.320 back when we used to hang out when we were kids, 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.799 and we would go ride bikes together at like sunrise. 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:36.440 We had no idea where we were going to go, 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:40.000 but it might involve a swamp, could involve a glacier. 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:45.720 There may have been like rail riding hoboes that we 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:48.280 shared lunch with. Who knows what the day was going 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:50.160 to bring, but we were up for all that and 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:52.240 may or may not have engaged in any of that 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:55.920 during that day. And then at the end of the day, 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:59.040 around sunset, maybe a little later, depending on whether it 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:01.600 was summer or not, we'd ride our bikes back home, 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:05.680 say see you tomorrow, go to our respective houses, and 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:08.400 then talk the night away on our soup cans that 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.360 were connected by a rope. 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:14.160 And that was our childhood, right we turned out me. 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:18.200 Sure, I have talked about my childhood some growing up, 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:19.880 but you know, I grew up in the woods basically 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:23.920 on like a couple of acres of land with a 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:27.760 creek and forest. Not in a subdivision, but on a 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.760 street with like seven houses in the woods, right, And 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:35.200 my mother had a we had this giant iron bell, 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:38.719 probably about eighteen inches across on a mounted on a 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:40.880 big like a telephone pole. 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:43.360 Yeah, kind of right beside our driveway. 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:46.200 And she would at the you know, when it was 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:49.880 dinner time in the evening, she would go pull that 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:53.599 bell and you could hear it from like a mile away, 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:57.320 this the bell tolling. And that's when Scott and I 0:04:57.480 --> 0:04:59.360 were like, all right, you know it's time to go 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:05.760 eat after having been out all day long with zero supervision. 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:10.240 And I had a great mom, Like, she wasn't neglectful. 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:12.039 This is just how it was done. 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:15.520 Yeah, were you a latch key kid? I know your 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:17.120 mom was a teacher, but did she stay at home 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:17.400 with you? 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:19.280 She didn't go back to teaching. 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:23.040 She'd quit teaching to raise kids and then started up 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:26.600 again when I was like, I feel like eighth or 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:27.920 ninth grade or something like that. 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:30.280 Okay, Yeah, my mom took off until I was. 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:35.360 Like six seven. I guess, like kinder No, maybe she's 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:37.760 still around in kindergart. I guess about first grade when 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:39.920 I was when I started school and she was like, okay, 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.080 I'm going back to nursing. And then after that point, 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:44.720 I was a last key kid for like the rest 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:47.040 of my life. But I had like older sisters who 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.719 would be home around the time I would, and but 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:53.039 I had like my own key to my house that 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:55.279 was just a couple of blocks away from my school, 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:57.560 and I would walk myself or ride my bike myself, 0:05:57.680 --> 0:05:59.440 and then I would be home by myself if my 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:01.880 sister was and something else for a couple hours until 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:05.000 either my mom or my dad showed up. And I 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:06.440 think I turned out pretty well. 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:08.800 Too, so that I even had a house key. 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:11.400 Ever, well, you guys probably didn't lock your doors. If 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:13.320 your mom rang a bell on a telephone pole to 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:14.640 call you in for dinner. 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:16.480 You know, I don't think we locked our door. 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:18.080 Okay, But but you were. 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:23.000 You had free range literally of your your house, your yard, 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:27.760 the woods around you. But here's a really big caveat 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:29.920 from what I've seen, I think a lot of people 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:35.520 who are like who aren't familiar necessarily free range parenting, 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:39.240 assumed that we could have done anything we wanted and 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:42.799 gotten away with it because we were we had overly 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.960 permissive parents. That's not the case for me, and I 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.160 would dare say that wasn't the case for you as well. 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:51.320 That we actually had plenty of rules and structure. We 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.240 were just also given a lot of freedom to do 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:58.280 things within that rules and structure, including geographic freedom. 0:06:58.040 --> 0:06:59.839 Right for sure. 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.640 Okay, yeah, so that is what I thought all kids 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.480 had up to this time. And I knew that there 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.640 was like such things as piano and mandarin lessons or 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:12.800 Mandarin classes, that kind of stuff, like things that kids 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:14.560 were taking more and more and they were really busy 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.520 and stressed out, and they had like like iPhones at 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:20.760 age seven, that kind of thing. But I still thought 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:25.680 that this happened, And I was really shocked, about as 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:27.800 shocked as I've ever been in researching an episode of 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:30.280 stuff you should know to find that that is not 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:33.400 the case. That not only does has this been kind 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:37.840 of squeezed out by other activities, it's actually become criminalized 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:41.320 behavior by society at large, among the parents who are 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:45.320 raising children today. I was blown away to find this out. 