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Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the

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Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers.

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Speaker 2: Now, there's no way to be a parent without being worried,

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Speaker 2: or at least I haven't figured that out yet, but

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Speaker 2: I feel like these new extravagant worries are super imposed

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Speaker 2: on us by a culture.

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Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, my mum

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Speaker 1: and dad.

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Speaker 3: Hello, this is doctor Justin Coulson.

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Speaker 4: I'm the author of a bunch of books about raising

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Speaker 4: happy families. Kylie, my wife, and I have the parents

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Speaker 4: to six daughters, and I'm the founder of Happy Families

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Speaker 4: dot com dot au. Well school Holidays starts soon. In

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Speaker 4: the Coilson family, we're getting in early. Kylie and I

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Speaker 4: have taken the opportunity to spend a bit of quality

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Speaker 4: time with our children over the next couple of weeks,

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Speaker 4: and we hope that you get the chance to do

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Speaker 4: the same, especially for those in Queensland in Brisbane, especially

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Speaker 4: dealing with.

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Speaker 3: The lockdown anyway.

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Speaker 4: On today's podcast, we're looking back at my Parenting and

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Speaker 4: Perspective interview series which we published last year. On episode

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Speaker 4: one hundred and thirty three, I spoke with Lenau Scanazzi.

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Speaker 3: Lena is the president of lep Grow.

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Speaker 4: It's a nonprofit organization that promotes childhood independence and resilience,

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Speaker 4: and she's also the founder of Free Range Kids, the movement.

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Speaker 3: We talked about the moment where everything changed full in all.

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Speaker 4: She was living in New York and suggested to her

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Speaker 4: seven year old son that he catched the subway home.

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Speaker 2: Our son was asking us if we would take him

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Speaker 2: someplace he'd never been before and let him find his

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Speaker 2: own way home on the subway, which is how we

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Speaker 2: get around in New York City all the time. And

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Speaker 2: this was not something that our older son had asked

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Speaker 2: us when he was nine, So it was something that

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Speaker 2: we really had to think about, my husband and I

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Speaker 2: before we said yes. But then finally we did say, okay,

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Speaker 2: we'll do this. I'll let you take the subway by yourself.

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Speaker 5: It's kind of independent, really, isn't it. Nine year olds

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Speaker 5: aren't usually saying give me a challenge. Let's just let's

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Speaker 5: just drop me somewhere in the city and let me

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Speaker 5: try to get home. So has he always been an

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Speaker 5: independent minded kind of kid?

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Speaker 2: I would say he is. But I think we're sort

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Speaker 2: of right and wrong on whether kids have always or

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Speaker 2: don't ask this kind of thing. I think that a

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Speaker 2: generation or two before this, it wouldn't have been a

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Speaker 2: conversation because it would have happened naturally. You know, kids

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Speaker 2: would have been either getting on their bikes if they

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Speaker 2: were in the suburbs, or riding the bus or subway

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Speaker 2: if they were in the city, you know, to get

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Speaker 2: to a music lesson, to get to school, to get

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Speaker 2: to grandma's house, to get to you know, an empty

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Speaker 2: lot and start a baseball game and hang out there

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Speaker 2: all day. And so even the fact that he had

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Speaker 2: to ask, as opposed to this just being a normal

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Speaker 2: thing that kids just do on their own, is indicative

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Speaker 2: of it being you know, a more sort of mother

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Speaker 2: may I kind of era than it was before. So, yeah,

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Speaker 2: he was asking, and that was unusual, but I don't

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Speaker 2: think his independence would have been unusual in any other generation.

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Speaker 5: When you had the conversation with your husband and then

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Speaker 5: decided that we're comfortable with this, will give it a go.

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Speaker 5: We'll take you into the city and we'll go home,

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Speaker 5: and then we'll see you at home in a couple

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Speaker 5: of hours.

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Speaker 3: Hopefully what we did that's a bigger you're.

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Speaker 2: Making it into a bigger deal because we were in

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Speaker 2: the city, right We lived in Manhattan at the time,

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Speaker 2: and we were sending him. You know, we just took

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Speaker 2: the subway up to this beautiful, fancy department store, which

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Speaker 2: is why it was someplace he had never been before.

