Why Modern Parenting Is Stripping Our Kids of Independence with Lenore Skenazy | Ep. 132

0:00Lenore Skenazy:Welcome back to the Learning to Mom podcast. I'm your host and official mom friend, Layla. This is the podcast that grows with you from pregnancy and birth in season one to postpartum in season two to toddlerhood and speaking about early motherhood. We discuss things with real experts. We have honest conversations and give you helpful tools for the season that you're in. Now we do lean a little bit more on the holistic side. You'll hear us talk about screen-free play, slow living, intentional family rhythms, and questioning the cultural norms that don't always serve us or our families. If that sounds like your kind of motherhood, you're in the right place here, my friend.

0:40Lenore Skenazy:Each expert guest brings their own experience and perspective, so please note that the content presented in this podcast is designed for general educational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalized professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Hi, Lenore. Welcome to the Learning to Mom podcast. Thank you. I hope to learn something. Thanks. No, I'm hoping to learn from you. No, no, no. There's always going to be give and take. No, I'm so excited for this conversation. First and foremost, thank you so much for the work that you're doing for the moms in my generation, raising this next generation of kids.

1:19Lenore Skenazy:I know we're going to get into it. Before we do, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself? What all you do and how you got started with it all? How I got started is easier than what I do because I can never describe what I do. But many years ago, when my younger son was nine, he asked me and my husband if we'd take him someplace he'd never been before in New York City where we live and let him find his own way home by subway. That was his big dream. He wanted to be grown up. He wanted to be finding his own way on the trains because that's what we do all day long. It sounds like we're hobos.

1:56We ride the rails. But no, in New York City, we don't have a car. We take the train everywhere we go. So obviously from zero on up to nine, he'd been on a million subway rides and he wanted to do one by himself. So we decided, yes. I took him to a fancy department store, Bloomingdale's, and I left him there as his starting point, knowing that Bloomingdale sits on top of a subway station, which he quickly figured out too. And sure enough, he took the train and then he had to take a bus across town and he came into the apartment just so proud and chuffed, a word that I love that is more English than here, but it's just so right.

2:30Like I felt chuffed. So, and then I was a newspaper reporter slash columnist back then. I wrote a column, why I let my nine-year-old ride the subway alone. And that has been going viral for 17 years now. So that was that. It sort of put me in the position of having to clarify my beliefs for myself and then for anybody else about why I thought he was ready, why I didn't think it was a foolhardy decision, why I stand by it to this day. Now he's 27.

2:59Lenore Skenazy:Our older son is 29 and the subway rider is 27. Older son rides the subway now too. So and and and from that, I started a blog to explain my side of things and I called it Free Range Kids. And then Free Range Kids gradually grew into a nonprofit that we call Let Grow. That was started by me and three others. Daniel Shuckman, who's a philanthropist and used to be head of FIRE, which fights for free speech on campus. and Peter Gray, who I think is of the most interest to your particular listeners, because he's a professor at Boston College who has spent his life studying play, which obviously your listeners are watching every day now.

3:41And you can see how much kids learn when they're looking at things and trying to figure them out and interacting with you or other kids. So he has just, he's sounded the clarion call for allowing kids to have more free play in their lives, because that's how they learn the most, even more than when we're with them, when they're just playing with their friends as they grow older. They learn so much, everything about being a human. And then the third co-founder with me is Jonathan Haidt, who is the man of the hour. Everyone thinks he's Jonathan Haidt. He's Jonathan Haidt. He wrote The Coddling of the American Mind a few years ago, but now he's known for writing The Anxious Generation.

4:17Lenore Skenazy:Which you have a big part into. Let's not try to be humble. You and the New Yorker have figured this out. New Yorker recently wrote about it. We read the acknowledgments. You're also mentioned a few times throughout. You're a big deal. I'm so honored to have you here. Wow. I'm so honored that you read the footnotes. Who does that? No one. Let's get real for a second. Parenting can feel isolating. You're making big decisions every day. And sometimes it's hard to know if you're on the right track. That's why I love the Mom Club. It's not only where you get access to more content, but it's where moms come together to talk about what's really going on, to ask honest questions, and to feel seen in every stage of motherhood.

