Mental health — many say it's the crisis of our time, fueled by a cocktail of culprits from COVID-era isolation to social media. Some, however, speculate it starts much earlier and reining it in begins with parents.
"Children's anxiety and depression have been going up, but they've been going up in parallel with something else, which is a lack of independence as kids' lives have become more adult-run, adult-structured," Lenore Skenazy, the New York mom who pioneered the "Free-Range Kids" movement, told Fox News Digital.
"They leave school, they're in a car, they're taken to a class, they're taken to a game, it's run by an adult. They come home, their homework is overseen by an adult. Their reading log is signed by an adult. Then they go to bed and then the next morning they're taken again to school. There's just very little time left for anything that we would call self-directed."
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy sounded the alarm on the youth mental health crisis earlier this year, paying careful attention to upticks in anxiety, depression and loneliness hampering America's kids in the post-COVID world. Though he cited social media as a primary factor, Skenazy said more attention should be directed to the loss of childhood independence and experiences that allow kids to grow.
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Gone are the "Stranger Things" days of playing outside and riding bikes on adventures without parents' supervision, she said. They've been replaced by the rise of the electronic world – social media, cable TV, 24-hour news and smartphones.
With the rise of the digital age, it's easy for parents to worry about their kids and take action to protect them from unsafe spaces or disturbing content, but Skenazy, along with psychologist Dr. Camilo Ortiz, posed the question responding to those actions in a New York Times guest essay last week: What if kids are so "overprotected" that they’re "scared of the world?"
They also proposed a simple solution: "Start letting them do more things on their own."
"Free-range" parenting does just that. It challenges narratives warning that kids are in constant danger of kidnappers, germs, failure and more and trusts that kids are safer and more competent than we realize, allowing them to lead their own lives and grow into independent adults.
But parenting Skenazy's way, as reminiscent as it is of childhoods of the past, isn't controversy-free. In 2008, she caught flak for letting her then-9-year-old son ride a New York City subway by himself after he had begged her to let him find his way home on his own. As the story made headlines, the media branded her "America's Worst Mom," and she received mail echoing the criticism.
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"When I wrote a column about it and the media became intense around my decision and my parenting, I wavered. I sort of went between feeling like, 'Well, I'll show them,' and like, ‘Oh, my God, somebody called my house and said my children should be taken away from me,’" she said.
"At some point, I remember being on the carpet shaking."
Since then, she has gotten more pleasant feedback and, though taking heat was challenging for her then, she is able to handle it now. She went on to help found Let Grow, a free program for families and schools to help restore kids' independence and let them "grow stronger" by overcoming adversity.
"I've always felt that my kids are pretty self-sufficient and resilient and resourceful and that I could engender that by taking a step back. Not that I stepped out of their lives," Skenazy explained. "Our job is to teach them how to be safe and don't get in a car with strangers, don't let anybody touch you, all that kind of stuff, but I did trust them to make their way without me."
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The "Let Grow Experience" has become a part of some classrooms across the U.S. as well, Skenazy said. Teachers download a homework assignment and give it to their students, challenging them to do something on their own with parental approval but without parents present. Going to the local market to buy something or checking out a library book alone are some options.
"It changes parents too," she said. "It's when they come home, and they walk through the door, and they're proud, and they checked out a library book or they bought a fish or they bought a donut, or they brought you a flower or a dandelion, that changes you. You really can't keep being so afraid for them when you've just had the feedback loop of ‘look at them blossoming.’ We are so keen to get schools to do this because, really, it changes an entire community."
It changes minds, too, she said.
"Kids need a whole lot of those experiences. They are anxiety killers," her article with Dr. Ortiz read in part, adding, letting them go on adventures and walk their own path lets kids "see what they're made of."
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