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Speaker 2: We don't usually shot there. And then all he had

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Speaker 2: to do was come back down on the subway about

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Speaker 2: four or five steps. And then we don't live right

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Speaker 2: near there, so he had to take another little bus

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Speaker 2: across town. All together, it might have taken an hour

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Speaker 2: if that.

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Speaker 5: When you went through this conversation and actually got to

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Speaker 5: the point where you're like, okay, let's do this. What

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Speaker 5: reservations did you have? At what point were you thinking?

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Speaker 5: Are we crazy?

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Speaker 3: Is this normal?

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Speaker 5: A generation to go it would have been fine, but

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Speaker 5: it's a different world. Now, What are we thinking? What

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Speaker 5: sort of concerns did you have beforehand?

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Speaker 2: We had the concern though, we wanted to make sure

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Speaker 2: that he knew what he was doing. And so even

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Speaker 2: though we are on the subways all the time, and now,

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Speaker 2: some kids love certain things, like there are kids who

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Speaker 2: love cars or dolls or whatever. He loved the subway

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Speaker 2: loves you know, we love public transportation, But we wanted

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Speaker 2: to make sure he understood that you know that you're

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Speaker 2: reading the map and the green line, which is the

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Speaker 2: line that he was going to have to take. That's

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Speaker 2: the four, five and six train. For anybody who's been

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Speaker 2: to New York City, that that was the train you

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Speaker 2: would have to take. And you know this is the

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Speaker 2: stop you get off on. And then of course we're

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Speaker 2: always on that extremely slow bus, so he knew that

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Speaker 2: he would have to wait for the bus at the

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Speaker 2: bus stop. I don't recall telling him this that time,

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Speaker 2: but I've always told my kids that you can talk

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Speaker 2: to strangers, you can't go off with strangers. So if

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Speaker 2: you need help from somebody, certainly you can ask a

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Speaker 2: question of somebody, but you can't get into somebody's car.

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Speaker 2: You can't go off with somebody. And other than that,

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Speaker 2: we prepared him with a couple of things. We gave

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Speaker 2: him a subway map twenty dollars just in case he

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Speaker 2: needed something went really terribly wrong and needed to take

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Speaker 2: a cab or something quarters because even twelve years ago

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Speaker 2: there were still some payphones in the subway, and and

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Speaker 2: a metro card, which is the card that you slide

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Speaker 2: through the entryway to get into the trains to pay

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Speaker 2: your fare. And so I'd say that we didn't think

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Speaker 2: we were crazy because we were preparing him and because

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Speaker 2: it wasn't something that he was saying, no, Mom, I

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Speaker 2: don't want to do this. This was his idea and

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Speaker 2: something that we had all discussed and decided he was

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Speaker 2: ready for. You know, I'm a reporter by trade. I

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Speaker 2: spent years and years at the New York Daily News,

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Speaker 2: which is if you've seen the Superman movies, it's actually

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Speaker 2: they call it the Daily Planet, but they shoot they

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Speaker 2: shoot the movies at the Daily News, which is where

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Speaker 2: I worked, and so as a tabloid reporter, I was

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Speaker 2: steeped in the city. You know, I went everywhere on

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Speaker 2: stories hither and yon, and I had a very i'd

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Speaker 2: say realistic view of the city based on being very

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Speaker 2: much part of it. And that's very different from I

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Speaker 2: think the way the story obviously resonated around the world

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Speaker 2: because if you watch you know, TV shows, especially Law

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Speaker 2: and Ordered Geez set in New York City, you think

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Speaker 2: there's a murder every second, and there are always children,

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Speaker 2: and they're always raped beforehand, and they're always cut into pieces.

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Speaker 2: And in fact, the crime rate. The crime rate right

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Speaker 2: now is crazy because of COVID, but for since the nineties,

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Speaker 2: the crime rate has been going down, down, down, down down.

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Speaker 2: So given all that, I didn't think we were crazy.