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:46.920 I really legitimately didn't know. 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:51.800 Yeah, I mean, and getting back to the activities, you know, 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:54.120 I played some soccer in high school, and then I did. 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.840 Like church sports, which there's not a lot of. 0:07:57.040 --> 0:07:58.920 I mean, I think we did like maybe one basketball 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:02.480 practice a week, so it wasn't like every day practice 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:06.760 and stuff like that. I never took lessons of any kind. Uh, 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:09.880 Like I taught myself guitar and all that stuff. So like, 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:15.200 I don't think I literally ever had a structured post 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:17.880 school activity in my life. 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:20.520 Yeah, did you say church sports. 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:23.440 Yeah, I played church softball and basketball. 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:25.640 Did like everybody win every game? 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:29.080 No, it was actually fiercely competitive. 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:30.440 Oh okay, I'm just kidding. 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:31.840 No, no, no, it was. It was. 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:34.320 It was legit like we had a pretty good basketball 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:38.280 team in the league. Was pretty impressive too. But yeah, 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:40.120 I don't, I don't. I never signed it. I never 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:43.000 had a single class. Like the idea of my mom 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:45.320 having been like, all right, I'm going to take you 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.640 to your violin lesson, and then on the weekends we 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:53.359 have gymnastics and uh, whatever else. 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:56.280 People are doing these days, was just it, just it. 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:58.319 We didn't do that. She was just like, go play. 0:08:58.679 --> 0:08:58.839 Right. 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:01.319 So, so there has been and we'll talk about all 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:03.560 the reasons why, but there has been a movement away 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:06.920 from the kind of childhood we had, a very pronounced one. 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:10.440 If you, if you look at you know, culture is 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.199 a pendulum swinging one way or another. It has swung 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:17.520 very far the opposite way to where kids' lives are 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:22.560 structured down to the minute, where they have actual calendars 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:24.880 and schedules that they have to keep up with because 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:30.520 they have so many things going on. And there has 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:37.440 come about, in reaction to that, an antithesis basically, and 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:41.640 it is nothing more than letting kids grow up the 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:45.440 way that you and I did that. And it has 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:49.240 become so novel in the face of the world. And 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:51.439 the culture that we have in raising kids in the 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:54.520 United States, now that it has its own name, it's 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.680 a movement. They have to go to court to defend themselves. 0:09:57.679 --> 0:09:59.960 It's so weird. But really, if you strip it down 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.520 and look at it, all they're doing is raising their 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:03.360 kids the way. 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:06.520 You and I and Jerry I'm sure was raised. 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:10.120 Well, yeah, I mean to a certain degree, but the 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:12.679 whole idea, and it's not just like I want you 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.160 to grow up the way I did. It's what it 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:17.600 really is is an argument that says, you know what, 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:23.000 kids will grow up healthier and happier if they have 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:26.080 freedom to play and they have freedom to fail and 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:30.440 freedom to get in a playground scrap and to work 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:32.760 it out with another kid on their own and figure 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.680 things out for themselves. They will end up better people 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:38.800 because of this. It's not oh, I'm lazy or I 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:43.160 have nostalgia for my childhood. It's and you know, there's 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:45.360 a lot of research into this now or some research 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:48.880 that says, no, what we're doing is is trying to 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:53.480 make better future adults by not hovering over my child 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:59.480 scheduling them to death. And you know, every time they fall, 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:03.280 run over, pick themselves up and like and you know, 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:06.200 rock them to sleep, you know if they get a booboo. 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:09.360 Right, So I sound so judging. 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:10.360 I don't mean that. 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:12.600 Well, let's let's just take a second. Let's take a 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.040 break real quick and like collect ourselves and then we'll 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:17.000 come back and we'll really get into what free range 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:17.640 parenting is. 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:21.839 Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:24.920 I want to learn a thing or two from josh 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:25.680 Am Chuck. 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:27.400 It's stuff you should know. 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:40.720 Should all right, thanks, shot, shot stop? 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:47.079 Okay, Chuck. 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:50.439 So, I think you demonstrated something that is has made 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:54.800 free range parenting very unpalatable to a lot of a 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:57.520 lot of parents who don't raise their kids that way. 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:02.400 And then it seems to be a react, almost in 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:07.000 your face to some people, reaction or judgment of that 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:10.640 helicopter style parenting where you're always kind of around your kid. 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:15.680 Their entire life is very structured and supervised, including playtime, 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:18.360 and that free range parenting is meant to be a 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:20.440 reaction to that, and in some ways it is a 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:22.560 reaction to that, but it also stands on its own 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:24.600 and if you step back and look at it and 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.320 look at free range parenting not as a reaction to 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:30.960 helicopter parenting, but as its own thing, is its own 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:33.679 philosophy for how to raise a kid, and you strip 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:34.280 away like. 