Why you should spend less time with your kids | Lenore Skenazy

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. As a mom of three, I know how hard it is to find the balance between wanting to protect my kids and letting go so they can make mistakes and learn on their own. In her talk, journalist Lenore Skenazy makes the case that letting our kids be a bit more free range or giving them more independence instead of micromanaging their every move helps build resilience and actually eases both parents' and children's anxiety. Enjoy.

0:48I am here to talk about parenting, which is kind of weird, because if you Google America's Worst Mom, you find me there for 22 Google pages, followed by America's Worst Mother's Day gift, which, guys, a lot of you here, we don't want an iron and lingerie is for Father's Day. So how do you get a name like that? Well, years ago, when our younger son was nine, he started asking me and my husband if we would 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. So we talked about it, me and my husband, who you never hear of as America's worst dad.

1:33And we decided, sure. Long story short, I wrote a newspaper column why I let my nine-year-old ride the subway alone, And two days later, I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News and NPR. Fox News and NPR. Okay? Kind of wild. And I realize that a lot of you would not make the same decision, obviously, but you should have seen our son. He came into the apartment levitating. He was so happy. So I want you to think back for just a second on something that you absolutely loved doing as a kid. Maybe flashlight tag, building forts. And now I want you to raise your hand if your mom knew exactly where you were.

2:22Okay, it's an older crowd here. Sorry. It is usually the younger people who raise their hands because that's what's changed. In fact, that's what I wrote my book about, free-range kids. For the last generation or two, Kids have been getting so little time on their own, so little time unsupervised. And of course, some of that's good. You know, togetherness is good. Kids need a strong bond. But, you know, too much is driving us all crazy. There was the Surgeon General report from 2021, which a lot of you probably saw. It said that kids are more depressed and anxious than ever, right? And then he came out with a report like two years later, and it said, parents are more depressed and anxious than ever.

3:07I'm like, yeah, because we need our space, right? The olden days were not perfect, but back then there were three worlds that were absolutely perfectly balanced. There was the kid world filled with, you know, bikes and adventures and playing, and the adult world, so boring. People were always talking about politics and who was having a procedure, a lot of polyps, polyps, polyps, polyps. And then there was Then there was family world, where everyone was together, like on vacation or at dinner. But now they've all been sort of mashed up together, and especially since phones, because now even when parents aren't physically with their kids, they can be texting and talking and tracking to them.

3:46So the worlds are not in balance anymore. Fortunately, the reason I'm here is that there is a sort of easy way to start teasing the worlds apart again. and it just begins with a little bit of deprogramming. So here goes. We have to realize that we've been sort of brainwashed into believing that any time our kids aren't with us, they're in terrible danger of being kidnapped by a guy in a white van looking for his puppy or, also tragic, not getting into Harvard. And as a result... Terrible. I don't even like to think about it. But the upshot is that we are spending way more time with our kids than our parents spent with us, usually helping them do things that they could do on their own.

4:38And we'll call it the adult takeover of childhood because it's so vast that the University of Michigan did a study two years ago, and they found that parents want to give their kids independence. They recognize its importance. But the majority of parents of kids age 9 to 11, which is tweens, right? Kind of old. Will not let them play at the park with a friend. Will not let them walk to a friend's house. And if they're at the store shopping together, only 50 % will let their kid go to another aisle. Okay? That's the real statistic. That's University of Michigan. So sending your kid for a can of peas is like sending them to NAMM.

5:23Okay? It's just crazy. We've got to get braver than that. We've got to get brave enough to send our kids to the canned food aisle or to the park before their voice changes. So, how? Well, I've got two helpful facts and three solutions. Helpful fact one is this. Your kid is not going to be kidnapped. If for some reason you wanted them to be snatched off the street by a stranger, Statistically, how long would you have to keep them outside?

5:57750 ,000 years. Okay? It's a while. And after the first 100 ,000, they're not even kids anymore. They're not even cute. They're like dust. Fact two is that when our kids aren't with us and all our teachable moments, they're actually learning more. And let me explain. When adults organize a game, we are efficient, right? We decide what they're going to play and whether the ball was in or out and who gets a trophy, which is easy because everyone, right? But when kids are organizing a game, it is a total mess. You got, especially if you got like a bunch of kids of different ages, like the Peanuts gang.

