This was my response the first time I heard the term “free range children." I had heard of free range chickens, and later on, free range hogs. Both of those terms emerged basically as marketing terms to let consumer know that the meat they are consuming comes from animals that were not raised in confined spaces. Taking that understanding, I figure that free range children must refer to raising them in a manner where they are not confined. I’m not talking cages, rather from a little research it refers to the concept of raising children in the spirt of encouraging them to function independently and with limited parental supervision, in accordance of their age and development. This runs contrary to how many parents — often referred to as helicopter parents — have chosen to raise their kids in recent years. In reality, this is basically the way I was raised, back when parents got a lot of their advice from Dr. Benjamin Spock. That said, I am still somewhat surprised by the use of the term free range!
To be very honest, my generation of parents has in many ways disabled their kids because of the control we have exerted over their lives. I can’t count the number of times that I have made the comment that we should “just wrap out kids up in bubble wrap” to protect them! But what have we been protecting them from? In retrospect, I believe we have protected them from growing up and living life. And what I find very interesting is that there are examples of parents who have taken this “free range approach” and have been met with some serious pushback. For example, not that long ago the Washington Post reported about a mom from Wilmette, Illinois that created a huge uproar in her neighborhood when she let her 8-year-old daughter take the family dog on a walk around the block by herself. She saw this as giving her daughter a little more independence and responsibility. Apparently neighbors thought different and reported her to authorities! Really!
It went even further in Maryland where a family from Silver Spring found themselves under investigation for neglect by Child Protective Services for letting their two kids, ages 6 and 10, walk home alone from a park a few blocks away from their home. When I think back to when I was ten, I was living in Council Bluffs, Iowa and on more than one occasion I walked home from school by myself along Highway 6 for at least three miles because I behaved badly at school and had to stay after. My parents added to my punishment by making me walk home! I shake my head when we have some parents in our own community that drop off and pick up kids at school rather than expecting them to walk four or five blocks! (By the way, I know it was three miles because I checked on my odometer about ten years ago because I was curious how far I actually walked! However, it was not uphill both ways and there was not ten foot of snow!)
It seems that leaders in at least one state see that this coddling of a couple of generations of kids has been taken too far. However, it is a bit ridiculous that it has come to this! In Utah, a state Senator introduced a measure that “exempts from definition of child neglect various activities that children can do without supervision, permitting a child, who’s basic needs are met and who is of sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm, to engage in independent activities . . .” That includes kids being able to walk, run, or bike to and from school, travel to recreational facilities, play outside and remain at home unattended.
When we have thirty-somethings still living at home, twenty-year-olds deeply depressed because they have no sense of self-worth or confidence, and teens who balk at being told “no,” one has to at least consider that we need to “open the range” and free young people from the cocoons we have built around them. I truly understand the fears that parents have raising a child, but at some point we need to recognize the responsibility that comes with being a mom or dad is to raise an adult, not a child.
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