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Is it possible that giving our kids more freedom might actually help them thrive? In this powerful episode of The Fresh Start Family Show, Wendy welcomes Lenore Skenazyโauthor, speaker, and founder of Let Growโto explore the surprising connection between independence and mental wellness in kids. Together, they unpack how our cultureโs obsession with safety and control is fueling anxiety, and how simple acts of trustโlike letting kids walk to the store or ride a bike aloneโcan be the very antidote our families need.
Lenore shares the story that launched her into the national spotlight as โAmericaโs Worst Momโ (spoiler: sheโs anything but), along with decades of insight from research partners like Dr. Peter Gray and Jonathan Haidt. With warmth and humor, she offers actionable ideas and free Let Grow resources to help parents reclaim their confidence and raise capable, resilient kids. This is an inspiring, perspective-shifting episode for every parent ready to let goโฆ and let grow.
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Episode Highlights:
- Independence Builds Resilience: Giving kids age-appropriate freedom to explore, take risks, and make decisions helps them grow into confident, capable, and emotionally healthy humans.
- Overparenting Fuels Anxiety: Constant supervision, tracking, and rescuing communicates to kids that the world isnโt safe and they arenโt trustworthy, which increases anxiety and limits growth.
- Let Grow Makes It Easy: The Let Grow Experience and Let Grow Play Club are free, school-based programs designed to normalize independence and encourage free playโhelping both kids and parents strengthen their โtrust muscles.โ
- Trust is the Antidote: Letting go of control and trusting our kids (and ourselves) is essential for healing generational patterns of fear and overprotection.
- Failure is a Gift: Mistakes and challenges are critical to development. When parents respond with support instead of shame, kids become more likely to make wise choices and grow from lifeโs inevitable stumbles.
Resources Mentioned:
Follow Lenore on Instagram
Let Grow website
Grab Lenoreโs book Raising Free Range Kids
Let Grow Experience Homework Assignment
America’s Worst Mom with Lenore Skenazy on Amazon Prime
Lenore’s Email – [email protected]
How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations Article
Unable to listen, or prefer to read along? Here’s the transcript!
Well, hello community and welcome back to a new episode. I’m so happy to be here today with Lenore Skanezy from Let Grow. Welcome to the show Lenore. Thanks Wendy. Thanks for getting both names right. Appreciate it. That’s makes me the most nervous, but I nailed the name and we’re so happy to have you here today. I have admired your work.
00:26
and your organization for a long time. So I am so happy to have you on the show today to have this very important conversation around how we can do parenting from an angle where we are not over parenting and instead giving kids more independence. And that is easier said than done, especially in an age where it can be so easy to come in and kind of rescue kids and do things for them.
00:56
all that good stuff. So today, our subject matter is breaking free from over-parenting, how to and why you wanna give your kids more independence. And if you could just start us off, Lenore, with telling us a little bit about yourself and your passion behind creating, let grow, and what you’re up to most days, and tell us your story, please.
01:20
All right, we have to cast our minds back pretty far at this point to when our younger son was nine. He started asking me and my husband here in New York City where we live. If we take him someplace he’d never been before and let him find, you’re nodding along. Is this boring? Like, you know this story so well I should just stop. I don’t know, tell me. Oh you don’t, oh okay. So he started saying, know, can you please take me someplace I haven’t been before and let me find my own way home because we’re always on the subways. It’s just something he wanted to do because that’s what kids.
01:50
want to do, they want to be big, they want to be part of the world. Yeah. And so after a lot of, you know, nagging, we said, okay. And one sunny Sunday, I took him to Bloomingdale super fancy department store here in New York City. And I left him in the handbag department because that’s right above the entrance to the subway and entrance to the subway. And then I went home a different way. And sure enough, he went into the subway and he got a little lost. He talked to a stranger who put him on the right train and
02:18
And he came down and came out of the subway at 34th Street, which we know from Miracles. And then he had to take another bus home because we lived in an unpopular part of town. but when he came through the apartment door, he was levitating because he had done something right. He had done something that he knew he was ready for. was a little scary, a little challenging, but he was ready for it. And he knew that we trusted him to do it because we had.