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:37.280 The judginess and all that stuff. It holds up to me. 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.439 And like you said, there's been a lot of a 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.160 lot more study recently, but the whole thing really started 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:46.920 back in two thousand and eight by a journalist. It 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:51.480 wasn't a child psychologist. It wasn't a child development psychologist. 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:55.319 It wasn't a child development, child analyst, psychologist, none of 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:58.080 those things that made that last one up, by the way, 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:02.559 it was a journalist named Leonora Skenazi. 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.839 Yeah, so she is a New York mom. In two 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:09.720 thousand and eight, she wrote a column for The New 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:12.439 York Sun called Why I let my nine year old 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.319 ride the subway alone. She was in a store one 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:18.480 day in Manhattan and her son had been badgering her 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:21.520 to be able to ride the subway and bus back 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:27.160 home by himself. And finally one day she said, all right, great, 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:30.600 let's do this. Here's a subway map, here's a subway card, 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:35.199 here's twenty bucks, here's some change for a payphone. 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:36.560 Have at it. 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:41.360 The kid made it home, and she said he was 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.120 quote ecstatic with independence. 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:45.760 What great. 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:48.800 Yeah, And like she got a lot of blowback from 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:52.040 this from like the judgment goes both ways. I mean 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.120 there were people that said it was neglect and abuse 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:57.160 for her to do this and let her kid ride 0:13:57.200 --> 0:13:58.040 the subway alone. 0:13:58.080 --> 0:13:59.240 Oh oh yes, Yeah. 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:01.439 If you had to divide the two sides up and 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:03.880 start weighing which one was a little judgi or you 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:08.040 would definitely your hand would be much lower holding the 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:11.600 helicopter parents side, for sure. Yeah, if you're a free 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:15.600 range kid proponent or you raise your kids following that, 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:19.600 there's a whole burden, whole social burden that you have 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:21.800 in addition to the burden of raising your kids that 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:23.120 you have to put up with, for sure. 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:26.280 Yeah, and I should point out too real quick that 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:28.360 it all depends upon your kids too. I don't think 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:32.800 there are any sweeping generalizations. Sure, my daughter has always 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:38.280 been very just instinctively kind of safe and smart about stuff. 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:43.200 Ye other kids in her class are just like little 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:46.960 wild banshees, And I would probably be a lot more 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.040 worried if she was the kind of kid who has 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:54.720 an instinct to like jump out of a tree instead 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:57.160 of like back down very slowly out of a tree. 0:14:57.200 --> 0:15:00.080 So right, it's all different depending on your kid. 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:03.000 Or a kid who like can't seem to shake being 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.040 totally fascinated with matches or knives. 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.160 Or something like that. Yeah, I think that was a. 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:10.880 Really good point, Like it's you shouldn't sweep or generalize, 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:13.880 But I think that's an even larger point too, people 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.680 should be left to raise their children how they see fit. 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:19.640 Yeah, given a. 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:21.160 Certain amount of. 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:25.720 Trust invested in the parents, that the parent isn't going 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:27.960 to harm the kid or let harm come to the 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:31.840 kid because it's their parent, right right. Okay, So this 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:34.480 whole thing started with Lenor Skins, and like you said, 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:37.360 she got a lot of blowback, but she also got 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:40.840 a really positive response too, and actually parlayed the whole 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:45.440 thing from that New York Sun article into a blog 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:48.160 that she called Free Range Kids. So, from what I understand, 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:52.160 she coined the term free range kids and started writing 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:55.080 about this stuff. And at first a lot of it 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:58.760 was just like it's it's good. It's on its face, 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:01.120 it's obvious that this is you should raise a kid. 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:03.400 You know, kids need play, they need to learn how 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:07.040 to pick themselves back up when they fall down. And 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:09.280 not only that, you're doing a disservice to your kid 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:12.320 when you pick them up after they fall down, because 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:15.640 they're not learning how to get back up themselves. And 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:19.120 over time it kind of went as people became more 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:22.400 and more enamored with her philosophy or this whole free 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:23.360 range kids idea. 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:26.560 More child psychologists. 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:29.960 Started weighing in, and the whole movement kind of took 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:34.640 the shape and they figured out that for a parent 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:36.920 to kind of see the light as they as far 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:40.720 as they were concerned, they had to first change the 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:43.920 mindset about what kind of world they were raising a 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:47.200 kid in, because if you're a free range kid parent, 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:52.280 you probably don't feel as threatened by the world in 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:54.960 general as say a helicopter parent would. 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.120 Ounce for ounce, Yeah for sure. 