I don’t know why I sometimes click on parenting articles.
Maybe it’s because of the huffy little mom that lives in my head that occasionally likes to tsk and harp on every single thing I’m failing at as a mom, so when someone claims they know what they’re doing, I’ll give them a listen. Warily.
This is how I came to be annoyed with Free-Range Parenting. Not so much the entire concept, but the people talking about it. In the articles I’ve read, the Mom Tone is nearly completely sanctimonious: How are they supposed to learn to be adults when they aren’t riding the public bus alone at ten years old? Stop coddling your kids and let your fifth grader ride their bike two miles to the school by themselves!
No thanks.
I watched an interview with a woman who apparently coined the “Free -Range Parenting” term. Her belief is that it is just absurd that parents don’t let their kids do the things we used to do without supervision. You can’t even let them go to the park by themselves anymore, gosh darn it! She’s from a major city even and let her nine year old ride the subway alone and he was just fine!
I’ve heard again and again that it was easier for parents back when I was growing up because they could let us just run off to play in the great Out There. There were no “playdates”, just the kids in your neighborhood on bicycles having adventures until the street lights came on and whatever other suburban Speilbergian images that seem to get conjured up whenever people look back on their 80’s childhoods.
But the thing is, when I look back on all the freedom we had as young kids running around on our own, there isn’t a whimsical, carefree feeling attached to those memories, but something much darker. My not letting my kids take off and wander like I did at their age doesn’t have to do with any irrational fears or what society is telling me makes a good or bad parent, it’s based on my own experiences growing up in the very era of utopian childhood these folks so often reference. If my girls went through any of the things that I or my friends did, I would be horrified and people would be in jail.
Everyone makes parenting missteps now and then, and we will all get to deal with the fallout of our choices eventually. My gripe here is how parents writing these articles seem to feel that people not going along with their preferred parenting method are contributing to what’s wrong with society and the Free Rangers are the worst. The “I let My 9 y/o Ride the Subway Alone’ lady believes she is so right, that she’s the head of a whole social movement and also wants to start a just “Leave Your Kids at the Park Day. “
It’s very worth mentioning that this person has SONS and only sons, and if you don’t get why that point matters- I envy the world you think we live in.
When I think of this, or any kind, of hands- off approach, I’m reminded of the parents hanging out on their phones at the park while their at least seven year old nearly knocks my two year old off of the top of the slide while he’s running around unchecked in the designated toddler area. No, that’s okay, I’ll just parent mine extra to protect her from yours so you don’t have to possibly stand in the way of his personal emotional growth.
The other articles I’ve read are nearly identical in the points and experiences they’re congratulating themselves on, including one local lady letting everyone know she ‘Let her Ten Year Old Ride the Public bus (Alone)’. It ‘s just so strange that they feel they need to do this- or why they think this particular independence milestone should be praised. While the argument that you are raising the adults your children will become is valid, a ten year old is still a kid and in New Orleans, the mistakes they may make while navigating the city alone aren’t worth the consequences .
And that’s okay.
My not learning how to ride a city bus until my 20’s is far from being what messed me up in life.
