Did you know? The Patriot Post is funded 100% by its readers. Help us stay front and center in the fight for Liberty and support the 2024 Year-End Campaign.

November 13, 2024

Kids Need Freedom

Allowing kids to experience independence doesn’t just help kids; it helps parents.

I often report on fake “crises” pushed by media.

Here’s one that may be real:

Kids are anxious.

In my new video, Lenore Skenazy, founder of the non-profit Let Grow, says it’s because today’s parents rarely allow their kids to experience the joys of independence.

Skenazy once let her 9-year-old ride the New York City subway on his own. For that, the media labeled her “America’s worst mom.” “Law and Order,” the TV show, produced an episode where the child riding alone is kidnapped and murdered.

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

Skenazy argues that not letting kids take care of themselves makes kids insecure. Anxiety and depression are “spiking off the charts,” 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 going up before cellphones,” she replies.

She says that the cause is the media’s hyping of isolated examples of child kidnapping and “stranger danger.”

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

Skenazy says parents should just teach kids to “recognize no one can touch you where your bathing suit covers. Resist, run, kick, scream. If somebody’s bothering you, don’t be nice. Resist. And then report.”

“Those three R’s,” she says, “keep kids way safer than ‘stranger danger’ because most strangers do not present a danger.”

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

“It’s no fun to think that the second your kids go outside, they’re going to be kidnapped … and it’s no fun to have to be with your kids every single second.”

The U.S. Surgeon General issued an “advisory on the mental health and well-being of parents,” writing, “Over the last 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’s so much that you could be doing with your life!”

“Let Grow, the nonprofit I run, has teachers give kids the homework assignment to go home and do something new on your own … just so parents have the experience of … watching the kid go off to the store, the park, or if you’re in a dangerous neighborhood, the kitchen to make pancakes without parents there to turn on the stove.”

She says kids who do this “Let Grow Experience” feel better about themselves “because they’re trusted and doing something new, and it’s exciting.”

Again, it’s not just kids who benefit.

“The parents are ecstatic,” she says. “I used to think it was because they were so happy that their kid wasn’t kidnaped … But then I started thinking, you have kids so that they will live on when you’re not around. Until you let your kid do something without you, you don’t know that they’re ever going to be OK without you. So, it is this ecstatic moment of realizing, ‘Hey, I had a kid who is going to be all right.’”

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

Kids need independence for the same reason adults do; it’s how we grow.

COPYRIGHT 2024 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.