>> Amy Draves: Lenore Skenazy is joining us as part of the Microsoft Research Visiting Speaker
Series. Lenore is here today to discuss her book, Free Will, Free Range Kids, Why Does an OldFashioned Childhood Sound so Radical. Free rangers believe in safety and they also believe in
being reasonable. We can gain the perspective required to allow our children some of the
freedoms that we grew up with. Lenore is a Yale graduate and writes a nationally syndicated
column. She is a former columnist for the New York Sun, New York Daily News, Mad Magazine
and has worked for NPR. She hosts a reality TV show called The World's Worst Mom and is the
co-author of Who's the Blonde That Married What's His Name. Please join me in giving her a
very warm welcome. [applause].
>> Lenore Skenazy: I sound like a nut when you put all those things together, I know. So thank
you Kim for your watch and thank you people in the, you know, you should know how
untechnical I am, but I have to say I am a Microsoft person and I wrote that book that some of
you are buying [laughter] on Word, okay, so, that's actually why I called up Microsoft and said
can I please come and talk here. And then Amy you were kind enough to say yes. You forgot to
tell me I should put my speech here in case I have to refer to what I'm going to talk about
today, which is the fact that I really am America's worst mom. I mean, you know, if you Google
that, oh, am I allowed to say Google? Google? If you search, if you Bing that as we all do,
[laughter], Bing, Bing, Bing I come up once, but if you Google it, I come up for 35 pages
[laughter], and it's America's worst mom, America's worst mom, finally followed by America's
worst Mother's Day gift, which you should know, since that’s coming up. There were three
things. One is a McDonald's gift card; moms don't want that. Lingerie, that's for Father's Day.
And the other one is The Collected Works of the Three Stooges, okay, we don't want that.
World's worst mom, America's worst mom or not, I am a mom and that means that I spend a
lot of time talking to other moms, like three of whom I see here. There are so many guys; this is
such a guy place here. I once talked to a convention of school bus drivers, and that was like the
only demographically similar thing, there were like three women [laughter] and then all of the
guys, and so I have to sort of readjust myself. We moms talk to each other all the time. You
end up talking about your kids or what's happening, and once I was talking to a couple of years
ago my neighbor, one second, okay? Talk amongst yourselves. Let me do just one big cough,
for a second, okay? Sorry, cyber people [laughter]. So I was talking to my friend Melissa and
she was saying Lenore, can you believe she did that? And I'm like what, what, what happened?
Well, here's the story. Melissa was at Costco with her two children who at the time were ages
two and five, two little girls and the lady who was in line behind her, you know, with another
pallet full of dog food or whatever, tapped her on the shoulder and said "would you mind
watching my son for a second?" Little boy, you know with his feet in the cart, I forgot to get
enough tuna for Armageddon, or whatever, [laughter] you know, it's about 3 miles back, would
you mind watching my kid for a second? And Melissa said sure. And that's when she turned to
me and said can you believe she did that? And I'm like, what Melissa, when I go to Costco I can
never remember what I want. It's all in those big brown boxes. Nothing looks cute or fun to
buy. No, Lenore, I could have taken her baby and she would never have seen him again. And
I'm like, that's what Melissa was stunned by? That's what she thought the woman did wrong?
I'm like, Melissa, let's just walk through this scenario for a second. Okay, let's assume first of all
for the sake of argument that you were a kidnapper, okay? One of the rare women kidnappers
with two children of her own, waiting in a public place, using the sort of low yield method of
waiting for somebody to hand her a baby in line at Costco, okay, let's take that as a given, okay?
So now all you have to do is wait for her to disappear behind the baggies and then you have to,
let's see, put your own child down there. You have to turn around, you have to start grabbing
the kid with the chubby little legs out of the cart, and ahh, and it starts to yell, oh, you're
scraping me. That's one years old, not yelling, but wah, wah, and then you have to take your
own two-year-old and you have to have your five-year-old come with you, and you have to start
leaving the store with a screaming child and you have your two-year-old saying I'm the baby
and your five-year-old saying what about the goldfish crackers. You said we were going to get
goldfish crackers. Shut up, I gotta go. And then you're walking by everybody, excuse me,
excuse me, you're leaving your groceries, you're leaving behind your space in line at Costco?
That's crazy. That's an hour you will never get back, Melissa, so you're going goodbye
everybody, goodbye cashier, goodbye Lenore. Then you get by the door and there's the lady
who checks your receipt, right? And it's like let's see, are you taking anything that isn't yours?
Yes, she’s taking that lady’s baby, but I'm the baby. Shut up kid, we gotta get out there. Okay,
we're not taking anything. Fine. You go to the door and then it's the parking lot. You've gotta
find your car. You are a little nervous, because it is your first kidnapping, and you're looking,
you're looking, beep, beep, beep, where's the minivan? Oh, there it is. You get to the minivan,
you put the five-year-old down, the two-year-old baby, you put the, the five-year-old can put
on her own seatbelt, the two-year-old you have to strap in, the top, bottom side and then the
cushy things and then the board book, and then, you don't have a car seat for the baby, right. I
mean, you know, that's against the law. Melissa wouldn't ride a car without a car seat for the
baby, so you sort of make a car seat and then let's see how old is the baby? It's not yours; and,
you know, they're supposed to be sitting backwards until they are two and then forwards when
they are 2.1 and so finally you get the kid in the car and you put on the Barney, and you gotta
go, and you got the Disney radio and you gun it across state lines and that is what Melissa
thought was a sane thing to think about and she thought the lady who said will you watch my
kid, was crazy. So that's my big question in this entire talk today, which is who's crazy, the
people who think that we can trust our children and our neighbors and the world a little bit, or
those that think our children are in danger every time we turn our back? Well, I thought that
that was an amazing thing, that she really believed that that woman was irresponsible and
Melissa told me that all of the other people that she'd spoken to felt the same way she did, that
the mother was irresponsible bordering on negligent. So I being a newspaper columnist, went
to the computer, the Microsoft computer and I, Microsoft operating system, forget it. You
assume that I'm always using Microsoft, okay, let's just take it as a given. So I went to my
computer and I wrote the column in a white heat like isn't there something strange going on in
our country today that we absolutely think that the worst thing is happening every second of
the day, and I shot it through and it ran in the Daily News, the newspaper I used to work for and
I got like three e-mails, you know, two people saying you sound like a very terrible mom and
then one guy who was my aged admirer on Staten Island who writes to me no matter what I
write and this time he wrote um, I don't think you're crazy, but I'm crazy for skin easy
[phonetic], which I appreciated because at least it was an e-mail. [laughter]. So that was that,
and so years go by. I keep writing column after column and then about three or four years ago
when my younger son was nine, and I have an older son who never gets mentioned so I am
mentioning him now Mori, okay, but the youngest son asked me at age 9, asked me and my
husband, if we would please do one thing for him. What? He wanted us to take him someplace
he had never been before in New York City where we live and let him find his way home by
himself on the subway, yes the [inaudible]. This was not something we had actually talked
about before, my husband and I because our older son had never asked us this and we thought
well, that's a weird request. Does it make sense? Well let's see, he's nine. We are on the
subways all the time; we see that they're safe. We know that they're crowded, but they're not
dangerous. He can read a map; he knows the language. He wants to do it. He's telling us he's
ready. Okay, we decided we would, and my husband sat on the ground with him with a subway
map, made him understand, you know, like the green line, the red line, this and that and fine.
