Episode 256
Lenore Skenazy: Free Range Kids
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Apple Podcastsby The Second City
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Jan 21, 2021
Episode 256 – Guest: Lenore Skenazy
Guest: Lenore Skenazy
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Kelly speaks to journalist and co-founder of Let Grow, Lenore Skenazy about helicopter parenting and the myths that make our children less resilient than they need to be.
“Crime was going up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. It peaked around 1993 and it’s been coming down ever since. I don’t have the statistics for this year and I know things are all fluid because of COVID, but until this year, crime was back at the rate of – depending on which statistics you are looking at – 1963 or 1967. So if you were growing up anytime between then and now, your children today are safer than when you were growing up, and nobody believes that. So why do I keep saying it? For the same reason as you: I have a statistic; I will state it, and everyone will ignore it and go back to panic.”
“The National Center for Missing exploited children started putting pictures of children on milk cartons. Like, ’have you seen me?’ and it’s like, ‘Yes, I see you every morning ; you’re there in front of my breakfast.’ And what they neglected to mention, with all these adorable children, was that the vast majority were either runaways or taken in a custody dispute. And we were left to assume that they were all plucked off their bikes or taken by some strange deranged killer as they were walking to school. And that was not the case.”
“Dr. Peter Gray wrote a book called “Free to Learn” about how kids learn when they’re playing and when they’re curious and it’s really hard to get information into them when they’re not interested, which is often the case in a classroom. His theory is that the reason we keep thinking that parents have so much influence on their kids is because parents write the books. It’s not the buddy down the street who’s writing the book. It’s not the older brother who’s tormenting the kid who’s writing the book. Right? It’s just us parents writing books for more of us parents. The pressure it puts on parents if you think that you can control everything is intense and you cannot control a whole lot of things.”