Freedom to Learn

When I was a young man (about 15) my father began allowing me to leave the house with older teens who could drive. He didn't like it, and he was strict with curfews. He also told me - with powerful emphasis - that I would have this freedom only so long as I did not prove that he should take it away.
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In other words, screw this up and you lose.
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So I didn't mess it up. Instead I came home on time and did was I was told. With it just being myself and my single father at home during my teen years, I pitched in and helped. I helped clean the house, mow the lawn (both mine and my grandparents; no mean feat in Florida, where I needed to do both twice a week in 90+ degree heat) and pitch in with other stuff too.
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Our arrangement was a mature exchange. More responsibility around the house, in exchange for more responsibility outside of it.
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By sixteen I had my own license, a slightly later curfew and more trust. I was out until around 11pm and always home on time. On the rare occasions I was five minutes late I call ahead and explain I was on my way home and that was ok - I didn't need to run a red light to get home at 1058pm instead of 1105pm.
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By seventeen I had a job where I worked 30 - 25 hrs per week (quietly.) I paid my own cell pager and then cell phone bill. I paid my own car insurance bill every month. By this time I had no curfew. I often went out on Friday night with a bag packed. Sometimes I came home late - and other times, I came home Sunday. "Be home in time to get up for school on Monday morning" became the rule, which made sense as my father was dating and often out late as well.
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Now I am 32 and a late starter in college. Spent so long learning on my own that having others tell me how to learn was just...uncomfortable. Still is. I have a townhouse, work a job and pay all my bills without trouble. My budget is tight, as it is for many others today, but I make it work. After all, I have been doing it since I was 16, without help.
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In contrast, my brother was raised by my mother when she left. He was spoiled and babied and sheltered. She changed his sheets at sixteen and did his laundry for him until he moved out at 20. Now, he struggles to keep jobs, borrows money to pay his bills, spends as much as he makes and just generally cannot manage his own affairs. Not surprising, since he has never had to do so.
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Freedom and responsibility helped prepare me for life. I strongly encourage other parents afford their own children the same opportunities.

I agree with this perspective wholeheartedly.

Recently, I let my two young daughters, at ages 9 and 10 respectively, each travel alone to France for 6 months for a foreign exchange, through a program called En Famille International (www.enfamille.com) which organizes exchanges for kids ages 9-16. Over 2000 children have participated in the program since 1978, and of course the kids who go are well cared for in their new families.

When I tell other American parents, I can't tell you the number of times I've heard "I could never do that," implying that it would be impossible for a parent to loosen the parental apron strings enough to trust another family to care for their little one.

In Europe, by contrast, the program has a long waiting list of families who want to participate. These families desperately want to be matched with English-speaking families, but the program continues to struggle to find American families willing to even consider it.

My kids were adventurous to begin with, but having returned from their adventure abroad, in which no English was allowed and they spoke no French before they left, they are even more so. They aren't afraid to take risks and they're more empathetic. I'm forwarding this article to the older one, who's now 14. One of her pet issues is the low expectations that most adults have for kids.

My older son needed and wanted to skip two grades in school. He went to college 2000 miles away at age 16. He's an 18-year-old sophomore now and a leader at his college.

As parents, I believe that three of our most important jobs are: 1. watching for opportunities to stretch and grow that our kids need, 2. PREPARING them for them, and 3. giving them to them. It's absolutely essential to their health and maturation process.

My daughter is only 3.5 so her freedoms seem minor to us, but it is amazing that things we consider her capable of and let her do seem shocking to my family. We let her drink out of a glass and use real china at 1.5 and use a fork and knife. Last year, her 6 year old cousin even took her knife away at the table and said, "We aren't allowed to use knives." to which she was confused and asked "Why? How will I butter my bread?" We gave her a floor bed she could get in and out of herself as a baby ( my family said cribs are for safety and she needed one because she could fall off or wander the house ). We never really baby proofed anything or even put a gate at the bottom of our stairs. Actually, we installed a child-height rail and my sister told me how horrible it was because now she would climb the stairs. Kids will climb stairs-- it is what they are meant to do -- better to give them a rail to climb normally.

Children are only capable of learning to handle the freedoms that are given to them. If the timing is delayed, the learning is delayed. Children need to be given more freedoms earlier in their life for the benefit of human civilization.