So one sunny Sunday I took him to Bloomingdale's which makes it sound like that's all I do on
Sundays; it was our first time at Bloomingdale's with him, because he wanted to be someplace
he hadn't been before, so it's not like I'm constantly shopping at Bloomingdale's. And I said
okay, Hon, today is the day, and I left him in the handbag department, mostly because to
myself it sounded funny, you know, like where's your son? Oh, I left him, you know, I bought
the purse and I forgot, oh, no, but also because if you open the door from the handbag
department, there's the subway. So this is a subway stop in a very wealthy, well off zip code. If
you are mugged it's to give you an Armani coat so they can go get another one. It's a really
well-heeled place. It was Sunday; it was the afternoon and I went one way and he went, I
presumed, the other way. That's why people hated me, because I didn't give him a cell phone
and I just presumed that he would be fine, but anyway that was the presumption and in fact, he
went the wrong way. And he talked to a stranger, and you know what he said? He said is this
the side that goes downtown? And the stranger said, I'm going to take you to Melissa,
[laughter] no, the stranger said you're on the wrong side. You've got to go up and over. So
that's what he did. He went up, crossed the street; Moses crossing the Red Sea, got in the
other side, went down to 34th St. and the miracle is, that's where he came up. That's where he
was supposed to come up, and he went across 34th and we lived on the other side of town. He
took the bus to the other side of town and he ended up back at home maybe 45 minutes later,
very happy. He felt proud. He felt like he'd done something that he was ready for and like he
had grown up a little bit, which is what I think we all like when we're growing up, just to feel like
I did it. I did it myself. Now my kids are parroting me all the time, saying I did it myself mom.
So he got home and with my keen nose for news honed by almost decades at a newspaper, I
didn't write about it, because it didn't seem like that big a deal. I hear you, what are you doing,
recycling? What is this? [laughter]? That's okay. Be yourself; we can all do our own thing. So I
didn't write about it until like a month and a half later when I was facing a deadline and I had
nothing to say about anything of import so I asked my editor, I said, you know, I've been talking
to some of the other fourth-grade moms about Issie’s subway ride and they said that they
wouldn't have done it until the kid was like 35. Why don't I write about that? And she said
okay, sounds like a nice local story. Hm. Well, the night that the column ran I got phone call at
home and I picked it up and it was, I don't know how national this story… It was a guy named
Joey Boots, does that name mean--see, that's because you're intellectual. Joey Boots works for,
I didn't know him either. I did not know him either, I have to stress this. He said, well he works
for Howard Stern, and I'm like, Howard Stern is calling me, eeh. What about? It's about that
story. I think it was of interest to Howard. I'm kind of like, that's weird, because I had all of my
clothes on when I left him at Bloomingdale's [laughter] and I've never danced around a pole, a
may pole maybe, but a real pole, no. And I have all my own equipment, and I don't do it with
dogs, I mean whatever it was, I said, why are you calling? And he thought it was a good story
for Howard. I was like, okay, any publicity is good publicity. And I hung up and then the phone
rang and it was the Today Show. And I'm thinking how could the two shows be interested in
the same story? I'm thinking it's like Kim Kardashian, yes, what is it? They were very interested
in having me on the show. What they neglected to mention at the time was that, and now
we're going to have this lady sitting next to you on the show going, uh huh, bad, bad, bad, bad,
which turned out to be a blessing, but anyways, I said sure, I would be on the Today Show, and
long story short, two days after the why I let my nine-year-old ride the subway column, I was on
the Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News and, for contrast, NPR defending myself as not America's
worst mom, but being in the public eye and having people telling me like off the record, Ann
Curry said she never let her children ride the subway and they're older than mine. But anyway,
realizing that this was so dissonant in our culture, some guy called the NPR show, it was Talk of
the Nation, and he said he wanted to know why that woman, me, the pimp, why that woman
had put her son on the subway knowing that he could easily end up at the end of the day
sodomized, murdered, decapitated and thrown on the tracks, versus wanting to give him a long
and happy life. I'm like, well, you know, six of one half a dozen of the other, [laughter] and, you
know, did I mention that I have that spare son at home and I needed a column, and this is
something to write about. The fact that people were thinking about me like this made me start
my blog. I should've been like, made me change my life, no these days, it's hm, something
terrible in my life; I'll start a blog. So I started my blog, Free Range Kids, that weekend to
explain that I actually love safety. I'm a safety nut. I love helmets. I was just talking about
them at lunch with one of you guys who was starting to give me statistics on helmets and it was
just too much, but I love helmets and car seats and seat belts and when the nine-year-old
turned ten and we had a birthday party for him, you know, complete with a football coach
because we were yuppies and we had to hire someone to have fun, what did I give the kids in
their little goodie bags? Did I give them candy? Did I give them a toy? I gave each child a
protective mouthguard, okay? That's the kind of crazy Evil Knievel mom I am, a protective
mouthguard and I sat in the kitchen boiling each one, shoving the kids out; there's boiling
water, go away go away, boiling water, boiling it in, and then blowing so it shouldn't be too hot,
and then sticking it in each kid's mouth so it should fit perfectly, nothing should hurt their
teeth, and people are saying that I am this crazy person who doesn't care whether my kids lives,
dies or is sodomized. So the blog begins and that's when I start hearing about how much has
changed in, like how out of step I was, really, with what was happening across America in terms
of keeping our kids supersafe, , but because like I lived in Manhattan at the time, I didn't realize
that parents are driving their children to the bus stop. Did you know that? Same bus stops,
same school, same house, but now kids get driven there and then the parents wait at the bus
stop to make sure the kids, you know, make it from the minivan to the bus. There are places in
America where the buses don't even go to bus stops anymore because that's not considered
safe enough and so they pick up the children at each house, you know, your kids get to the
school they are throwing up, they stopped a 17 houses on the way there. And then some of the
parents still wanting to show that they're good parents and that they care, they drive their
children from the garage to the sidewalk and then they wait there because that way they have
the air-conditioning on in case it's too hot and the heat on in case it's too cold and the roof in
case it's too windy or raining. Then what I heard about from one school and then I put it on my
blog and it turned out that it's happening all over the country, did you know about this? So
many parents are driving their children to school and then they pick them up, the line starts
forming about like 20 or 30 minutes before pickup at the end of the day. Do you have this at
your school? Do they do this thing with the walkie-talkie?
>>: [inaudible] the lines are pretty intense.
>> Lenore Skenazy: The lines are pretty intense; that's my parking space. I'll tell you a parking
space story later. But so what happens at these schools now is that the kids, you know, the bus
kids are sent out that nobody cares about. Go take the bus; we don't care. But then the
parents who care are waiting out in front and they wait for three o'clock. Okay it's three
o'clock, all of the children the parents care about are put in the cafeteria or they are in the gym
and they are huddled there and they're waiting and they're waiting and then outside, stuck in
the cold with her walkie-talkie, and I always think that they must do this to the gym teacher,
but I am imagining that is the gym teacher or somebody out there and then okay, it's three
o'clock; the first car rolls up and there's a name on the dashboard and it says Jennifer. Okay,
Jennifer your mother’s here. Jennifer, Jennifer, come on, your mom’s here, go. Somebody
takes her out. They throw her in the car, they slam the door like Obama, okay off she goes,
now it's Jeremy, Jeremy, your mom is here, okay go. Teddy, your mom is here okay go, go, go.