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Speaker 2: And in fact, there are a lot of things that

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Speaker 2: I wouldn't let my nine year old do, and that

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry that my twenty two year old does. I

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Speaker 2: absolutely am terrified of cars, but I guess he has

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Speaker 2: to drive. But taking the subway, did'n ie strike me?

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Speaker 2: Is crazy.

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Speaker 5: I'm speaking with Lenor Skanesi. She's the founder of the

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Speaker 5: Free Range Kids movement and the president of Let Grow,

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Speaker 5: a not for profit organization that promotes childhood independence and resilience.

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Speaker 3: Will continue talking with Lenau shortly.

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Speaker 1: It's the Happy Famili's podcast for.

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Speaker 3: A happier family.

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Speaker 4: Try a Happy Families membership, because a happy family doesn't

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Speaker 4: just happen. Details at happy families dot com dot au.

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Speaker 4: It's the Happy Families Podcast, the podcast for the time

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Speaker 4: poor parent who just wants answers. Now, this is Justin Coulson,

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Speaker 4: and we're catching up with a reflection or a rewind

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Speaker 4: on a conversation we had with Lenor Skannazi.

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Speaker 3: Let's continue that chap every now and again.

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Speaker 5: I'll send my kids off to play in the park,

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Speaker 5: or I'll tell them to go for a walk around

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Speaker 5: the block, or jump on their bikes and ride to school,

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Speaker 5: or whatever it might be. And as they leave the driveway,

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Speaker 5: my heart goes with them, and I think to myself,

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Speaker 5: I know what the crime statistics are loosely, I know

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Speaker 5: that I live in a pretty safe area.

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Speaker 3: I know all of these things.

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Speaker 5: But there's this part of me that just seizes up

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Speaker 5: and thinks, what have you just done. You've sent the

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Speaker 5: ten year old on a bike ride with a twelve

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Speaker 5: year old. What's going to happen now? It's a challenging thing.

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Speaker 5: And then you know, maybe the six year old says,

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Speaker 5: can I go too? And I think to myself, well,

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Speaker 5: can I send a six year old in the care

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Speaker 5: of a ten and a twelve year old?

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Speaker 3: And at this point the answer is no, because she's six.

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Speaker 5: But it's a really, really, really big challenge to kind

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Speaker 5: of encounter and work through these things, even when you

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Speaker 5: know rationally that it should be just fine.

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Speaker 2: I've just said the last this weekend, my kids were

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Speaker 2: visiting me, and they're now twenty two and twenty four,

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Speaker 2: and when they were driving home together. I was like,

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Speaker 2: both my kids aren't the car together? Oh no, oh no,

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Speaker 2: which is just normal. But here's what we're talking about.

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Speaker 2: You're saying, is it rational or irrational to worry this way,

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Speaker 2: to calculate the odds as we're doing. I'd say that

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Speaker 2: there's no way to be a parent without being worried,

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Speaker 2: or at least I haven't figured that out yet. But

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Speaker 2: what I think is different from our about our generation.

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Speaker 2: I'm actually I'm older than you, so about your generation,

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Speaker 2: and then then our parents are grandparents or anybody before that,

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Speaker 2: is that when my mom let me walk to school,

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Speaker 2: and it was age five, and she didn't do it

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Speaker 2: because she was a free range mom or a crazy person.

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Speaker 2: She was doing it because everybody let their kids walk

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Speaker 2: to school at age five in the suburb where I

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Speaker 2: was growing up outside of Chicago. She was a nervous mom,

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Speaker 2: you know, she was a regular mom. But back then,

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Speaker 2: you let kids do that, and when you let the

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Speaker 2: children go, you weren't sitting there going, oh my god,

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Speaker 2: I hope she makes it. It's going to be about

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Speaker 2: a six minute walk and she's only five, and she's

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Speaker 2: so small, and the world is such a terrible place,

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Speaker 2: and if anything darable happened to her, I couldn't live

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Speaker 2: with myself.

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Speaker 3: Forget it.