It is so empowering to read people's stories of not giving in to fear and incessant worry. I only wish my 12-year old son would ask for more adventure! As it is, the only independent time he asks for is hours in the skate park. In fact, this skate-park phenomenon is very interesting. It is mostly boys, of all ages, doing things: skateboarding and scootering, giving each other tips, bickering, possibly even bullying, looking out for each other, and generally just being themselves and growing. Fascinating stuff goes on.

But then again, I have to quickly point out that where we are is pretty safe -- at worst probably a little pot smoking among the bigger boys. In the skate parks in San Francisco where we used to live there was some disconcerting drugs and weapons presence. I'm glad I don't have to make a decision to let my kid loose in the face of that!

Would you rather have your 12 year old try drugs and decide they are not for him and so have a clear mind while attending college, or would you rather hide the world from a 12 year old only to let him discover everything on his own all at once while in college, fail, overdose, die, or otherwise self destruct?

I started working (as a volunteer) at our local children's library when I was nine. My mom (who was working on her doctorate) would drop me off two or three days a week to put boks away, plan story times and check out books at the front desk. When I was 12, I was hired... possibly illegally, but I wasn't complaining! At 14, I was old enough to work weekends by myself, as in I was the only person in the building and had the keys to open and lock up.

At 16, I had saved enough money to go to Great Britain for a few weeks. My parents went as well, they had always loved England, but once we were off the plane I rarely saw them. Wandering around England and Scotland alone at 16 changed my life. It was wonderful.

I was commuting to school in Toronto via public transport at 9 years old. There were a group of us kids that did the same thing together. We wanted to go to a better school. Toronto is a pretty safe large city. New York is pretty safe these days too.

I see kids on the subway and bus going to school all the time. I thought nothing of it until I started hearing how parents are expected to supervise children these days.

We played outside without supervision too.

I just took it for granted.

Dear Dr. Gray:

What a refreshing post. And you are not the only developmental psychologist to have made the same point. There are many books that show how well kids learn to get along and how responsible they bcome in primitive societies without constant adult supervision. There is also a wonderful book published in 1986 called Pre-School in Three Cultures. The team of psychologists did detailed observations on kids in a preschool in Japan, China and the US. The happiest and most resilent kids were in the Japanese preschool. They had one staff member for 30 students! The staff would not protect the kids from each other! And they had the 4-year olds take the younger kids to the bathroom. They would take the kids to vacant lots in the rain so they can discover that they can have fun wherever they are and under uncomfortable conditions. The most fighting took place in the US preschool, where there was a ratio of one teacher per six students. One of the main responsibilities of the staff was to stop kids from fighting! Unwittingly, their efforts to stop the fights were making them fight more often!

But what is most interesting to me about your blog is the comments by readers. They are all positive! It's because what you say makes so much sense to readers. But I guarantee you that had you tried to make the same point regarding bullying, you would have gotten an avalanche of nasty letters! Everyone, including virtually all professionals in the psychological sciences, have bought into the belief that society needs to protect children from bullying and that we need tougher and tougher anti-bullying laws. We are trying to protect children from bullying, and unwittingly raising them to be emotional marshmallows who are terrified of bullying and have no coping mechanisms other than report to an adult. As a result, the problem of bullying is escalating and bullied kids are despairing and taking their own lives with increasing frequency. To the best of my knowledge, there is only one academic developmental psychologist in the entire world that has openly criticized the anti-bully movement, and that is Helene Guldberg, and she has been vilified for her ideas, as I always am when I criticize the anti-bully movement in my own Psych Today blog. You can read about Prof. Guldberg in my blog entry: http://my.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychological-solution-bullying/20111...

The anti-bully psychology that has been universally accepted by the academic psychologists is a complete abandonment of almost everything that we learn about what is good for children's development, and almost no one sees it, and if they do, they don't have the guts to openly say so.

I am not saying that kids must always be left alone to learn how to handle being bullied. Unless they are allowed to spend many hours without adult intervention within their group of peers, many kids will not have the opportunity to figure out how to handle aggression. Such kids can be taught what to do so they can handle bullying on their own. But societal efforts to solve the problem of bullying for them by trying to protect them and to take their side against their bullies is counterproductive.