And it's like go, go, for God sakes go and I'm just imagining like helicopters thump thump thump
thump thump and bombs exploding and it's the Saigon thing and it's like Apocalypse now;
they're getting the kids out, please get out while you can, go. And this is what's happening all
over the country in neighborhoods that people move to because they wanted to have a nice
place to raise their kids. So this to me is baffling. When I hear about that, first of all I sip water
because I can never do it that fast. I feel like those parents should live in a slum, because
they're not letting their kids go out anyway and they could save a lot of money, right? Just rent
an apartment in some terrible neighborhood and you can pick up your child every day and put
them in front of the computer when they come home. Not that there's anything wrong with a
computer [laughter] and then no, no wherever you are, cyber people. And then you can take
them back the next day, but the idea that this is necessary is really weird to me because crime
is lower today than when we were kids. Crime is down from the, if you were raised, if you were
raised in the ‘70s, ‘80s or ‘90s, crime is lower today than when you were allowed to go outside.
Ask a question for one second so I can catch my breath. [laughter]. You, who is stealing my
chair, do you have a question?
>>: [inaudible].
>> Lenore Skenazy: Actually one quick question because I actually swore to myself that I would
never interrupt myself with a question, but I will do one question.
>>: Crime in crime occurrences or crime…
>> Lenore Skenazy: Crime rate.
>>: So you could have the same argument about crash guard, car crashes and plane crashes,
right? But when you do crash with a car, with a plane it's devastating, so when you're looking
at crime stats are you looking at the deadly crimes or…
>> Lenore Skenazy: Yeah, I'm looking at murder, I'm looking at, I'm looking at violent crime.
>>: But we're getting safer as a nation in general.
>> Lenore Skenazy: We are getting safer as a nation and sometimes people say well, of course
crime is down because all of the children are inside, but crime is down against grown-ups too.
>>: My point was more you might be looking at the number of occurrences, but [inaudible]
weapons and when they’re [inaudible] everybody dies.
>> Lenore Skenazy: It's not like murder is up and pickpocketing is down so I'm going to say that
crime is down. No, all violent crime is down. And now having caught my breath, I will go back
to our originally scheduled speech. So it's not just that we're only afraid of our kids to and from
and being murdered, Boy Scouts, I heard from a mom whose son is Cub Scout and the Cub
Scout leader taught them how to whittle, you know, here's how you whittle. You take a piece
of wood or whatever you do. I'm a Girl Scout. I didn't learn how to whittle; I learned how to
knit. You whittle it and then he gave each child a pocket knife, are you crazy? What you want
them to die? They're all going to do this because that's how we think of our children; and
they're too stupid to you understand this is the wood this is your wrist. [laughter]. I gave them
each a potato peeler. I defy you to whittle with a potato peeler. Can you imagine the Native
Americans? We have totem poles like this, you know, with like gouge marks. Anyway so Girl
Scouts, which I was one, we're still allowed to toast marshmallows, but by law you must have
one knee on the ground because otherwise, ohh, ohh, ohhhhh, you know, you’re just going to…
You know Joan of Arc, the troop that didn't stand straight, so [laughter]. There are just a lot of
weird laws out there. Here's the smoking gun that it's not just me thinking that in the olden
days things were better and different and we had more freedom. If you get the DVD called
Sesame Street Old School, anybody have this? Have you read my book? You're nodding along a
lot.
>>: I read your blog quite a bit and I was a foster parent so there was a lot of very intentional
parenting.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Oh I'll bet. Some of those rules are so crazy. It's like to prevent children
from having any childhood we will look you be a foster child. But so if you watch such Sesame
Street Street Old School, it's a double DVD set from Sesame Street from 1969 to 1974. And it
shows cute things like highlights from those years, like kids playing follow the leader and the
leader is not accredited. Believe it or not, it's a fellow five-year-old kid, right, no PhD involved.
[laughter]. There are kids who are writing trikes without helmets. There are kids who are
playing in a vacant lot and the balance on a piece of wood and there's no foam thing
underneath of them. There's one of those giant pipes and they shimmy through the pipe and
there's like no homeless guy in the middle; it's just like straight through the pipe to the other
end and they come out there and they're playing unsupervised and they're having a grand time
because of course this was put on TV to model a halcyon childhood, a sunny day childhood. Oh
there's one kid who goes to Sesame Street, the Sesame Street, scary, scary Sesame Street
where people live in garbage cans, and she gets taken around town by a, you know what, one
of those bad scary things, a man. Yeah one of those pedophile, probable pedophiles who just
happens to be male and before you see any of this, the kids playing, the balancing, the games,
this cartoon character appears on the screen along with the words the following is intended for
adult viewing only and may not be suitable for younger audiences. It's like, it wasn't intended
for adult viewing. It was intended for three-year-olds and four-year-olds but nobody can
endorse a simple old-fashioned childhood anymore. My friend is a lawyer at Sesame Workshop
and I said what were you guys thinking? You guys look like fools saying that children shouldn't
be watching Sesame Street. And he said I know; we had meetings about it, but in the end, they
just--could the meetings, I know, you think you have been meetings [laughter], yeah. But in the
end they couldn't endorse it, so what I wanted to figure out was where did this fear come
from? So that's what my book is about, available at the back from lovely Laura. And what I
think is, what I found is there are four reasons why we are so much more afraid on an everyday
basis than our parents were. My mom actually quit her job to be a stay-at-home mom and she
stayed at home. She stayed home. I walked to school; she stated home. I came home from
school; she was there. She was always there. She was always talking to my neighbor, our
neighbor Mrs. Gaston with the cigarette and coffee, the same coffee, same cigarette, same
phone call when I left and when I came home but that was the life back then. It actually sounds
pretty good to me [laughter]. And then I would go after the cookies and milk, I would go out
again and I would come in again and it was not a federal case like where is she doing, what is
she doing? Is this helping her? Is she going to get ahead? How's that going to look on the
SATs? You know, it was just playing. So the four reasons, the first reason that I think our
generation is so much more afraid is who we always blame? We blame the me, this never
works, the medee…
>>: Uh.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Uh, me di a, yay, now you're forgiven for your earlier clamoring. [laughter].
The media has changed so completely since when my parents were bringing me up because I'm
so old my parents were watching Marcus Welby. Anybody here remember Marcus Welby?
Laura I know you do, because you have grown children, yes. Marcus Welby was a doctor on TV
back when the patients lived. He would pat them on the back and they wouldn’t go, you
touched me, you know, now I'm going to sue. They wouldn't sue at all. They would leave the
hospital and they would have happy and fulfilled lives. Now if you turn on TV, you see 24-7
stories from all across the globe, the very worst stories that the news can find, which is I think,
you may not know Marcus Welby, but you know the name Maddie McCann? Does the name
Maddie McCann mean anything to you? Portugal, hotel room, no? Oh, you're ruining my
whole point. You sure do remember Maddie McCann. She was a four-year-old who was taken
from her hotel room in Portugal. Yes, one nod. Amy, she invited me; she has to nod. Okay, the
point is that if I say the name Caylee or Jaycee or Maddie, I mean the fact is that we all do know
the names of children who were abducted. Polly Klass. We know, I think I can reel off 5 to 10
names without thinking too hard of kids who met the worst possible, Jacob Wetterling, my
mom couldn't do that because the TV crews weren't going all over the country and then all over
the globe to look for these horrible stories and bring them home. They are so valuable to
television news to, what's her name, Nancy Grace, that they’re like saffron. That's why they
went to Portugal to get the story of a girl in her hotel room. It was a cute white girl who was
taken and never found again and her parents were upper-middle-class. This is gold for the TV
stations. When it's not regular, when you're not watching the news and you turn on the
entertainment shows, all of the gruesome ones steal those stories and sort of put them through
the grinder. This is a story I haven't told anyone yet. Let me see if this goes over well. So Izzie
was nine years old, curly hair, chubby cheeks when he took the subway by himself. So then
people started writing me like two months ago saying did you see Law and Order last night?