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:04.640 I mean when parents have experimented with this, the changes 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:07.040 that they've seen in their kids has been pretty striking, 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:13.080 if anecdotal. There's this one woman, Dana Bloomberg. She's a 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:16.840 school counselor in suburban Chicago. We should also point out 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:19.320 depends on where you live as well. If you live 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:21.560 in a very safe suburb or way out in the country, 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.679 it's a little different than a kid like in the 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.720 middle of the city or something like that. But she 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.960 gave her kid a lot of free range starting in 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:35.359 the second grade and got some neighborhood parents involved in 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:37.679 letting their kids do it. And they said, before you 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:40.240 know it, they had this little, you know, little gang 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:42.240 of kids kind of touring around the neighborhood, are on 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:44.920 their own and she's getting all these texts from these 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:49.880 different parents saying like, what a big change has happened 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:53.159 in their own kid. One parent even said it was 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:56.440 life changing for her daughter, gave her a nuisance of confidence, 0:17:57.080 --> 0:18:01.360 and that's sort of what the free range thing can 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:04.480 look like. But like you were saying, it all comes 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:09.720 down to assuaging appearance fear, the biggest fear, which is 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:14.560 my child will get abducted, or my child will get 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:18.560 there will be a sexual predator to target my child, 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:22.840 or heaven forbid, my child will get kidnapped and murdered. 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:26.760 Right, because you can understand and it's really tough to 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.760 fault somebody who doesn't want their kid wandering around by 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:35.080 themselves because they're afraid that something really bad is going 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:38.120 to happen to their kid. So kind of the first 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:43.639 step to adopting like a free range kid attitude is 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:47.720 to adjusting how you see the world. And they think 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:50.720 they think that with that, there are several things like 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:53.840 if you it's really fascinating to me. I love cultural changes, 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:58.000 especially when we can point to different things, seemingly unrelated 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:01.159 things that all kind of converge and has changed the 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:03.959 world in ways you never think of that seems to 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:07.919 have happened to produce today's helicopter parents, at least, to 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:12.119 produce the level of fear, the climate of fear that 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:18.200 the world is an inherently dangerous, brutal, sadistic place where 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:23.280 children have no call to be wandering around themselves. That 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:25.639 that is actually you can trace that back to a 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:28.919 convergence of things that have happened starting in like the 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.520 late seventies and early eighties, and in particular there was 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:40.080 some high profile child murder cases basically that all kind 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:43.960 of took place between nineteen seventy nine and nineteen eighty one, 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:47.760 and those really changed a lot of parents' minds about things. 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:52.000 Yeah, in New York, the very sad story of six 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:57.120 year old Eton Pats disappeared and was later found out 0:19:57.160 --> 0:20:02.320 to have been murdered. John Wall very famously his son Adam. 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:04.919 He's the one that does all the TV shows now, 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:07.239 I think he's on the Hunt on CNN now and 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.560 really made this his life's work. But his son Adam 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:15.240 disappeared and died in nineteen eighty one. Obviously, the Atlanta 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:20.359 child murders from seventy nine to eighty one, and this 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:23.760 all converged around the same time, Like you were talking 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:29.199 about these strange things aligning cable news coming out. CNN 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:31.760 was launched in nineteen eighty, so all of a sudden, 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:36.880 you have parents that are getting this kind of constant 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:40.160 flow of fear from the news about their children. 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:44.600 Right, Because so if a prior to cable news twenty 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:49.520 four hour news, if something happened to a kid somewhere 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:54.119 in some state, maybe if it were just particularly egregious 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:57.480 or outrageous or everything was kind of set up in 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:00.159 just the right way, it would capture the attent to 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:02.840 the national media and you would hear about it around 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:03.480 the country. 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:05.160 But that was really really rare. 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:07.760 And then second to that, the other place that you 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:12.919 would hear about child abduction's, child murders, horrific like accidents 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:15.679 that befell a child would be locally right like on 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:19.760 your local news that maybe maybe expanded to a region, 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:23.199 maybe the state, but it was pretty localized. And so 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:28.000 if statistically something like that happened fairly rarely, you weren't 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:30.080 going to hear about it very often, and so in 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:32.679 your mind it was a pretty rare thing, and you 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:35.080 weren't afraid of the world in general. But what a 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:38.280 lot of commentators and a lot of well some of 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:42.520 the people I ran across in research propose is that 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:48.119 with cable news, that potential pool of horrible things that 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:52.080 befell kids to talk about expanded to the entire nation, 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:54.520 not just local, not just a regional or even state, 0:21:54.640 --> 0:21:56.760 but the whole nation. So now all the bad things 0:21:56.760 --> 0:21:59.320