Best Wishes,
Izzy Kalman
http://my.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychological-solution-bullying
www.bullies2buddies.com

Loved the stories. I'm not sure the main question was addressed. How do children learn bravery in an age of over-protection? Where can I let my suburban elementary age kids run free? The opportunities seem so few, especially when the weather turns cold. I like the point you made once that computer/video games may be so appealing to kids because it's the only arena left within which they have total freedom. But I am dismayed that my hands are so tied about what I can offer them.

We unschool. We're involved in several groups and activities outside the home. Even in a group of relaxed parenting homeschool peers, the kids aren't allowed the freedom to work out their own playground problems or run through the woods as much as I'd like.

I wish there was something like the Sudbury model school but without an attendance requirement, welcoming of families, and costing less than thousands of dollars per year in tuition. We could use some kind of community center where we could just run free.

Another wonderfully thought-provoking piece, thank you.

I let my teenaged son meet up with adults he'd befriended on an automotive repair forum. They spent the day together and are planning to do so again. We encourage our children to learn from inspiring people in the community and on the web. IMO, it's the kids who are sheltered and disempowered who are at risk, not those who freely interact in meaningful ways with adults beyond those who are paid to monitor/teach/entertain them. Here are the details:
http://shareable.net/blog/we-dont-need-no-age-segregation

I let my 9-year-old son ride his bikes and scooters around the block. A few months back he asked if he could cross the street, and I said "Yep, just be careful." I think he was surprised.

We have one neighbor family who let their kids out on their own, so my son check if they're around.

He also goes the 3 blocks to the corner store for candy on his own.

It's not much, but he doesn't want more freedom. My son is very anxious about new things, and I'm pleased that he'll do this much out in the world alone.

I grew up in the 50s on the border of farm country and the suburbs. My parents basically just let me do what I wanted - free play, free range. I give most of the credit for the strong bent I have to creative thinking today to this upbringing. When my brother was in the 9th grade, they let him hitchhike with a friend from Minnesota to San Francisco (!). They carried a note that said it was ok. The journey was a great adventure for them (they even got a plane ride once!) and was without incident. Today is a different world in so many ways. We are bombarded in the media with all the worst possible things that happen every day. Still, there is a prevalence of drugs and alcohol and more in schools that was only a hint back then. Everything looks very scary as a parent. We have a 16 year old daughter who was raised between free range me (a straight arrow in high school) and my spouse who was a very difficult teen, raised by strict parents. Our daughter is also now a difficult teen, very hard to live with, mixed results in school, bad boyfriend, drinking incident - all out of the blue but very real and difficult. My spouse wants to come down hard on her; I am of the opinion that unless it causes bleeding, etc., we should let her make as many choices as possible but live with the consequences of those choices - so that she "owns" what happens and learns (hopefully) in the process. It's very hard to know what to do and hard to resolve our opposite approaches in the face of a difficult teen who is convinced that we are the bad guys.

What to do?

Oh, yes, one more book I wish I had known about earlier on this topic: 50 Dangerous Things (you should let your children do) by Gever Tulley. Also see his talk on TED (ted.com). Amazing.

First of all, I hope you all get what I'm trying to tell cause English is my third lanquaqe so I'm going to make lots of mistakes.

I'm from Finland. My first reaction to this column was growing wonder about culture differences besides my country and USA. When I was child, it was most common thing to play alone with other kids without parents around. Before starting school (we start school as seven-year-old) it was more limited but still I remember running around woods and nearby streets with. We climbed trees and roofs and everything. And when school started, we got more freedom and were allowed to travel to city by buss sometimes and so one. When it was holiday I traveled to see my grandparents by myself if my parents hadn't got the time. I also remember few summer camps (or something like that) where there were twentysomething of 8 to 10 years of old children and few leaders who were 13 to 15 years of old.
There were also this comment about being allowed to go with older teens at age of 15. Is this extraordinary in USA? I have difficult time believing that.

And I have been told that our school system espects independent behaouviour at earlier stage than that in USA. Haven't seen studies by myself so can't say for sure thought.

I'm 20-years-old, but I don't think things are so different for nowadays cildren here. And now when I'm studying and living in the bigger city at the moment, I see everyday children going to school or hobbies by themselves. Is that really so different? Or am I getting this wrong?