Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone
So a woman in New York City let her son “figure out how to get home on his own” from the original Bloomingdale’s. Fear-mongers across the country have come out of the woodwork.
Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them.
I applaud her. A wise man once said,
So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Is it easy to let your children experience independence? No, especially in today’s Be Afraid society.
Lenore: thank you for your courage. The world needs more people like you.
Via Bruce Schneier, who also links to “this great graphic depicting childhood independence diminishing over four generations” and some interviews and reactions.