02:48
Back then I was a newspaper reporter, which reminds me I have a column due after this podcast. Oh, cool. Sorry, column. I forget it now. It’s just been so few newspapers get it anymore. Wait, I actually am writing it on my hand. Call. OK. I love that. This one didn’t work. Call. There. Call. And so back then I had a more popular column. And I wrote a column that I called, oh,
03:16
I titled Why I Let My Nine-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone. And two days later, I was on The Today Show and MSNBC and Fox News and NPR. No way. Yeah. Two days later. Yeah. It was a big week. Put it that way. And so I started a blog that weekend, and I called it Free Range Kids, because I wanted to say my side of things, which is that you don’t, you know, I’m not.
03:42
I got the label America’s worst mom. I said, I’m not America’s worst mom. am. How interesting. It is interesting, right? The media works in mysterious ways. Anyways, I wanted to say that I actually am a nervous mom and I believe in helmets and car seats and seat belts. was like, we didn’t have our own car. And so I would drag a car seat with me when we took a cab. I mean, I’d say I was actually more on the nervous side than not, but I didn’t think that kids needed a security detail every time they left the house.
04:11
And that was, so, you know, so I started hearing from people who were on, you know, sort of the side of free range kids who said, yes, I loved my childhood. I’m so grateful that my parents allowed me to walk home from school, to play outside, to go to my friend’s house, to ride my bike, all of these things. And then of course I heard from the detractors and I guess a good controversy keeps the topic going.
04:40
But anyways, then about seven years ago, so I have to say that the nine-year-old is 26. So that was a long time ago. more recently, Jonathan Haidt, who wrote The Anxious Generation, it’s super popular now. It is so hot right now. Oh my gosh, is a hot little potato. Number one yet again for like the millionth week in a row. Jonathan Haidt was talking to another person like him, another person concerned about kids on campus.
05:10
being fragile, kids on campus thinking that when they were uncomfortable, whether it was with an idea or a roommate or a mouse in the dorm, they thought they were actually unsafe. And how come they started getting these things confused? Unsafe is bad, uncomfortable is part of life, right? And so the two of them were saying, well, we can intervene and try to get them.
05:34
you know, more open-minded and more mentally healthy at 18, 19, 20, but that’s kind of a late stage intervention. What if we started out trying to make them more resilient, open-minded, resourceful, confident, and competent as younger kids? And John said, well, I know Lenore and I love free-range kids. Let’s start a nonprofit with her.
05:58
Off the record, we call them our sperm donor. Anyways, because you started so many other organizations too. But anyway, they came to me. And don’t tell them that. I realize it’s public. Just keep it under that. I love your sense of humor. First off, I love that you used to write for MAD Magazine. That is the coolest. I’m still writing for my crack. So anyway, so we started a nonprofit together. But I said we had to bring in one other person to help us found it. And that other person was Peter Gray, who I would highly recommend you.
06:27
you read and talk to, G.R.A.Y., professor of psychology from Boston College, who has spent his research career studying the importance of free play. He studied the work of lot of anthropologists and psychologists around the world and different civilizations and said that except in times of war, and actually even in some times of war, and extreme child labor and slavery,
06:56
Children spent a lot of time playing as kids and they did it in mixed age groups. It was none of the tee ball for the four and five year olds. Right. You know, the beginning soccer for seven year olds. was mixed ages together. And he realized that by taking that out of kids lives, we’d taken out this very important part of growing up, which is being the little kid running after the older kids, wanting to be like them. And then being the older kid, the 12 year old throwing the ball gently.
07:26
to the little baseball player because there’s no glory in a 12 year old striking out a six year old. But there is fun when the six year old backs it and it’s like, look at that, it’s a home run. Can I get that ball? No, he’s going around the bases. That’s the beginning of leadership. That’s empathy.
07:48
That’s understanding sort of the interplay of human beings. And you know that your friends aren’t gonna think that you’re the worst pitcher in America who couldn’t even strike out a six-year-old. So taking that out and replacing it with really segregation, something that we’re usually leering up at this point, but we segregate by age. And when it’s just the 12-year-olds together,
08:14
You’re either the slowest 12 year old or the fastest 12 year old or the smartest or the dumbest. But when it’s everybody together, you all sort of get to shine and you also get to fail too, because you could be a really strong six year old and you’re not as fast as those eight year olds and you want to be like them. So you don’t want to be a baby. So you hold yourself together a little more. And that’s the beginning executive function and maturity and whatever you want to call it, frustration tolerance.
