By Bethany Parker
As I sit here writing this, my two younger children are outside in the snow, alone, and I can’t see either of them. This isn’t a big deal to me because I know they are on the snow pile, just out of view. Or perhaps they are in the backyard slaying dragons from atop the swing set. Or maybe they are in the neighbor’s driveway, the one with the best incline on the block, on their well worn skateboard attempting tricks in the snow that I’d rather not watch. No matter – they are outside, within their boundaries and they are doing whatever it is that kids do outside in the snow.
And they are doing it without me.
At ages 7 and 9, they can’t get enough this type of freedom, the pieces of the day when they are out of eyesight and where I can’t hear them talking. It’s part of the wonderful, frustrating, glorious, maddening push and pull between their need for security and the seductive siren’s call of independence. At 7 a.m. they are begging me to help them get out of bed, putting on their bathrobes and lying all over me, still thick with sleep and dreams. At 4 p.m. they are pushing me away, Legos in one hand and granola bars in the other, grumpily coming down from the day at school. Even the nearly 14-year-old is still finding his space – he roams for miles on his bike for hours on end, yet still throws his legs across mine when we watch a movie, or casually pushes me off the path when we are walking through the neighborhood. It’s a delicate balance, this knife edge on which we balance with our children as they grow through childhood towards their own lives. Knowing when to step backward and when to pull them close, when to hover and when to watch from a distance – or when to not watch at all – can be all too complicated if we let it.
I’m no expert and while I’m probably not a free range parent, I do allow my children a great deal of freedom. I can only speak to what works for my own brood, made all the more complex by the developmental disabilities we house within our four walls. For instance- I haven’t yet been comfortable allowing my middle child, the one with the autism diagnosis, to take a bike ride in the neighborhood with his older brother, yet I’ve allowed his younger brother to do so on many occasions. Fortunately, he hasn’t been interested in doing so yet, although I know that the day is soon coming. And my oldest son’s ADHD diagnosis often complicates issues for us, as impulse control, focus and attention to detail are things he struggles with. Yet it’s still important that I do the most possible, because they don’t learn by watching other people succeed and fail – they learn by succeeding and failing themselves. This is why current events, both regional and national that seem to have us all more and more on edge about what we can and cannot allow our children to do at certain ages, have me more concerned than ever that we as a collective are making some mistakes with our children, holding them close in fear and concern for our own reasons that do not serve our children well.
It would be easy to use my children’s safety as a reason to stay near them at all times, but current statistics suggest otherwise. These numbers, found on the freerangekids.com website, show how crime is lower today than when most of us were children. So what keeps us so fearful, so worried, that it’s not OK to step back and let our kids roam a little, or even just play out in the front yard?
For me, it’s not so much a fear that something bad will happen to my children, although I do worry that my middle child will wander. It’s more a concern that a neighbor or other presumably well intentioned adult will decide that my children are less than appropriately supervised and call the authorities. My desire for my children to experience life through their own lens does clash with so much of what I feel society expects of me as a parent – soccer games, day camps, play dates and park visits – that, while valuable in their own rights, are ultimately self limiting in their experiences. I cannot help but think that I am ultimately limiting my children when I only expose them to structured activities within the safe confines of adult supervision. And I want to know that if I send my kids together to the park, 3 blocks away, that they will not come home accompanied by the local policeman and child protective services representative.
I’ve been writing now for nearly an hour, interrupted once by a very excited child who needed to let me know they had broken through the snow fort and created a tunnel. One child has come inside to warm up, the other has stayed outside alone, one of the few times he is willing to play on his own without a sibling to keep him company. It’s much darker and colder, yet I will allow him to stay outside until he is ready to come inside, even though I admit that I would like him inside now for my own convenience. The independence and self help skills he’s gaining by being out there on his own are far more valuable than anything he could learn by coming inside just because I’m more comfortable with him in the living room instead of the front yard.
Bethany, mom to the three wilds who, despite all of their recent growing up, still manage to leave Legos where she steps on them barefoot, marbles in their pants pockets and various food wrappers on the floor of the car.