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna go get her and drive her myself. And

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Speaker 2: that simply wasn't the catechism back then. You didn't have

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Speaker 2: to go through what about you know? And then name

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Speaker 2: you know? What about you know? Elizabeth Smart? What about

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Speaker 2: you know? Maddie McCann. You weren't thinking that a normal mom,

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Speaker 2: a normal good mom, should be thinking about the murder

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Speaker 2: of their child every time the child was out of

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Speaker 2: their sight, or the death on the bike on the

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Speaker 2: walk on you know. So that is new, and it

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Speaker 2: feels normal because it is normal to worry. But I

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Speaker 2: feel like these new, extravagant worries are super imposed on

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Speaker 2: us by a culture that I've seen up close, in

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Speaker 2: part because of the question that was asked to me.

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Speaker 2: You know, I let my son ride the subway. Okay,

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Speaker 2: most interviewers at the very beginning, and I'd say the

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Speaker 2: very beginning. For the first four years, I would say,

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Speaker 2: we're saying, Okay, you know, he had a good time,

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Speaker 2: you're proud, he's elated, he feels grown up. Great, that's

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Speaker 2: all great, But what if he hadn't come home, framing

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Speaker 2: it in the negative. I never had a good answer.

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Speaker 2: How would I have felt? Funny you should ask I'd

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Speaker 2: feel great because I don't have to feed another kid.

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Speaker 2: I mean, there was like no normal answer that you

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Speaker 2: could give to that question other than this is how

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Speaker 2: I'd feel. And in a way, this is what they

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Speaker 2: were trying to make me feel. They were trying to

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Speaker 2: take a positive story and turn it back into the

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Speaker 2: story that television loves, which is he never came home.

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Speaker 2: So the fact that he did come home, Okay, let's

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Speaker 2: ignore that and think about how terrible a mom she

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Speaker 2: would have been if that had happened. And why wasn't

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Speaker 2: she thinking that way? You're always supposed to be thinking

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Speaker 2: in this extremely dark, dystopian way about your kid if

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Speaker 2: they're beyond your sight, and that's what's new, And I

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Speaker 2: feel like it's superimposed by questions like that. When an

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Speaker 2: interview would say, well, how would you have felt, it's like,

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Speaker 2: you know how it feel. I would feel lower than hell. Okay,

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Speaker 2: but why are we talking about it? Why? You know,

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Speaker 2: why can't we celebrate when a kid does something normal

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Speaker 2: that I'd say, you know, most nine year olds could

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Speaker 2: do if if they felt like it, worry is normal,

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Speaker 2: but us worrying when the kid goes around the block worrying.

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Speaker 2: I would say, even if a six year old is

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Speaker 2: with a ten and a twelve year old who love

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Speaker 2: him or her and care about them, that's new.

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Speaker 3: What I'm interested in is this.

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Speaker 5: You've been doing some work with let Grow dot org

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Speaker 5: with one of the best thinkers in the world of psychology,

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Speaker 5: Jonathan Hate and.

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Speaker 2: She's one of the best thinkers in the world of psychology,

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Speaker 2: Jonathan Height. And also Peter Gray, doctor Peter Gray.

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Speaker 3: Now you're just.

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Speaker 2: Showing off genius.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, I just want to talk about

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Speaker 5: John at the moment because his research is what has

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Speaker 5: fascinated me the most, because Peter really focuses on the

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Speaker 5: play aspect of life and John has always focused so

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Speaker 5: much more on the I guess, on the social psycho

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Speaker 5: and the dotter and trends. And what I'm really curious

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Speaker 5: about is what as you've worked as a trio, what

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Speaker 5: have you discovered in the data. What's the data showing

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Speaker 5: in terms of this, well, is there a trend or

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Speaker 5: are we just at peak twenty twenty and everybody's you know,

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Speaker 5: getting so excited about the outlaws the unusual stories.