08:43
So Peter became one of our other co-founders and we called our new organization, Let Grow. And our whole goal, it took us a couple of years to finally figure out what we’re doing, but our goal is this. Our goal is to make it easy, normal and legal to give kids back the independence, responsibility and free play.
09:04
that we accidentally took out of children’s lives, you know, to make them safer and more successful and optimize their time and give them more experiences. But to give these back because that’s what they need just to become competent and confident and happier adults. And all our materials are free. Oh my gosh, incredible. Yeah. And
09:30
I think it’s so interesting as we have this conversation. I am just so aware. It’s like, feel like maybe there’s been other times like this in the world, maybe not, but I feel like I’m so aware of how fast the human brain is changing right now. Like I can feel it in myself and I can see it in children, the more and more the screens and the technology and the instant fixes and the
09:55
you know, protection and the making sure no one gets hurt and then combine that with like mistakes are bad, which is a lot of my people come from the world where if you make a mistake, the price will be paid and there will be shame, pain and humiliation. Like, holy smokes, it’s, it’s a tough, it’s a tough combination of things. And so I just, I love what you guys are doing and bringing awareness to this conversation that we got a
10:21
we’ve got to come together to counteract some of the things that are happening because I really can, it feels like I can see that humanity is changing and it’s not for the better, right? It’s not for the better. So many, think the data is really showing about the anxiety and the depression and even suicide rates going up amongst youth and it’s, and so much I feel like is connected to this. And I feel like I found, I first found your work, Lenore,
10:51
when I had seen a show on Apple or something and it was about the Japanese practice. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The little kid with the… Right, right. My first errand, they call it Old Enough on Netflix. Is that what the show is called? Oh my gosh, it was such an interesting show as they studied different parts of the world and how they do things with kids.
11:15
and the Japanese kiddo, you know, there’s, guess there’s some type of practice in Japan where they send them out. And I think they’re like three or four years old to get some milk and bread. I don’t even know if they drink milk in Japan, to get some bread. Right, they were headed out. They were sent out to do an errand and pick up whatever it is, tofu, bread, milk, and then make their way back to their apartment in downtown Tokyo.
11:43
And I want to say they had like a little flag that they would carry. And I mean, they were crossing into massive segments of this huge city with cars and buses and trains. And this little kid was just happy as can be going out there doing his thing. And I just found it so interesting as just such a stark comparison.
12:08
to what we’ve now created here in America, which is just so much protection. And yeah, so that’s kind of how I found you. And I think you dropped in to my world around the same time. yeah, just how interesting to see that what kids need more of when it comes to independence is actually what we’re pulling back on. So.
12:32
Let’s talk a little bit about giving more independence. And when it comes to mental health declining over the years, talk to us a little bit about what your data and research and these incredible partners that you have behind Let Grow, what have you seen happening with the mental health as the independence has seemed to decline over the years? Like maybe some reference to that. Yeah. Right. So that’s
13:00
doesn’t just seem like it’s declining. mean, there’s proof that it has, and there’s books written about. Even the circumference of a kid’s world has just shrunk. Not in terms of where they’re driven to, I’d say that’s probably wider and further. I there’s travel soccer, there’s hockey leagues. I’m in New York, people.
13:23
Canada, you know, for these hockey leagues. But in terms of what they’re allowed to do and where they’re allowed to go without an adult supervisor, that has shrunk. And my favorite article comes from weirdly, the Daily Mail, which you don’t have to trust it on anything else, just trust it on this one article. And it’s easy to Google. It’s called How Children Lost the Right to Rome in Four Generations. And it’s a classic piece at this point, reprinted all the time because it shows a map.
13:52
where the reporter talked to four generations in one family. And there was the great grandpa who was 88 who showed how far he used to walk as a kid from his home. And it was basically a six mile circumference to the watering hole, you know, to go play with his friends, whatever, to wander through the woods, six miles. And his son, a 66 year old grandpa would go about a mile in any direction, roaming with his friends, riding his bike. The mom,
14:21
in her 40s would go half a mile. She would walk to school back and forth and her son was not allowed off the block. And I can’t remember who’s not allowed off the block or not allowed out of the, yard. Wow. Yeah. So I liked that because it’s so stark and because the family had stayed in the same city town, you could really see chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk at the walls. Right. Yeah. And in terms of what that’s doing to kids, Peter Gray,
14:50
one of our founders, as I mentioned, had a big article in the Journal of Pediatrics in September. And it was titled basically, I can’t remember the exact wording, but like the loss of kids independence and the rise of anxiety and depression in childhood. And what he said, and what we, know, sort of our working assumption this whole time is that
15:14
Kids need to know that they can do things in the world, that people trust them, that the world is trustworthy. I’m reading yet another book about trust. The evaporation of trust is like the evaporation of culture, of a society, of anything that makes us work, whether it’s interpersonal trust or trust in our institutions, trust in our fellow man. These have been plummeting. The kids who are the youngest today have the least trust. People my age have the most trust.