And I said no. But there's this amazing thing called the computer and you can look things up on
it that happened at another time and then they come to you in the present. I think it's Hulu,
and if Hulu isn't legal, then I wasn't Hulu. But at any rate, I watched this episode that people
said to watch and sure enough there's a boy who looks almost the spitting image of Izzie, who
has curly hair. He's nine years old. He has chubby cheeks and he says to his mom, oh, no,mom
is saying to him as she lets him go like, oh, I can't believe I'm letting you ride the subway for the
first time. Did you see this episode? Yes. And he says yes, mom. I want to do it on my own.
And did he come home safe and sound like Izzie in real life? Guess. This is Law and Order, no,
no, no. Not only was he murdered, but at some point in the show you see the body in the
morgue all white and then they take off, I guess the shirt is off, and you see the marks on him
where he was tortured with cigarette burns and then because you have to sort of mush
everything together that's in the Zeitgeist, who did this to him? It wasn't a pedophile? Hint. It
wasn't a pedophile, so what's the other bad thing that's going on that we all have to worry
about all the time now? Bullies. Did you see that episode? And of course, who are the bullies,
because you still have to have the advertisers, beautiful white girls with long hair and lip gloss.
So it was everything mushed together but that's what happens on TV. You don't, the reason my
story was interesting at all is because you do always see the sad stories. It's like here's a child
who took the subway. We'll tell you what happens next. You're like, I know what happens
next. He was murdered after being burned. And like no, he survived, and that was sort of the
news hook, because otherwise, everything is murder. The night I was watching TV just to see
what's on a typical night of TV so I could write my chapter around the media. First there was a
Law and Order episode that was worse; it was a rape. I guess it wasn't worse, but it was a rape
but then I turned on CSI and because I grew up in the Marcus Welby era, I can follow the whole
plot but I can give you the plot points where some people were dead. They were in a swamp
and then they had to be pulled out of the swamp and then somebody's in charge of counting
the maggots which tells you how long, you know three maggots means he's been dead for
three hours, four maggots means four hours, so there's the maggot counters there and then
there's somebody else has a key to something really important that somebody else wants, but
ha, ha, you can't get the key. He swallows the key. Ha, ha, yes I can get the key. He slices him
open with a potato peeler [laughter], no, with a knife, he pulls out the key and then he has to
go to the beautiful hotel room where somebody's being drowned in a bathtub and she's been
held under water, eeeeee, which is like the soundtrack for all the shows. But she gets out of
the water and you start to think, thank God, she's alive, but then they dunk her head again and
then eeeee, blub, blub, whatever she's under the water but then ha, she breaks free but she's
so disoriented from being almost drowned that she stumbles around and she ends up impaling
her breast on a towel hook. [laughter]. Yeah, don't you hate it when that happens? You know,
you got out of the shower. You're nice and clean and owww, my white towel, and now I gotta
go to work; I go to change. So this is what's happening on TV all the time. It's these gruesome,
awful stories and the Mayo Clinic did a study. They were curious about what's the difference
between crime on TV and crime in real life and they compared two seasons of CSI Miami with
two seasons of real life and aside from the dearth of breast impaled on towel hooks in regular
life, they found three other discrepancies. One was, what was one? In real life drugs and
alcohol are a big component of murder. Two guys get in a fight. Bang, bang, there dead. But
that's a very boring plot point. It's even boring here. You're not laughing. So you don't see it
on TV. Two is that in real life minorities are way overrepresented as crime victims, but not on
TV because the advertisers want the whites. And three, is that in real life, and I'm pretty sure
you're sophisticated enough to know that the vast majority of crimes against children are
committed by people that they know. Right, it is both the abuse and the murder and the
kidnappings even are by family members often or close family friends or step parents. But on
TV, the vast majority of criminals are strangers. And so either they are the hulking guy who's
drooling outside the playground which is why in New York you can no longer go to a playground
by law unless you are accompanied by a child, which to me means you have to snatch a child
first [laughter], then go play and then take them, but you're not allowed to be on the
playground if you're an adult without a child. Or it's the criminal mastermind who has figured
out for instance how to do an actual PowerPoint. But more to the point, they figured out how
to go into Facebook and are not bored by all your pictures. They're the ones that really look
through them instead of saying everyone looks cute, and they look through them and they see
that in the background of that soccer game there was a boy in a jersey that said, I can't keep
using the name Jeremy. What's your name? Jim. Jim is there and they figure out the GPS and
they go, oh, he must've been in Ohio, and they track him down because he's the cutest kid on
the entire web and murder him that way which is why you can never put your child's pictures
on the web. So it makes you start feeling like 24-7 our children are in danger because on TV
they are. You really switch from one station to the next and you start feeling like any time your
children leave the home, they need a security detail and then that becomes us. So the reason
number one is the media. Reason number two is that we're in a litigious society and you think
well, what impact does that have on our kids, well, I'll tell you what impact that has on our kids.
If somebody falls off a swing in this park then all the parks, the whole park district starts
worrying should we have swings. Because they don't want to get sued if another child falls off a
swing because of course, they've been pre-warned. Look, this child fell off. You already knew
that that was going to be dangerous so park districts take out swings. Try to find a park around
here that has a teeter totter or a merry-go-round. Do you know of any?
>>: We do still have merry go rounds.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Oh my God! Really you got to…
>>: It's so much fun.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Yeah, that's what gets kids to the park, but of course if there's nothing fun
they won't go. Little Tykes makes these workbenches, little plastic workbenches for like kids
like three, four, five, whatever, and two years ago right before Christmas, they recalled them
because one child had almost choked on a nail. And I thought that is weird. Why are they
putting real nails in the workbench? That's a strange idea. I didn't know they were doing that.
But then I read further and it was, no it was a plastic nail that was 3.25" x 1.25" and a child had
almost choked on that which I think is amazing. But I started looking around my house and like
that's the size of my saltshaker. That's the size…
>>: It's a battery.
>> Lenore Skenazy: It's a battery. It's a Ho Ho in my house. [laughter]. Yeah, it your house it's
a battery [laughter]. It's a curler. I mean it's so many things are shaped that way and this is a
toy that had been sold since 1994 and it was recalled I think in 2000, 16 years of selling this toy.
They had sold 1.4 million units of them and to me that is the definition of a safe toy. You've
sold over 1 million of them. You have them on the market for over a decade and no one has
died. That is safe. But that is unsafe in our society today. So unsafe it had to be recalled.
When you get to that point nothing is safe. My kids’ grammar school has an overnight for the
fifth-graders to take them around Manhattan and show them that's a tree. [laughter]. No. Give
me a burglar, [laughter]. So a little beforehand they have a meeting with all of the parents,
that's what we are, parents. And the vice principal was explaining to the parents what will be
there and he's taking questions. Excuse me, excuse me, how far are they going to go? How
many hikes? They're going to go on two hikes. Can my child only go on one hike? Can I have
the phone number? How far are they from a hospital? How far away are they from a trauma
hospital? How far--it's like people were just going so crazy, he's like going okay, okay let me
just tell you something nice, Gary Chevelle whose cousin ended up marrying Paul McCartney,
the most fascinating fact that my grammar school. [laughter]. It's true. You can look it up.