5:02Lenore Skenazy:One mom club bestie said it perfectly. She literally said, I'm in a few different Patreon groups, but the mom club is hands down the best, which I agree. You get a community and so much extra incredible content from the Learning to Mom podcast. So if you've been craving a community that really gets it, this is your place. Come join us at learningtomompodcast.com slash join. That links below in the episode show notes in case you forget or can't write it down right now. And I cannot wait to welcome you inside, mom friend. I'll see you there. But everything that you just said perfectly lines up our conversation today because those are skills that we need to make sure that our children have so that way they can be independent, right?

5:45Lenore Skenazy:Right. I think the through line there is that nobody watches this movie anymore have you heard of the tom hanks movie that was a classic and i guess the 90s maybe called big do you know about that movie i yes is that when he is a little boy trapped in a big body yeah yeah hence hence big yes yeah yeah it's himself he wants to be like a little big right and that has been the the driving force through all of human nature through all of human history is that kids don't want to be babies. They want to be big and they do as much as they can. And when we're doing everything with them or for them, when we think that they only learn stuff because we're showing it to them and explaining it to them in a sing-song voice, we're forgetting that there's this innate drive to master things.

6:38And that sure, you can show kids how to use the, you know, the broom or the dishwasher or whatever you're showing them. But what they want to do is tinker and figure things out and get big. They want to be like us. They don't want to be helped by us. They want to be like us. And more than even being like us, they want to be like the cool five-year-olds. And the five-year-olds want to be like the cool nine-year-olds. And one of the things Peter Gray has said that has haunted me, and you'll just hear me name check him throughout this whole podcast, so just get used to it, is that, for instance, if you have a bunch of seven-year-olds trying to play a card game, it will never work.

7:14It will just fall apart. But if you have seven-year-olds playing with nine-year-olds, the nine-year-olds are going to be bringing them along. And the seven-year-olds want to become like those nine-year-olds. So they'll listen. And it's not, it's not sweetie. This is not how we play. It's, my God, hold up your cards. We can see your cards. Come on. Oh, my God, we can see them again. We don't. We're not supposed to see your card. Don't turn down your queen. The queen is at the end. Putting the card back in that kid's hand. Right. And that's how information gets transferred and how kids get this desire fulfilled.

7:48Like, oh, now I'm being like the nine year olds. And so when everything becomes age segregated, which is the way we do most things in America, you know, grades are age segregated. But even after school is age segregated. You know, the five-year-olds are not playing with the 12-year-olds at Little League. When it's just nine-year-old versus nine-year-old, all you can tell is who's the fastest, maybe who's the smartest, who's the best hitter or whatever. but when a 12 year old is pitching to a five year old which happens when you have just age mixed you know peanuts gang type neighborhood play which i'll tell you later is what kids really long for so the 12 year old pitches the ball gently to the night to the five year old because what's the point of you know striking out a five-year-old you're going to look like a jerk right you know he's he's half your age and then when the little kid you know taps the ball the 12 year old goes oh my god it's a home run and of course the five-year-old is thrilled but the 12 year old is thrilled too because he is becoming what we were just talking about big he's acting like an adult he's empathizing he's showing a little leadership self-control kindness, compassion, and everybody grows from that experience.

9:05Whereas a 12-year-old pitching as fast as he can to another 12-year-old, somebody wins, somebody loses, and that's all that happens. So what we have to recognize is that kids were sort of, Mother Nature assumed that kids would always be in a mixed age group. And maybe not the one or two-year-olds, but the three-year-olds in most cultures are running as fast as they can toddling after those six-year-olds to be part of the group that's going to have some adventure. And the nine-year-old is scooping up the three-year-old and carrying her over to the swing because that's what everybody's programmed to do.

9:40We've taken out this really normal part of human development, which is interacting with kids without an adult directing it. And we wonder why kids are so droopy and anxious. And part of the reason is because they're not growing up in a normal way. They're sort of growing up in this weird, segregated, adult overseen, very structured way.

