Take Your Children to the Park...And Leave Them There

Lenore Skenazy is a mother, the author of the book Free-Range Kids, and an advocate for allowing children to wander in public without adult supervision. Most famously, she allowed her nine-year old son to travel across New York City on the subway by himself. Skenazy argues that the dangers to free-roaming children are overstated, but that denying children unsupervised time out of the home is detrimental to their development.

Skenazy has therefore declared today, May 22, Take Your Kids to the Park and Leave Them There Day. The idea is that parents should take their children to a public park, tell them how to get back home, and then leave them there at the park to do so:

And once again, let me reiterate that this is not a day to leave our 2-year-olds in the park. It is meant for kids age 7 or 8 and up. And it needn’t be more than an hour or even a half hour. And you can just take a walk around the block, if that’s all you or your child are ready for. And you can give them cell phones! I just want to get kids out of the house so they can frolick and maybe even plan to do this strange thing where they ask a friend to “come out and play” again. And it’s a great time for parents to meet each other, too! The way to really make any community safe requires reviving just that — community! Connect with your neighbors and everyone watches out for everyone else.

What do you think of the free-range kids movement?

Link via Hit & Run | Photo: Motherhood Later