Gary Chevelle’s cousin. Gary Chevelle was having this meeting and so he said listen, let me just
tell you one really nice thing. The night that they are there we have a, the kids gather around.
We're outside we have a big bonfire. BONFIRE! The parents are going crazy. What do you
mean? He says wait, wait, let me explain. The children are seated 25 feet back [laughter] and
there's a row of benches between them and the fire. And it's like, benches don't catch on fire?
But I was thinking, you know, kids are so far back it's like they're marshmallows are like rocks.
Your candy bar would not melt. You might leave the weekend still not understanding that fire
generates heat [laughter], you know? But this was for the sake of the children and to keep
anybody from saying look we tried to keep them back the fact that their hair caught on fire is
not our fault. It's because of something else, lightning. [laughter]. No, lightning. The point is
litigiousness in our society does change childhood and if you read my blog for the last couple of
days there have been all these other instances of like can't I let my kid walk from the daycare
center, the afterschool to Little League? It's a hundred yards away and it's like no, you have to
pick up the child, sign him out and walk him over to the Little League field which is at the same
daycare center at the same school. But it's not allowed. So litigiousness has changed our view
of what's safe and also what's legally allowed. The third thing that has changed our parenting
culture is the fact that we live in an expert culture. There are experts who are telling us exactly
what to do to raise the perfect child and if you don't do it right, you are to blame for hurting
your child possibly, probably irreparably. And it starts even when you first get that first little
test back, you know, the thing that says you're having a liability, no, a child. [laughter]. If you
read what to expect when you're expecting, which apparently a lot more people read then Free
Range Kids, but if you read it, it tells you that each bite you take is a chance to have a healthy
child. Not every day you should eat a little more spinach and a little less Kahlúa cream pie, each
bite you take is determining your child's entire future. What do you get if you eat each bite
correctly? Well, each bite during the day is an opportunity to feed back growing baby of yours
healthy nutrients for which you get better birth weight, improved brain development, lower
risk for certain birth defects. Okay so, if you eat everything right and your child comes out
right, you can thank yourself, but if anything goes wrong it's probably because in an effort to
spare your child choking, your older child, you ate the Ho Ho and now you've damned the little
brother who is coming along. The book, What to Expect which is supposed to be so helpful and
it actually has grown from 300, 400, 500, the fourth edition is 600 and something pages and it
boasts now with more symptoms and I think problems than ever before. Because you're
supposed to be thinking up more symptoms and more problems, they don't say problems; they
do say symptoms. But to me it reminds me of that book The Other Boleyn Girl, which is actually
based on facts, so, why don't I just refer to fact? Ann Boleyn has a baby and it's completely
deformed and it doesn't live, what happens to Ann? [laughter]. Right? Nothing good. Worse
than going on the overnight with fifth-graders, terrible, terrible thing happens to Ann, and it's
because Henry VIII blames her, but I think Heidi Murkoff and Arlene Eisenberg are blaming
parents too. They make you feel like either you're doing it right or if anything goes wrong you
got to look back and think what did I eat that day when I was really hungry and I had a hot dog?
Oh, I did it. And that kind of perfection, the idea that there's this certain way to do it, pervades
so many of the parenting books except mine, saying things like, there's a book called The
Happiest Toddler on the Block, like ha, ha, ha; yours is third happiest [laughter]. I think, we can
all agree I have the happiest child on the block because I learned how to relate to my child. It
says things like this, your kid’s cookie crumbles, which has happened for generations. There's
an expression, that's the way the cookie crumbles, but you're not allowed to say, oh, it's an
animal cookie, so it's a little more anthropomorphic. You can't just say, oh, that's too bad; have
another one. Or oh I'm sorry, we're out. Or eat it anyway. It's just the crumbs. They end up in
the stomach. It's the whole thing, you'll see. When it comes out, it's the same. So you know
[laughter] it's going to get squished anyway. You can't say any of that, and frankly I wouldn't
suggest that, but what you have to do is if their cookie crumbles, do you know what I'm
supposed so you? Say you're crying. Cry. [laughter].
>>: Waa.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Waa, very good. Sad. Sad. Sad. Sad. Sad. You're supposed to
respectively relate to the child's inner turmoil because only this way can you start to bond with
your child so that they understand that you understand that they understand that the cookie’s
dead, and then you give them another cookie, but there's all these things. You're supposed to
do this; if you take the kid's picture, right, the kid drew a picture, right? You can't say that's
great. You're a genius, like it's a horse, or it's a spider? It's whatever, it's great. You can't say
it's great because then the kid gets this inflated ego. Oh, I'm so great. I did, oh, but that was
when I was good. And now I'm not going to be good anymore and I can't draw another thing.
I'm stymied and you've ruined them, okay? But you can't say, I can't even tell. Is that eight
legs? And it's not a horse, then it is a spider because this stinks. You can't say this stinks
because then, of course, you just automatically crushed them, so you can't say good, you can
say good job, but you can't say good kid, or you’re good or any of that and it gets to a point
where it the guy actually suggested, The Happiest Toddler guy, said, what you should do is look
at the child's picture and take a few minutes, okay, and then think of something to say that is
the right thing. For instance, I see you used the color green just like that green shirt you wore
at your birthday. Really, because you're supposed to say that because it shows that your
present and your thinking and your relating and you're at his birthday party, so you are
remembering a happy moment in their life and all of that is what it takes to talk to your child
about one stinking lying dog, [laughter] a sunshine doo doo, whatever it is that the kid was
drawing a picture of. Everything becomes your Microsoft job interview. Am I saying the right
thing? Is this going to go well? And this is under the guise of helping us, but it really makes you
think like you must be a real idiot who can't even figure out what to say to your kid on your
own. You better read a book and use the right words and go through some role-playing
scenarios so you're not going to harm your child by something that you accidentally said that
crushes them for life. So the expert culture drives us crazy. But the fourth thing and the last
thing that I'm going to talk about that I think is driving us crazy is what I call the kiddie safety
industrial complex and I brought a couple of examples. This is, you can't answer this if you read
the book, but of course I hope you all read the book. What are these? What are these? All
right. You can answer if nobody else is answering.
>>: Elbow pads?
>> Lenore Skenazy: Elbow pads, no, that's tennis. This is for babies.
>>: Mittens?
>> Lenore Skenazy: Mittens, no, that would help. [laughter].
>>: Are those kneepads?
>> Lenore Skenazy: Kneepads, yes. These are, I heard you but I couldn't give you first dibs, but
he does win. These are baby kneepads to protect your child because you decorated the nursery
in crushed glass [laughter]. It looks nice; it's so sparkly, but no, bad idea. The thing is that these
are on sale and if you go to the One Step Ahead catalog page and you look at what it says, it has
reviews, and one mom says this really helped my child make the transition from carpet to floor.
Okay? That's not having a lot of confidence in your kid or evolution. [laughter]. I mean, also,
don't you want it to sort of hurt their knees so that they have some incentive? Oh, this feels so
good mom. Mom, I got a basketball practice [laughter]. You know, you want them, want them
to get off their knees and have some incentive to walk, but not with these, no. How about this?
Yeah, right, they do. I did a story on that too. There is a story on a guy that came up with the
onesy and he put mop heads on both knees, and that I thought was pretty brilliant. You should
always try to use your kids rather than the other way around. So you know these are Mr.