6:39Well, they have to decide what they're going to play and then they have to make the teams kind of even, a lot of negotiating, and then you have to keep the game going, even when there are arguments, which there will be. So along the way, they're learning, hmm, how to make something happen, how to get by an executive function, focus, compromise, you know, communication, just all the skills they need to be a functioning human being. And if, if like a 12-year-old ends up pitching to a five-year-old, which would never ever happen in adult organized sports? Well, there's no glory in striking out a kindergartner, right?

7:19So the older kid throws the ball kind of gently, and the little kid taps it, and the older one goes, my God, it's a home run! And the little kid is so ecstatic, right? But the older one is too, because he's doing something new. He is learning how to empathize and how to be generous, how to be an adult. And that's the most teachable moment of all. When we take those experiences out of our kids' lives by always being with them to help them and high-five them, good job, good buddy, you know, they get anxious because they don't see how much they can do, how much they can handle on their own. And we get anxious because we don't see it either.

8:06And so we're all feeling way more anxious than we have to. What can we do? Here's the deal. About eight years ago, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and I and two others got together and we started a nonprofit to make it easy, normal, and legal for parents to let go and let grow. Okay? In fact, we call our organization Let Grow. And because a collective problem, which is nobody letting their kids do anything, needs a collective solution, everybody doing it at the same time so they don't feel guilty or weird or judged, God forbid, judged, we came up with two school programs that are free and one new law.

8:56The law is this. The law says that it is not illegal to let your kid play at the park. with a friend or walk to the store or do all sorts of things on their own. We call it the Reasonable Childhood Independence Law. And so far, as of last month, it has been passed in nine states. Yes. Right. Thank you. Yeah, it's a great law. And actually, they're voting on it in Florida tomorrow. Anyways, and then our two school programs are these. We would like schools to stay open after school, not just for chess and homework help and soccer and all these adult-run activities, but for actual mixed-age, no-devices, free play.

9:42You put out some balls, some chalk, cardboard boxes, and there is an adult there crouching in the corner with an EpiPen. But they don't solve the arguments, they don't organize the game. They're like a lifeguard, OK? And I know everyone thinks that kids just want to run home, they really want to be with their phones. They really want to be with each other. They really want to be having fun, playing, having adventures, maybe flirting. And if the only place they can do that without constant adult supervision is on their phones, of course that's where they go. But if you give them back a place that's free of phones, filled with kids, a swath of time, they love it.

10:25I've gone to these play clubs. It is so great. I consider them a wildlife sanctuary for childhood. Simple. Just keep the schools open for free play. The second thing we suggest is that schools do the let grow experience. And that's when teachers give kids the homework assignment that says, go home and do something new on your own with your parents' permission, but without your parents. You can climb a tree, walk the dog, make pancakes, doesn't matter, anything. depending on your age and your neighborhood, etc. And it's in just over 1 ,000 schools so far. And last year we heard of one kid who was 10 or 11, and he decided for his let-grow experience, he would make dinner for his family.

11:13So he went to get the ingredients at the store, and he's shopping and he's getting everything, and then he can't find the hot sauce. And the idea of asking a clerk for help, going up to an adult like a moron, an idiot. He just felt so tiny. He couldn't do it. He ran out of the store. He literally left his cart and all the other groceries there, and he bolted. And then he went back in, and he talked to the clerk, and he got the hot sauce. And in one sense, it's just a simple errand, right? But in another sense, it's the hero's journey, right? Because he had been defeated and humiliated. He actually abandoned his quest, just like they say in those Hero's Journeys books.

12:02But then he went back in and he did it himself. I did it myself are childhood's magic words. I did it myself is the original anxiety buster. And in fact, if I ask you right now, and probably we'll talk about it later, to remember something that made you really proud of your own kid or your grandkid or your niece or your student nephew, whatever. It's usually something like, you know, he was on an overnight last night and the other mom called to say he cleared the table. Really? Or we were on vacation and she got lost, but she found her own way back to the hotel. Or my kid took the cousins out last night and let the five-year-old get a home run.

12:49we're most proud of our kids when they do something on their own. And our kids are most proud of themselves when they do something on their own. So the solution to the parent anxiety crisis and the kid anxiety crisis turns out to be the exact same thing. You've got to pull apart those worlds again. You've got to put the kid world separate from the parent world. Put them back in balance. You've got to let kids do something on their own in the big, wide world, maybe without even tracking them or talking to them or texting them, just trusting them to do something on their own. And if you can do that, if you can let go, I can guarantee your kids are going to end up less anxious.

13:37Your kids are going to end up smarter. And your kids are going to feel really proud, but not as proud as you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

13:55That was Lenore Skenazy speaking at TED 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faze-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.