Sandecki is a freelance writer in Terrace, B.C. This column originally ran in the Terrace Standard.
Courage and confidence are emotional muscles. Like biceps or gluteals, it takes exercise to build and tone them. Hovering over our kids to keep them safe robs them of opportunities to develop independence.
Recently a New York Sun columnist let her son, 9, make his way home alone on the subway from Bloomingdale’s Department Store at 59th Street to 34th Street, and then catch a crosstown bus for the last couple of blocks.
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Lenore Skenazy chose a sunny Sunday to satisfy her son’s begging to be left somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own.
She gave him her blessing along with all the aids necessary for anyone who can read to navigate solo in a city as logically laid out as Manhattan – a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters in case he had to make a call.
In due time, he arrived home “ecstatic with independence.”
More than 360 readers weighed in on her judgment and common sense. Half said she did the right thing. The other half wanted to turn her in for child abuse.
Skenazy defends her hands-off experiment as one of those independence-building episodes so many children today fail to experience.
We keep our kids indoors to avoid abductors. We drive them back and forth to every activity for fear they will be killed in traffic. We map their free time, enrolling them in dance, organized sports, and music.
Skenazy says the problem with this everything-is-dangerous outlook is that over-protectiveness is a danger in and of itself: “A child who thinks he can’t do anything on his own eventually can’t.”
Author Richard Louv adds this: “We are dangerously close to becoming a society that is so risk-averse that we drain the lake because one child drowns. If we keep it up, with no lake, no child would learn to swim.”
Bob Livingstone, a clinical social worker in San Mateo, California, believes the natural world is the best environment to challenge and develop a child’s innate abilities.
Summer holidays are an ideal time for parents to encourage kids to enjoy nature while building courage and confidence.