10:03Lenore Skenazy:And I mean, all of this is why I'm just so grateful to have you on. And I know that like, you know, typically like your book or what you do is like for older kids. But I think that if we don't have this foresight as moms of little kids now, like, then we can see what can happen if we don't start at least the building blocks now. Like, it is just so helpful to be like, yeah, I want my five-year-old playing with nine-year-olds and what kind of community am I creating to allow that to happen? Right. So that reminds me of a couple of things. One is that it's hard to have five-year-olds with nine-year-olds in our culture now because everybody's so afraid of bullying and everybody's afraid that the nine-year-old will be held back intellectually because he's wasting his time with the fire.

10:54One thing I want to pause and say here is that there's so many other influences. I must quote Peter Gray again. He says that there are all these parenting books because they're written by parents, right? That makes sense. But there's so many other influences on kids and we forget about them because there's all the parenting books telling us what to do and how to make the perfect kid and make them a contributor. And even I am part of that problem. But there's all these influences that we forget about that are really important and sometimes may be more important than just us. There's the teacher that they love or the teacher that hates them.

11:35There's the wonderful uncle or the bad uncle. There's the neighborhood that you live in. There's the neighbor. You know, she's two years younger, two years older, and that becomes your kid's best friend. It's really a wonderful part of their growing up. And they're all learning stuff from each other. And how do you deal with the fact that two are 13 and one is younger and one's a sister and one is not. And so there will be so many influences on your kid's life, not to mention their genes and their gut biome and their wiring and their temperament and their, you know, their babysitter and their nanny and their siblings.

12:11So try not to feel like it's all you. And that, you know, do it all right and you'll have a perfect kid and one false move and all bets are off because neither of those are true.

12:22Lenore Skenazy:I think we've been hinting at maybe at why being so hands on is dangerous. But I guess can we actually just address that of being like, here are the downsides of actually like being a helicopter parent or being a bulldozer parent. I'm going to flip that. And here's the upside of what kids get from some independence in the world and some free play with their friends without us watching. So recently, John Heights people and I were allowed to do this wonderful Harris poll. And what we found out that was so interesting was that when asked whether kids were asked, kids age 8 to 12, which I realize sounds like giants to your audience.

13:07But anyways, kids nonetheless were asked, if you had your choice of these three things, which would you choose? One is playing online with your friends, you know, whether it's Fortnite, Minecraft, whatever. Two is just playing in real life with your friends, you know, just goofing around. And three was going to an organized activity like soccer or ballet. What do you suppose they chose as first choice?

13:33Lenore Skenazy:Gosh, this is like a trick question. Quick reminder, whatever you put on your face ends up on your kids. When they hug you, kiss you, snuggle you, it transfers. And once I started reading my ingredient list on my makeup and Googling the side effects and risks that were in all those ingredients, I switched brands. That's why I use Crunchy today completely and exclusively. It's a clean, non-toxic makeup brand that actually performs as opposed to other clean makeup brands out there. No shade. So if you've been wanting to clean up your makeup bag without sacrificing how you look, this is the best swap.

14:11Lenore Skenazy:Everything I personally use is linked at learningtomompodcast.com slash makeup. If you need to know just where to get started, because I understand scrolling a whole website can get pretty overwhelming. So that link is in the show notes below for you along with their website. Go check it out now before you forget or get distracted with a dirty diaper. Again, that's learningtomompodcast.com slash makeup for my go-to staples of clean makeup that I can wear without any worry of transferring harmful chemicals to my kids. And no, it's just really interesting. They say is in real life. They just want to be with their friends.

14:54They don't want to be at soccer and they don't want to be online. But these are the only choices we give them. Right. Right. So many kids lives these days are so structured because we're so worried that our kids will be hurt or fall behind if there isn't an adult with them or if they aren't inside. We put them in organized activities or we say stay inside and we give them a screen because we're afraid of what would happen if they walk out the door. Well, it turns out what they really want to do is walk out the door. And 90 percent of the kids said that they would be on their devices less if they could play in their neighborhoods more.

