I often report false “crises” pushed by the media.

Here’s one that might be real:

The children are anxious.

In my new videoLenore Skenazy, founder of the non-profit association Let it growsays it’s because today’s parents rarely allow their children to experience the joys of independence.

Skenazy once let his 9-year-old child ride the New York subway alone. For this, the media called her “the worst mother in America.” Law and orderthe TV show, produced an episode in which the child traveling alone is kidnapped and murdered.

But in real life, what Skenazy allowed isn’t that risky. His son told me, “I know how to get around.” Nothing bad happened to him and he gained the confidence that comes from taking care of himself.

Skenazy argues that not letting children take care of themselves makes them insecure. Anxiety and depression are “skyrocketing,” she says, citing the Journal of Pediatrics.

“How do you know the cause is lack of freedom?” I ask. “Maybe it’s social media.”

“Anxiety and depression were increasing before cell phones,” she responds.

The cause, she says, is media hype around isolated instances of child abductions and “stranger dangers.”

“It actually points everyone in the wrong direction,” she says. “The biggest threat to a child is someone they know, not a stranger.”

Skenazy says parents should simply teach their children to “recognize that no one can touch you where your swimsuit covers. Resist, run, kick, scream. If someone bothers you, don’t be nice. Resist. And then report it.”

“These three R’s,” she says, “keep children safer more than ‘stranger danger,’ because most strangers pose no danger.

Allowing children to experience independence doesn’t just help the children, she says; it helps parents.

“It’s not fun to think that as soon as your kids go outside, they’re going to be kidnapped…and it’s not fun to have to be with your kids every second.”

The American Surgeon General issued an “opinion on parental mental health and wellbeing”, writing: “Over the past decade, parents have been consistently more likely to report experiencing high levels of stress.

“It’s miserable if you have to spend every second watching, supervising, entertaining,” says Skenazy, “when there are so many things you could be doing with your life!”

“Let Grow, the nonprofit I run, asks teachers to assign kids to go home and do something new on their own… just so parents have the experience to… watch the child go to the store, to the park or if you “We are in a dangerous neighborhood, the kitchen to make pancakes without the parents being there to light the stove.”

She says children who participate in this “Let Grow experience” feel better about themselves “because they’re trusted and they’re doing something new, and it’s exciting.”

Again, it’s not just the kids who benefit.

“The parents are delighted,” she said. “I thought it was because they were so happy that their child wasn’t kidnapped… But then I started to think that we have children so that they can live when you’re not There until you let your child do something without you, you don’t know if they’ll ever be okay without you. So it’s that ecstatic moment of realizing, ‘Hey, I got it. a child who will be fine.'”

She says Let Grow “is exposure therapy for parents” because they “haven’t been exposed to letting their kids go. They think if I let my kid out, something bad is going to happen , or I’m a bad parent, or I might never forgive myself.”

Children need independence for the same reason adults do; this is how we grow.

COPYRIGHT 2024 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.