15:41
And of course, you’re going to have a very little trust if you’re told that anything that you would do on your own would result in disaster. Either people would be mean or you would get lost or you’d get hurt and so out. Yes, right. Kidnapped, which I have statistics on that. so at like, well, we don’t say be naive. We don’t say get into cars with strangers. But we do say that when kids are allowed to be gradually.
16:10
released into the wild, I guess. Their confidence and their street smarts grow at the same time, and so does ours. I know we’ll probably talk about phones. Let Grow is agnostic on phones because that’s just not our thing. There’s so many organizations out there, know, fighting social media and fighting phones. We’re just trying to get some independence. But the one thing I have noticed with phones is that they
16:39
Apps that are sold to us as parents are sold to us on the idea that like, if you don’t know where your kid is at any time, you’ll be so nervous. And at last we can deliver you peace of mind. And that happens to be the exact opposite of the truth because first of all, now, anytime you can’t get a hold of your kid, you’re scared, right? Oh my God, know, it’s not that he left the phone on the bus. going to be mad at me. Right. The fear is generally that
17:09
you know, something terrible has happened to your kid. And the dynamic that interests me is that when I left my mom’s house as a kid, as a five-year-old walking to school, five, six, seven, she didn’t see me again or hear from me until I came home at three. And so automatically just through the social norms of the day, she grew a trust muscle, right? She knew that she didn’t.
17:35
that they’re like the whole time, oh my God, is she okay? I haven’t heard from her. Is she gonna be fine? I wonder if she’s lonely. I wonder if she’s hungry. I wonder if she’s being bullied. I wonder if she made it to school at all. That was not how the brain had been wired to think until we had these peace giving items that made us think that when we’re not in touch, something bad could be happening. And so we must be in touch.
17:58
So first of all, that plant’s a really big seed of anxiety, or it does the opposite, I guess, which is like, it doesn’t let the trust plant grow, right? Yeah, both. Right. And then in return, how do kids know that they’re ready to do something on their own, that you trust them, that they’re growing up, that the world is safe enough and they’re smart enough that you think that they can get to school, that you think that they can go to the park?
18:28
that they know that you trust them not to do something terrible. The only way you can prove yourself to someone is if they can’t be in touch with you, right? If you are out of their curtain for a little while. So when kids can’t prove to, I mean, I interviewed these teens who were just saying like, you know, I told my parents I wouldn’t go to the party, but they don’t know that I didn’t go to the party because I am trustworthy.
18:55
because they could also check to see if I was at the party or at the library. And so how do you prove yourself and how do you separate from your parents? And how do your parents separate from you? I mean, the whole idea of attachment theory is that you trust each other and you know each other, they’re there, they’re there for you, they’re your rock so that you can go off base and explore and then come back if you’re scared and then go off base a little more. But you’re never off base if you’re always being tracked and if you can always call your parents the second year.
19:25
confused or you forgot your lunch. So there’s something about our current culture that is undermining this basic relationship of parent and child and child and world and telling us it’s all to make us safer. But in fact, without learning how to be part of the world and without knowing that your parents believe in you, that’s very undermining. And I think that
19:51
that creates a lot of anxiety and to a certain extent depression because you want to know that the people who love you most also believe in you. It’s so true. Yeah. And it’s like, I know there’s so much, like, as you said, it’s not, it seems to be, there is the data, right? Like there is clear data about the rising, um, uh, anxiety, depression, suicide rates. And it’s like in our own, in our own family, we saw this kind of in the opposite direction of, um, our little guy who’s now
20:21
almost 14. He was, I had just some minor anxiety stuff going on. He was probably like, you know, between like, I’d say like 10 and 12 and he would show up in some funky ways. And we were like, gosh, that’s, that’s tough. And we’re, we’re helping him and getting him different resources. And, you know, he would have, you know, some good seasons and then go backwards. And he was also my kiddo that struggled with a separation anxiety when he was in kindergarten and first grade, he would climb the
20:50
the fence when we left and run after me when I left for date night. And it was so interesting because here in Southern California, we have, it’s like the E-bike capital of the world. And it’s, it is scary as hell. It’s like little motorcycles and- They’re on the sidewalk here. I live in New York. They’re everywhere. They’re like mosquitoes. I love that you live in New York. New York is the coolest place ever. But Loveham or Hadham, they, I witnessed what they’ve-
21:18
Here’s the good thing is they have Reese there’s been a resurgence of freedom for kids and I could sense in my body that it was actually really good for these kids. Now there’s a whole thing about what’s troublesome about them. Parents are not present. There’s kids not in helmets. Of course, there’s kids that are going really fast and it’s there’s there are bikes. Yeah. Oh yeah. Here it’s all delivery guys.