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Speaker 2: First of all, I do think there's something I'm happy

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Speaker 2: you mentioned the outliers and the unusual stories because I

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Speaker 2: feel like they are driving so much of our regular

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Speaker 2: life based on the saddest, worst, most anomalous, unpredictable stories,

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Speaker 2: that if there was some way we could get rid

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Speaker 2: of the story of one horrible accident or one horrible crime,

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Speaker 2: or one horrible shooting, I think we would all be

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Speaker 2: at a much better set point rather than using those terrible,

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Speaker 2: outlying stories as the norm from which we decide how

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Speaker 2: we should live our lives. But the thing that so

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Speaker 2: Jonathan Hyde, he's a big fan of free range kids,

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Speaker 2: and he's raising his free range kids, and I feel

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Speaker 2: great about that. But he came to me a couple

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Speaker 2: of years ago, and his hypothesis was that young adults,

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Speaker 2: and by young adults remains college age and a little

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Speaker 2: bit beyond, were becoming fragile. And as it turns out,

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Speaker 2: doctor Peter Gray had noticed this too. That you know,

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Speaker 2: I think it's great when kids go for you know,

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Speaker 2: the psychological services they need. And believe me, I live

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Speaker 2: in New York, I'm a Jew, I'm a woman, I've

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Speaker 2: been through as much therapy as anybody could pasibly have

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Speaker 2: because of these demographics. So I love therapy. However, it

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Speaker 2: seems like at this point on the college campuses, and

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Speaker 2: I'm talking about before COVID because COVID is just so weird,

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Speaker 2: that the colleges could not keep up with the number

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Speaker 2: of kids who were seeking therapy and who seemed to

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Speaker 2: be falling apart and not falling apart after a breakup

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Speaker 2: with a girlfriend or a boyfriend, friend or something very large,

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Speaker 2: but often after a B like a not a bee

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Speaker 2: like a this B like a B minus, or after

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Speaker 2: an argument with the roommate, after a mouse in the dorm,

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Speaker 2: and John and Peter were thinking, where is this fragility

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Speaker 2: coming from? Why do the kids think they need to

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Speaker 2: talk to either counselor or they have to talk to

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Speaker 2: their dean because they're so worried about their grades, or

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Speaker 2: they're calling their parents as they walk across the campus

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Speaker 2: because they feel afraid to walk without talking to somebody

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Speaker 2: while they're crossing the campus. This seemed new, and it

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Speaker 2: seems sad. You know here it is this, this blossoming

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Speaker 2: time of your life, and yet a lot of kids

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Speaker 2: were very very anxious and depressed. And if you're asking

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Speaker 2: about the data, the data are that anxiety and depression

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Speaker 2: among young people has been going up for the last

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Speaker 2: several decades. And I you talk about it, but so suicide.

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Speaker 2: So it's not just you know, choosing to call more

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Speaker 2: things depressed or kids saying I'm depressed. Because there's a

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Speaker 2: certain social cache to it. It really does seem to

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Speaker 2: be weighing on the kids. And so John came to

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Speaker 2: me and said, I think this is starting younger. You

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Speaker 2: seem to be the only person. I'm not the only

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Speaker 2: person who is trying to fight the over protection that

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Speaker 2: seems to be undermining kids. And let's work together and

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Speaker 2: start a nonprofit that tries to overthrow the overprotection that

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Speaker 2: is not helping kids, it's hurting kids.

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Speaker 3: That's Lenaskenazzi.

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Speaker 4: You can hear the full interview on episode one hundred

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Speaker 4: and thirty three of out Parenting in Perspective podcast series

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Speaker 4: as part of the Happy Families podcast.

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Speaker 3: Kylie and I Well, we'll.

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Speaker 4: Be back after Easter with a mix of new episodes

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Speaker 4: along with highlights from previous episodes from the Parenting in

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Speaker 4: Perspective series, And we're really looking forward to reconnecting with

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Speaker 4: you after the school holidays.

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Speaker 3: If you enjoy the.

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Speaker 4: Podcast, we love those ratings and reviews, you can jump

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Speaker 4: online to Apple Podcasts just wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 4: you'd like more info about making your family happier, whether

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Speaker 4: it's the Happy Families membership, the books that we have

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Speaker 4: on offer, the webinars, any of those things, you can

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Speaker 4: find at all at happyfamilies dot com dot au