Smarty-pants, know it all over there? What are they? I'm not going to show you [laughter].
What are they, come on? They are table toppers. These are eco-friendly table toppers. Ecofriendly except for the fact that they exist. Made by Disney, I don't want to hurt this; this is my
favorite package. These are disposable placemats you can bring with you. What do they do?
They provide on the go protection from germs, dirt and cleaning chemicals on restaurant and
food court tables. Let's read that again. On the go protection from germs, eh, dirt, eh, and
cleaning chemicals, so basically your child is in danger any time you leave the home and you are
at the food court and you are like scraping off the burrito special from yesterday, bleh, or God
forbid somebody came through with a rag and washed down the table. Oh no, it's clean, oh my
God, my poor child. I can't put my food down on that, so they're telling you that your child is in
danger no matter what, dirty or clean, your child is in danger. That's how we go crazy. Nothing
seems safe enough if the entire continuum of what the world can be constitutes danger, but
this is my favorite little example here. Are you ready? This, do you know what this is?
>>: A rubber toy?
>> Lenore Skenazy: A rubber toy? What are you 95? [laughter]. This is the baby bathwater
temperature duck. Okay, this is it. You're seeing it. I have extra ones in my closet, God forbid
they ever go out of business. I would lose my whole speech. So this is duck that if you are
giving your child a bath, you put in the water before the child [laughter] and then after a few
minutes you take it out and if the word hot, thank you, appears on this dot, then and only then
do you know that the water is, oh what's that thing, it's scalds you; it burns you, hot, that's it.
This duck tells you that because you as a parent couldn't possibly stick your hand in the water
and if you pull it out and like all that's left are bones [laughter] and there is stuff floating in the
water and it smells like chicken soup, you know, that's not a hint. You can kind of what is that
again can see my hand fell off and I shouldn't put the baby… Thank you. This one will tell you
what to do, but I want to come up here and read in a very loud clear voice what it says to do
under caution, because there are some instructions on the back. Could you start from the word
adult?
>>: Adults should always place hands in bath water to test the temperature before, in capitals,
BEFORE, placing the baby in tub.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Oh, the adult should place her hand in the water before placing the kid in
the tub? So what is this guy doing? This guy is screwing with you. This guy exists to get $3.49
out of you when you come into babies R us. It's telling you that you are ill-equipped to get your
child alive from day one to day two without buying something, using something, worrying
about something that nobody in the history of the world had to use until this generation to
keep their kids from dying, so that's why we're going crazy. There's a whole industry out there
trying to convince us that we are too dumb and our children are too vulnerable to make it out
alive. So that's the big point. There are all these factors that are working against us and here's
the effect that you have on kids. [inaudible]. Okay. Here's a letter from a 15-year-old that you
notice in a second. This is the ultimate effect of us worrying and keeping them safe and
thinking that the worst going to happen all of the time. I'm 15 right now and get pretty much
no freedom. I'm limited to what's inside the house and the backyard. I can't even go as far as
the sidewalk; I might be abducted or killed. I used to walk to a bus stop but my dad says it was
too dangerous so he's started driving me to school. Today after playing video games for two
hours or so I went downstairs and realized the only things I could do there were eat and watch
TV. Watching TV, playing video games and eating junk food are fun and all, but after even just a
few days, it gets old. I've been on winter break for half of the week now. I don't want my kids,
if I ever have kids to live like me at all. So these are parents who are so worried about anything
bad happening to their child, especially kidnapping that what have they done? They kidnapped
him. They kidnapped him for his own good. They're keeping him in this bubble to keep him
safe and they think that that's what their job is as parents. I don't. I think our job is to raise, as
my subtitle says, safe and self-reliant kids, but how do you do that? I'm just going to give you
one quick example. There's a teacher in New York City who teaches sixth grade. It's a magnet
class. So sixth grade is like aged 10 and 11-year-olds. And what she does every year is she has
them do a free range kids project. They can do anything they want that they feel that they're
ready to do that they haven't done yet for one reason or another. And it had to be extra credit
because she knew that some parents won't let their kids do anything at all. They would be like
the 15-year-old’s parents. But once the parents are signed on, they can do anything. So she
has me come in every year and read the projects and kids do some things that were just, the
first year I read them; some were very, very, very timid, insanely timid. A couple of kids made
fried eggs and one of them wrote I was afraid I was going to burn down the apartment. Okay?
Some of them, you know, make a dinner. One kid was living in one of these big apartment
buildings but she was going far away to this magnet school so she didn't know all of the
neighbors, so she said mom, how about I go around our floor and I knock on everyone's door
and I get to know the neighbors finally, because I don't know them. And the mother says no,
no, no, you can't do that. They could be terrible people. She's like but mom, what if there's
ever a fire? Then wouldn't you want them to know that I'm here so that they would come and
get me? And the mother is like, oh, no! [laughter]. The fire, predator, fire, predator. Extra
credit mom, extra credit. Okay, extra credit at the magnet school, okay. So the kid knocks on
all the doors and wouldn't you know it, she met two other girls her own age who became
friends, which is very much part of what I want to see happening, people connecting. But my
favorite project was this one girl who said she decided to bake an independence cake and she
made this big poster that said how to bake an independence cake. It's always hard to get
everything on the poster. So here, how do you bake an independence cake? So she decided
that she would go to the grocery on her own about a half-mile away, which she had never done
before, get the ingredients and bake the cake. So she started out and she wrote that she was,
she started going on her path and she said on the way there everyone looked angry like they
were going to reach out and snatch me. Okay, she had that world view that comes to us from
all of the media, that everybody is scary and awful. And then she gets to the grocery, and you
know it takes a while. You have to find the flower and the eggs and the butter in the back and
it took her maybe half an hour and finally she's checking out. She's in line, and the lady behind
says would you mind watching my… No, [laughter]. It's the infinite loop version of my story
feed. So she's checking out and she wanted to use her very own money because she really
wanted it to be by herself. So she pays with her own money and now she has her bags and
she's leaving the store and she wrote that the way home seemed so much shorter and more
pleasant because I was already used to the walk. And that is my point for you today. We can
give our children all of the GPSing and the constant phone calls and the trophies for eighth
place and Stanley Kaplan and the baby kneepads and the table toppers and you name it but
what really makes kids happy, confident and just love their life is being part of the world and
that is our job is to open the world to them. Don't just send them out there. Teach them how
to cross the street. You teach them how to swim. You teach them that they can talk to
strangers, but they can't go off with strangers, but after that you have to let them have the kind
of childhood you had and the freedom you had because that is how they grow up and that is
how you raise a free range kid. Thank you very much. [applause]. Amy?
>> Amy Draves: There is a question. The question is…
>> Lenore Skenazy: So they are real, huh? Those people watching online…
>> Amy Draves: There are 184 people online, in fact. Where is your personal line between
what is stupid to worry about and what is smart to worry about and what she's asking is, and
how do you drive? And she is specifically talking about things like skiing. There are so few ski
accidents.
>> Lenore Skenazy: I worry about skiing and I let my kids ski.
>> Amy Draves: And so several people online said absolutely you have to wear the helmet, but,
you know, it's rare that people actually hit trees.