21:45
Oh no, we are like, if you go to the Terrence middle school, there’ll be a hundred e-bikes locked up. There’s like a hundred thousand dollars worth of bikes out front of our local middle school. Oh my goodness. I had no ideas going on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A few years ago, I was like, I really should be buying stock in super 73 e-bikes. And our kids, our kids use them for years and Terrence still uses them cause he’s 14, but Nick, that was when he started.
22:10
riding to school every day by himself. And it was almost like clockwork the day he started riding and we watched him drive away. And that day you could almost feel something different in him. And since that point, he’s had much like much less anxiety and this has been years now. And he, you know, it was just, I think a pivotal moment for him to be given this freedom. And he’s, you know.
22:37
he’s real into wheelies. And so he does wheelies on them, even though they’re not around cars, you know, we, and again, there’s a whole plethora of problems that happen with e-bikes. But when it comes to the freedom we saw, and we, my husband and I have talked about this numerous times, how we saw a direct correlation between his reduced anxiety when he started getting himself to school and back and having his, his, um, radius of how far he could go and be trusted expanded. And, um,
23:08
And then on top of that, like the phone thing has been very fascinating. So we are a bit of a countercultural family because we do make our kids wait till eighth grade, or till high school, which is still too young. mean, they really like, you just wish they could wait till they graduated from high school. And I suppose you can. I’ve interviewed people who have done that. But we also watch them face, and Taryn is still facing it because he still doesn’t have a device.
23:34
The uncomfortableness that comes with being different has been a blessing in itself. And to trust that they will be able to figure out how to be the kid that is different when, because 99.9 % of kids here in Southern California, they’ve got an iPhone by the time they’re 10. And anything you need to know, you find out on the internet in two minutes. And like you said, you call your mom if she’s late, if she’s two minutes later, if you got your lunch.
24:02
And so even that has been a blessing for a lot of reasons, but just to watch, know that, to trust that they’re, to be given the freedom and the independence to figure out how to work through that uncomfortableness and know that they’re capable of being the kids who just don’t have the iPhones and that they’re gonna be okay, right? But I think about how our world of knowledge has expanded and that’s great, but a lot of, you now we have it.
24:30
is so in our face of like, here’s the dangers or here’s what happened in Ohio today, or here’s the kid that got hit on the bike. And I think that’s raised the fear in parents. And so I have so much compassion for our culture, because it’s like, in theory, it made sense why we would want to buckle down or like, you know, go, go tighter. But it’s just so clear that the data shows that it’s the opposite of what a human child and soul needs.
25:00
to really thrive in life? It is. And here I will put in a plug for one of Let Grow’s two free school programs. Yes, please do. It’s called the Let Grow Experience. Might as well use the Let Grow name there, right? And it’s so simple. It’s a homework assignment that teachers give kids, and I’m talking kids K through 12, that says,
25:29
go home and do something new on your own with your parents permission, but without your parents. And yes, it’s an assignment for the kid, but it’s also maybe even more so an assignment for the parent because so I feel like my parents, there was a whole culture that was saying, yes, your kid can walk to school at, you know, first or second grade. And yes, they can go to the park on their own and by a certain age, they could have a
25:56
a paper route, if anybody remembers what newspapers were, or they could be babysitters and they didn’t have to have their PhD in child development. without those milestones being visible anymore, parents really don’t know when they’re allowed to let their kids do anything. And so they don’t. And they’re worried that, you know, they’ll be ashamed or something bad will happen to their kid, or God forbid somebody calls 911 and there’s just all these different reasons that are making it easier. You know what? I’ll just take him.