15:30So what I'm here to ask your audience is to think about how great it is to open the door and let our kids do more on their own, which seems scary. But the alternatives, I think, are scarier, right? Being online all the time, I'm pretty phone neutral and device neutral. But I do recognize that if you're spending five hours a day, which is what most kids are spending on your device, that's not five hours kicking around a ball or petting a dog or climbing a tree or even making pancakes or babysitting. I mean, it's just all online. It's sitting. It's not in three dimensions. It's not interacting with the real world, which is where kids get their confidence and their groundedness in the neighborhood and their neighbors and their capabilities.

16:18And then the organized activities, there was another study done like five years ago by Cornell that found that across the economic spectrum, this is not just an upper middle class phenom. Everyone across America now believes that the more organized adult led activities they can put their kids in, the safer and more successful they're going to be. You know, I want my kid to succeed. Of course, I have them in, you know, chess or soccer or whatever. And believe me, I had my kids in enough things. I know the lure. Right. I mean, my kids have been in, you know, sports they hated and after school activities that fizzle.

16:53um so i don't say there's anything wrong with those but there's something so right with what the kids are innately longing for which is time to hang out with their buddies where i spend the summer there's like a roving band of kids and i hear them and half the time they're saying no wait that's not fair or wait let's try it this way or no it wasn't out yes it was and and it can be jarring to an adult because there's a there's some yelling involved you know there's some laughter and some joyful sunbeams out there. But there are some arguments too. And that's what mother nature expected to happen throughout childhood.

17:34And if we take that away and have an adult saying, no, the ball was out, it's your turn, you can go next, okay, we're starting now. What kids get is sort of a drill in how to play a game, but they don't get practice in how to be a human being, how to compromise. How to listen to the other kids, how to get a little buy in, how to be less of a jerk so people will play with you. And all the social emotional skills that schools are desperate to teach kids now. And they use workbooks and worksheets and, you know, rug sitting exercises. I don't blame them. They recognize that something is missing. but it's sort of like, you know, if you'd only fed kids little, you know, food pellets, you know, since they were little, because they were just getting this artificial sort of food.

18:24And then, you know, you realize like, oh, maybe kids want to eat an apple, right? Maybe kids want to eat, you know, a banana or a piece of bread. We haven't given them normal food in terms of food being the analogy for regular everyday life that their body came into the world expecting. And so when you ask what's bad about a hovering parent or a helicopter parent, I feel bad for parents because they're sort of forced into helicoptering. And I can go into that later. But what kids get when we do step back is what Mother Nature programmed them to want and need. And we see it in the Harris poll that says the kids really do just want to hang out with each other that they haven't been getting.

19:09And when they get it, they thrive.

19:12Lenore Skenazy:No, I am seriously, I'm all about this. What I figured out from my 30 ,000 degree or 30 ,000 feet viewpoint is that the real problem is that we are with our kids so much. When you're with your kids, you're going to see, oh, he was bored. He was unhappy. He came to me. He was hungry. He needed a snack. He got us, you know, she got a scratch. She wasn't sharing. He was using his outdoor voice when he was in the tree, whatever. Wendy Mogul, who wrote The Blessings of a Skinned Knee, had the best sentence ever. And it's sort of mean, I guess. But it goes like this. And she said that don't be surprised if sometimes you like your kids' friends more than your own kids.

19:55They seem nicer or smarter or whatever, better behave. And she said, when you look at anything up close, you see the flaws. And I think what she meant is also that we are so close to our kids now. We're spending so much time with them. I mean, there's studies that show we're spending way more time with our kids in this generation than the generation when moms didn't even work, right? More time, like eight hours more a week, which is an entire workday more just with our kids. When you look at anything closely, you see the flaws. And so when we're with our kids and we do see them bored for a little bit or what we consider misbehaving or wasting their time or just like pulling up clumps of grass, you know, well, that's not very fun.