>> Lenore Skenazy: I don't have a hard-line, and I know that I really believe that everyone is
going to have to draw that for themselves. That's really not something that I want a lot of rules
to be drawn up for, but like a helmet to be is a great idea because it doesn't change the
experience. They still get to ski. They still get to ride their bike. They still get to ride their
skateboard, all of the things that terrify me, but I let my kids do it with their helmets. In terms
of how do I decide what's really frightening, is I really try to keep perspective. I'm very scared
about cars and so I really want my kids to not be looking at anything or talking to anyone when
they're crossing the street. I don't know what they actually do, but when they're with me I'm
always screaming at them. [laughter]. But does that mean I don't let them cross the street and
don't ever let them let go of my hand? I think that our job is to train our kids to be as safe as
we think they can be, you know, like train them to be responsible, and as they show that
they're responsible, then they get more freedom. It can go together. A lot of times now what
we're doing is doing so many things for our kids. One mom wrote to me that it hit her one day
why was she driving her kid to like the baseball game so that he can exercise? It's like a just try
to put things in perspective. You could have your kid walk to the ballgame and then he gets
more exercise and you get a break. So my general rule is, first of all let them do things if they
can still do them the way they used to but in a safe way. And then also if your parents let you
do something, like I was walking to school in first grade and then the crossing guards back then
were sixth-graders. I mean that was not a crazy era. If your parents let you do that, I would
question why you wouldn't let your own kids do that unless you think that they are less mature
than you were. Nobody ever wants to think that about their kids, so then they let them do it.
Yes?
>>: You think about environment sometimes as you grow up people travel and sometimes you
relocate. Have you seen any research in terms of the impact on kids as they are relocating?
>> Lenore Skenazy: No I haven't.
>>: I have a seven and nine-year-old then we moved from California to here.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Wait aren't we in, oh no, we’re not in California.
>>: We're not in California.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Right, I was in California yesterday. I know it's on this coast [laughter].
>>: No, but then you talk to people who are 35 and then they remember when they were five
and they moved and it was crazy and they are still traumatized from that. But what can we do
about that? Have you thought through that?
>> Lenore Skenazy: The only thing I feel bad about is when, I really feel that kids are very
resilient. I feel like we are all pretty resilient and to, you know, assume the worst, assume that
they are going to be crippled by difficulties along the way, I wouldn't. I really feel like we are
built to survive. The knee pads come from the idea that nothing should hurt and I really feel
that, you know, you fall out of the tree but you climb the tree again or you are relocated and
you make new friends, or you look back--I look back to my two weeks in summer camp where
the worst weeks of my life, which I didn't tell the summer camp association when I was
speaking to them last week [laughter], but anyways, but now I look back on them and
whenever I'm sad I think, yeah, but I'm not as sad as I was when I was at summer camp. So
even bad things can be okay. And also the idea of not doing something that's great for the rest
of the family because it's bad for your kid is, you know, that doesn't make sense. That's making
everything, it's making the child be the focus. Often times the child doesn't even know what's
best; you are the adult, and if you think it makes sense to move, move and then--you should
move to another country and then they learn another language. I wish I had done that. I wish
my kids had not Spanish automatically instead of being shoved into them. I think you are okay.
Yes?
>>: Have you done any analysis into using these concepts as far as childhood depression,
obesity, antisocial behavior and stuff?
>> Lenore Skenazy: I haven't done a lot of research in that, but a lot of people have. There's a
really good book, first you should buy mine, but second on the list should be A Nation of Wimps
by a woman named Hera Morano, and she talked to like the psychology, like student health
services at a bunch of colleges across the country and found that the kids coming in are called
teacups now because they look beautiful but they break instead of being a frosty mug, they just
break. When they get to college because they are so delicate and they have never done
anything for themselves, not that teacups do anything for themselves, but I don't like pursuing
that course of study because I feel like the other thing is we get into our mind that it is us
creating these children and if we've crippled them or if they're anxious or depressed or fat or
anything it's all our fault and I feel that that adds more pressure to us as parents and it's also
wrong. Your kids come out, and if you have more than one kid, they come out differently.
Some are good at this and some are good at that and they go through ups and downs and
assuming that it's all of us also assumes that we created exactly who they are, when it's their
environment, their genes, and their brother and their teachers and so, you know, I think it's
good for kids to spend time outside and to be independent and to make things on their own
and to do things on their own, but I would never say that you and I are crippling our children by
doing X, Y, or Z, unless you actually cripple them. Don't cripple them. Yes? I mean, cripple, no,
I meant the media. Go.
>>: I must disclose that I am not a parent, but I am a university professor so I feel like I clean up
after parents, so [laughter] so you've been speaking sort of about an antiseptic environment
that kids seem to inhabit these days. I wasn't as aware of that because I'm not…
>> Lenore Skenazy: I wasn't aware of that until I started doing this.
>>: What I observe from afar is that when I was a kid I had an enormous amount of
unstructured time which was incredibly important for my intellectual development. I mean I
was just, there was time that was not accounted for. I was out either, I'm sure I was doing
dangerous stuff, but…
>> Lenore Skenazy: I think everyone's going to nod along. Didn't we all have that? Time where
you were just outside and then you came back when the state lights came on?
>>: Yeah, you were down in the stream or whatever and learning about the world around us.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Yeah, without learning, yes.
>>: Not structured, and now I see parents they drag their kids from lesson, they've got the
music lessons and then the [inaudible] and they are like never alone just to do, you know, and it
seems to me that that would stunt their intellectual growth.
>> Lenore Skenazy: I do believe that. And what I have studied is sort of the importance of play.
Boiled down it turns out that, you know, you think you're giving your children all of these great
experiences, and some of them are great. I mean you can learn Mandarin and you can learn
the piano and if the kid shows some aptitude, mine didn't; they had to drop out. That's great,
but when kids are just free on their own either discovering stuff or playing with each other, I
mean when there are no sort of set goals, that's when your mind opens up. That's actually
what I kind of wanted to see here, if I could wander around just like, you know, come up with
ideas, or start thinking, that's why like we get our best ideas in the shower. That's unstructured
time, right, that's when you don't have a deadline. You're not at your desk. You mind just goes
than you think like oh, new ideas come to you, well that happens with kids too, and when they
are playing with each other, all of these other things come into blossom like communication,
compromise. I want to play kick the can; you want to play kick the squirrel. Don't do that. And
also what they say is that when kids are playing, and I know I am segueing from just free time to
kids playing with each other without a parent or a coach, when kids are playing with each other
they say that that is a really important thing because if I take three swings and I flub them all
and I'm with my mom, my mom will say oh, take another. You know, oh the sun was in your
eyes, oh, come on, I don't want to play. You play. You keep swinging. But if I'm with a bunch
of kids, what are they going to say?
>>: Your turn is up.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Your turn is up. Go to the end of the line. At which point I would have a
choice. I could either throw a tantrum and go home or suck it up and go to the end of the line.
If I throw a tantrum and go home, I don't get to play anymore. And play is just this incredible
drive in kids. They love to play, so the only alternative is to go to the end of the line, and when
they do that it's the seeds of maturity. It's the seeds of paying attention and playing by the
rules, literally, and that's what they call in the child development world they call it self
regulation or executive function or whatever they call it you recognize it as a kid that can hold it
together instead of saying it's my turn still, or I want another cookie or whatever. So what you
want is kids either on their own exploring or with their friends playing a game or just hanging
out together. Those are very rich environments for them. I can think in terms of rich, what am
I going to do for a living? I keep thinking couldn't I have an afterschool program where you
could drop your children off and I wouldn't supervisor them? [laughter]. And I could charge
like $300 for a semester and they would come and I would be at my computer, which is what I
do anyway and then they would be out back or at the park. I was the one that created take our
children to the park and leave them there day. Have you heard about my holiday? This year
will be the third year. Front page of the New York Daily News. Crazy mom’s idea. Where I said
let's just have a day, it's the Saturday before Memorial Day at 10 in the morning at your local
park drop off your kid, and that way your kid will meet the other kids in the neighborhood and
they won't have you there to say okay, now we're going to have two teams. Okay. You're going
to be on this team and you're going to be on that team. They are going to have to be so bored
that they will come up with something to do. And once they do, they're going to be so happy
that they're going to want to do it the next day. So that's just, spread the word, spread the
word ether people about that holiday because I do believe that time on their own is critical and
it's so ironic because we think we're giving them everything, by filling up even the cracks in
their schedule and, in fact, there is something very much to be said for chilling. Yes?