26:24
You know what, after school, I’ll make sure she’s in a program so that she’s not home alone, so she’s not going to the park or whatever. And so as John says, in The Anxious Generation, a collective problem needs a collective solution. And the collective problem is that it’s become abnormal to let your kids do these things on their own. And so if everybody at the school is getting this assignment, then
26:49
your kid is taking his e-bike and going to school and my kid is going to get candy because my kid is my kid and they will always get it. Right. And some are going to get a haircut and some are taking their little sister to school or waiting at the bus stop with a brother or whatever. So it just, gives parents this push and they need this push because it’s sort of like you must put the cart before the horse in this particular situation, which is
27:17
Parents aren’t ready to let their kids go, but it is time. So you make them let the kid go because when the kid comes back, like you just said, with your kid taking his e-bike to school, it’s an almost immediate hit of joy and pride for the parent and relief because, at my kid. Look at him, oh, he’s growing up. He’s a young man. Oh, he’s competent. Oh, he’s pleased. And then he knows that you believe in him.
27:44
You don’t think he’s just a baby or incompetent or in constant danger. He can handle it. And even if he screwed up, he got, he went the wrong direction or he got a flat tire. And then he figures out what to do and he’s home a little late or, you know, he’s sniffling and holding back tears because it was so hard, but he did it. So no matter what, it rewires the parent. And by rewiring the parent, it rewires the kid because now the parent is ready to let the kid go a little more.
28:12
And as you’ve just described this with your own youngest son, things changed so much when you started letting him see that you believed in him and letting him be part of the world. And so I think the anxiety that we’re seeing in kids is not just because there’s phones and there are all these problems in social media, because the anxiety and the depression were going up.
28:36
for decades, even before phones, even before COVID, as their independence, their right to roam was going down. And so with the Let Grow experience, with all these kids realizing like, hey, I can go get my own haircut. Hey, I can help my parents out and get them, I had a great story from Santa Fe. Recently, I just talked to a teacher who was doing the Let Grow experience. And she said that one of her kids who was a boy at like around 10 or 11,
29:07
for his let-go experience, he was already kind of independent, but he decided he go to the store and get the ingredients for dinner. And so he went into the store and he’s shopping and he gets what he needs, except he can’t find one thing. And I don’t know what the one thing was. And so let’s just call it the hot sauce. So he’s looking around, he can’t find the hot sauce. And he realizes like the only way he’s gonna find it is he would have to talk to a human. Yeah, an adult.
29:35
an adult he didn’t know. at that thought, he was so mortified, he left his grocery cart and he ran out of the store. He just couldn’t face it. It’s like, I’ll look so stupid. I’m like a baby. I’m kind of idiot. I can’t find this and I don’t want to do this. And I’ll just be, I’ll be so embarrassed. But then he looked back at the store and he thought,
30:00
Okay. And he went back in and he asked, and guess what? Hot sauce is an aisle five on the bottom shelf. So that to me is exactly what the Let Grow experience is about because it’s really, it’s like, you know, I don’t really like asking clerks for things either. I mean, it’s a little embarrassing even at my advanced age, but you know, it’s just part of life. And to realize that you can deal with life is this is the hero’s journey.
30:29
Right? He went from scared kid running out of the grocery, a baby, to a man in full who talked to an adult and got the ingredients as planned and came out and I guess made dinner. I never heard the end of the story. But that’s what’s happening in classrooms across America as they do this really simple project. And sometimes kids will draw a little picture of what they did or they’ll write a poem or they write a
30:56
You know, one sentence, how’d it go? Well, it was scary, but I was fine. Or I forgot to get the receipt or, you know, I can’t wait to do it again. But we’ve seen these, these projects, you know, that, kids write from all across America. And there’s one that was in this girl in Vegas who also went to the store. I love it when kids leave the house and go to the store or someplace else. she wrote, she wrote this thing that was like, can, you know, I can.
31:26
K-A-N-E, do it, E-T. was just, every word was dispelled. And it turned out that she was intellectually disabled. But nonetheless, her parents had given her pictures of all the things they wanted at the store. was fifth grade. And she took the pictures around and she got the ingredients and she said, checkout was really hard. But at the end she wrote, I love my project. And I love her.