20:38I could take him to, you know, Gymboree and he'd be learning how to tumble. You know, we can't tolerate that, right? It makes me hurt, too, when I see my kids being hurt or bored or anything. I mean, the pain of your own child somehow echoes in your heart, and it's so loud that it's intolerable, and you have to take your kid away because I can't stand my kid being left out or sad or didn't get his choice of what he wanted to do. That just doesn't seem fair. That other kid always does. So the only thing that works is not watching. not being there. I can almost guarantee, I'd love to see if this works and you'll have to write to me and tell me.

21:25But if you said, drop your kids off for three hours, when the parents came back, the kids would say, no, I don't want to go. We're just starting. Kids are still hardwired to want what you are trying to give them, but not when they have heroin waiting for them on the bench, which is here's a snack. Let me read to you. I brought a book. Here's your iPad. Right. So you, because we are so hardwired to understand how our kids are feeling to empathize and to provide them what we think they need, when what they really need is to learn how to provide for themselves or how to make their lives a little better or make a friend or wait their turn, they won't learn any of that if we're there to say, okay, honey, we're leaving.

22:16I know, it's hot. We'll go home. I'll give you a bath, and then we'll snuggle. It feels like you're doing the nicest thing for your kid because you've seen them unhappy or hot or bored or treated poorly. Treated poorly is really hard. But all the other things, kids are built to be able to handle all of that. And the idea that they shouldn't, that to be frustrated or unhappy or bored is something wrong is a weird new one. And it's because we're watching it. But if you weren't watching it, they'd be frustrated, bored, and unhappy part of the time and then work their way out of it and then have those skills for the rest of their lives.

22:59So the only answer that works is not always being with them. which brings me to let grow if i may please okay so let grow as i said is the non-profit that grew out of the whole idea of free range kids and free range kids said our kids are smarter safer and stronger than our culture gives them credit for and when i say culture this is why i don't blame quote-unquote helicopter hovering you know hovercraft it's not our fault we started doing that yeah it is not our fault it's become first of all it's the social norm and then it's it's um And, you know, reiterated, whatever the word is, it's pounded into the culture by rules.

23:36Like there are a lot of schools that won't let the kid get off a school bus unless there's an adult at the school at the bus stop waiting to walk them home, sometimes through kindergarten, sometimes through first, second, third or fourth grade. And it's like, so just quit your job and go wait at the bus stop every afternoon from three to three thirty. And we'll call it a deal. It's like that's not a deal. And and it's partly because we live in a litigious culture. So the school is thinking, well, you know, the minute we let go of the kid, they're your responsibility. So, you know, there's there's all these, you know, different reasons that the culture has become so ingrained with constant adult supervision.

24:16But there's also you can't just drop your kid off at school or camp. Sometimes you have to write, you know, write their name and sign them in and then sign them out. And then the camp is sending home photos of your kid every day. So you get used to watching them even when they're away for seven weeks. You're seeing, are they happy to that? It looks like she burned her marshmallow. Did anybody give her another marshmallow? I'm a little upset. I'm going to call the camp director. But I mean, and there's, you'll see it very soon. Any of you who have kids in daycare or preschool, there's a lot of cameras in the classroom.

24:46And then you can see the teacher was talking to, you know, Sebastian for seven minutes, but she only talked to my kid for two. And I'm going to call up the principal and the headmaster. Why is my kid not getting attention? So it's a culture that has normalized constant supervision by us or by somebody we hire of our kids. And so that's why I don't blame parents. It's this dystopian world that assumes that all kids are in constant danger all the time and parents should be watching them all the time. How do you change that? How do you breathe easy enough to let your kid have some independence and just play as we were talking?

25:28So when we started Let Grow, we're all thought leaders. You know, it's like, well, who cares? I mean, I've been thought leading for 10 years. I travel all around the country giving lecture after lecture. And people all love it. And they remember their own childhoods. And yes, we played in the woods. And my parents didn't know where we were. And we didn't come home until the streetlights came on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then they'd go home and they couldn't do that. You know, they'd go home and it would be immediately put the kid in the car seat and off we go to ballet. And so how do you how do you change a collective problem?