Free-Range Kids: A Book Review

If you are a parent and you can find this at your local library, I would highly recommend picking it up.  I grabbed it simply because the title caught my eye (free-range, that's like chickens, right?  Not kids!).  I was pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing out loud while reading it and joyously sharing her insights with Dan, who also got a chuckle but probably just wanted me to stop interrupting his solitaire game.

The author is basically presenting a commentary on the paranoid society we live in that has resulted in super paranoid, over the top helicopter parents who can hardly let their children walk to the mailbox alone anymore, let alone to school, to their friends', or down to the local convenience store, library, sporting event, etc.  She discusses how this paranoia is producing kids who are basically useless when they leave home - which is why they stay or keep coming back. 

I'm sure my bias makes this book a great read for me.  Although in such a large city I also fall victim to some of the paranoid thinking outlined in the book, I am always shaking my head at how intent parents are on making sure their child is ALWAYS SAFE.  Not that you want any harm to come to your child, heaven forbid, but learning the hard way now and then only makes you tougher.  And we CAN'T protect them from the world.  It's out there, waiting.  Most children of paranoid parents only greet it a lot later in life, and usually have a break down trying to cope with it.

If nothing else, this book will make you giggle.  Skenazy has a way of saying things that brings the lighter side out on everything and points out the absurdly ridiculous (labelling classic episodes of Sesame Street as "adult only" due to it's representation of activities now considered unsafe in our paranoid society, for instance), yet she manages to show that a foundation of understanding must be created within our children.  Knowledge is power, and knowing what's out there and how to handle it is truly empowering.  She also backs up a lot of what she says with research supporting the fact that crime rates have not changed over the years, rather our 24/7 CNN coverage of every little traumatic event in the lives of people hundreds of miles away from us has changed what we believe are every day occurances that we have to protect ourselves and our children from.

Give it a read.  It'll make you smile in this wet, dreary spring!

From the Wall Street Journal review:

"Skenazy will find plenty of supporters for her contention that, in a world where the rights of chickens to roam freely are championed, it's time to liberate the kids."