>>: I am a parent…
>> Lenore Skenazy: Ha!
>>: And I've got two children that we tried to give as much unstructured time as we can. They
have structured stuff they like to do. Obviously, they are the only kids in the neighborhood that
have unstructured time, so now that there is nothing to do…
>> Lenore Skenazy: I know. That's why we have to start a movement. That's why you guys,
you know, get out there and spread the word. I actually have a son who, I just wrote a column
about this too, every day after school, now that he's just turned 14 he wants to have a football
game and everybody, I'm going to soccer; I'm going to home or watching YouTube or lessons.
And so we finally had to sign him up for a $450 football game program at the, next to the school
because that way there's a quorum of kids that want to play. I know, I know, it feels like a
losing battle but that's why we have to, and that's what I give these talks. That's why I wrote
the book to sort of spread the word that if you can find two other parents who live in the
neighborhood whose kids want to do that too, maybe that could be the seeds of something. I
think of it as planting, replanting wildflower seeds, you know, like they used to grow, and then
they stopped growing; now we have to spread them around again. It's like that's what I want to
do again, kind of spread the wildflower of kids playing on their own again. Yes?
>>: I think it's interesting talking about that. I have a 14-year-old and we live in a very suburbia
neighborhood, but no other kids go out and play. So if he wants to play and talk to kids, do you
know what he does in his unstructured time? They can chat on Facebook or they can play
games online, but heaven forbid they go walk three blocks to the local park to play a game,
especially kids who both their parents work. They're not allowed out of the front door until the
parents are home so even that period from 3 to 5 and these are 13, 14 and 15-year-olds right?
>> Lenore Skenazy: That is just outrageous. 13 is the age that Juliet was supposed to get
married, you know, and look what happened with her unstructured time [laughter]. Scratch
that. [laughter]. The point is we are treating our children like they are completely fragile, like
the minute they walk out the door they're going to step on a landmine and we are lucky enough
to live in a country where they don't step on landmines when they walk out the door. And like I
said at the beginning of this lecture, the kids are safer than when we were growing up, safer
from those violent crimes. And the fact is that it's good for them. It's good for them
intellectually; it's good for them physically. Kids who spend more time outside even have less
myopia than kids who are inside. I'm just asking you because I'm wondering how to spread the
word. I have a TV show. It spreads this word. It's in the rest of the world. They haven't bought
it in America yet. It's in pretty much every country except America. I think America is just so
worried and we keep exporting this fear and so I keep going around talking to rooms full of
people and writing the book and the blog and saying please, connect with other people who
think like you. Show them that it's not crazy. Show them that it's safe and wholesome. It's
good for you; it gives you some free time. It's good for them; it gives them some free time.
How would you feel if you left home for work, or you left work from home and then your boss
was still there telling you what to do all night long? That's what we're doing with them. We
just happen to be the bosses of our kids. Spread the word. Yes?
>>: I have a six-month-old son. He's my first kid.
>>: Oh, so you guys aren't married?
>>: No,…
>> Lenore Skenazy: Oh, so I was wrong.
>>: [inaudible]. So I absolutely love what you are saying. It totally resonates with me. It's the
way I was raised. What can I do with such a young child to start this philosophy and [laughter],
what can I do to set the prearranged lifestyle with my child?
>> Lenore Skenazy: I like the free ranger, I always say just talk to older people and see what
they did and see if what they did make sense. One of the things that I suggest doing in my book
and I don't know if anybody's ever done it, is walk around babies R us with your oldest living
relative and say like did you have, they make spoons now that the color changes if the food is
hot in the spoon. And I just read now there's another--there is a spoon obsession in our
culture. There's this new spoon that that pivots because it says a child simply cannot, the way
they're built hold a spoon and get it to their mouth and it always strikes me that everything,
really, it pivots, so gradually you can pivot it so it's back to where like it would be when their 19
they can use it like this. Ah, close. It's just everything in there is based on the assumption that
your kid is going to fall behind. It's very interesting to me intellectually and Mr. Professor get
somebody to do their PhD on this, how everything from the special-needs world migrates to
the what is it, neural typical world from monitors that, now there's this onesie that you can
have your baby sleep in that will text you if their heart rate changes or their temperature
changes or their breathing changes. And that's not for a child who was in the MICU; it's for
your child at home in the very, very scary crib. And then in the room there are monitors and
monitors that go, not just sound, but visual and now they're not just visual, they are infrared.
And now they're not just infrared, they're scanning, so they're scanning the room, you know,
which makes sense if you're like Osama bin Laden's baby [laughter], but it's just all the
assumption is that your child is about to die or fall behind, which is equally terrifying to modern
day middle America. Yes?
>>: When you think about the obsession on knowledge, we often think that we want our kids
to know everything, be ahead and so forth. Is there an observation that you have about the
stuff that they should actually learn? I think about in school some kids are forced to know
calculus and things like that and others might be…
>> Lenore Skenazy: Oh, you're into calculus oh wait.
>>: Things that seem to make them smarter but actually they're just remembering hard facts
and they could be spending their time doing other things.
>> Lenore Skenazy: No, I don't have any hard and fast rules on what they should be learning or
not, but I go back to what we were originally talking about is that some of the time we're
shoving extra information into them. They would be getting information just by being on their
own by thinking or reading. I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for four leaf clovers. I
can't exactly say how that got me ahead, but, you know, there was something to it. It was just
free time. It didn't stymie me. I do know that just because you kid learns to read at age 3
versus age 5 or age 7, that makes no difference down the line. So the idea of showing them
flashcards, but, everything has flashcards on it. All the placemats, there are Sesame Street
paper plates that have addition and subtraction on them. Everything is geared towards, I go to
the toy fair. You can't buy, you know, a ball without it saying, you know, helps stimulate
neuron transmitting blah, blah blahs and it's like really, they'll be okay just playing with, you
know, banging on a, Gymboree drives me crazy because it says that it has experts who will
teach your children to play in a safe environment. And it's like first of all you need experts.
Secondly, you need someone to teach your kid to play. Thirdly, the only safe environment is
Gymboree? I mean all this stuff is constantly coming at us and I feel like it's this brainwashing,
but if you say it, I don't mean it to be insulting, because I got brainwashed too. I had a baby
monitor in the room and I signed my kids up for mommy and me music that was just horrible.
So I got sucked into it too, but I'm just trying to say that I don't blame individuals for worrying
about all of this stuff; I blame this weird culture with all these layers of worry and I'm just trying
to take us out of it for a second and say, you know, do we really need all of that? You know,
Einstein played with cards. They weren't flashcards? They were cards. He made card houses.
That seems like a pretty big waste of time.
>> Amy Draves: We're out of time, so thanks.
>> Lenore Skenazy: Oh, okay. Thank you. [applause].