31:56
because she went out and did it. And I love her parents because they didn’t say, oh, it’s too hard and you have a learning disability and I’ll do that for you. They decided to see how it would go, which is that’s their own hero’s journey and their own leap of faith. trust and faith are sort of the same thing. And they are only ignited when you don’t know how it’s going to end. And so to…
32:25
Accept that as part of life as opposed to saying I have to know every single second that my child is safe Even if it involves sucking out his entire soul Yeah It’s it’s a huge thing I mean, I’m just like I said, I’m reading this book about trust and it’s like without trust Families can’t function societies can’t function It’s it’s so debilitating and yet we are keep
32:54
Being told that like trust is stupid, you should always be checking. And I’m saying the opposite. It’s hard to believe, but life gets better sort of the less you know. It really is so true. And I would add, I love that our work compliments each other because, you know, trust and faith are so important. And then I would add that, that making sure a parent knows how to support a child through the failure.
33:22
Right? Like the mistakes and the failure that happens when you let them try. And I think, you know, just so many parents are learning to do it differently than what happened to them where if there was failure, you know, perceived failure, which is just unfinished success. But the concept of you’ve you’ve made this mistake and now you’re going to get reamed and punished and and all that kind of stuff. Like, you know.
33:47
It doesn’t, it needs to all be interconnected. And when there’s an ecosystem of learning from your mistakes, mistakes are just opportunities to learn, realizing that it is okay to fail. Failure is so important and, and it’s, there’s no shame in that and mistakes are going to get made. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re gonna.
34:09
Do the thing as the teenager. that’s just what we do all day long here is we just help parents teach when your kid makes the mistake, when they fall short, you teach through relationship. And I will tell you that, and you know this, it’s like when there is trust and faith together, then, and the learning environment when mistakes are made instead of shame, pain, and humiliation.
34:33
then all of a sudden the relationship grows. And when the relationship grows, then misbehavior goes down. And all of a sudden you have a teenager who’s not as likely when you give them freedom to do bong hits at the party or drive drunk, whatever. Because it’s scary, right? But the more trust and faith you have in your home and then safety around mistakes, the less a child is actually going to misbehave.
35:00
but so much in culture, it’s just the opposite of that is happening and the vice is tight and the punishment is intense and the shame and the disappointment is drilled into a kid and then all of a sudden the relationship drive happens and then it’s like justified why you can’t trust a child. And so it’s kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy. So I love that our work very complements each other because it’s.
35:26
It’s all got to be present to have this ecosystem of like healthy growth for a human soul. Wait, can I just tell you, cause it’s a story I always forget to tell. And it was so fun, which is that I was at a, like a pizza place or something with my son. And we were talking to a young man who was just there. was like graduating and maybe he was wearing his graduation robes or something and he had just gotten his master’s. Oh, and what he’s been studying sea slugs or something like that. And it’s so exciting. And they only have this many.
35:56
I don’t know, cells in their brain, which makes them really fun to study. And I was like, how’d you get into that? And he said, he went off to college and you had to write in your major. And he wrote, he wanted to study the environment and his handwriting was so bad. They thought it was invertebrates. it’s amazing. And there you go. Screwed up. And he ended up loving it.
36:24
Oh my God, it was the best. You just don’t know. mean, if everything is perfect, there’s just no chance for serendipity or surprise or growth, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. This last year, I mean, we have the 16-year-old, I mean, every teenager, I mean, not every teenager, but a lot of teenagers start to dabble with drugs and alcohol. And ours did. And it was like,
36:47
because of our work and just our ability to see mistakes as opportunities to learn and this serendipitous thing that you’re talking about. just never know life gets served up, whether it’s God, angels, universe, however you see it. And we looked at this mistake and we were like, I think we need to stop drinking and we stopped drinking alcohol. And here we are a year and a half later, never feeling healthier, sleeping better, and just thank God for that mistake. About a 16, she was 15 at the time, you know, like, I mean, we, started.
37:15
I think I was going to keg parties by the time I was 15 growing up in Maryland. you know, if I got in, most kids, you know, they get caught for making a mistake and it’s like, oh man, punishment, grounding. we, Terry and I were just like, oh, I think this is a sign that it is time for us to start modeling. was a teachable moment. And we just decided we were going to start modeling a different way of being. And it’s just been the best thing ever. So.
37:40
It’s, what, when you look at it differently, it just can open up a whole new world and kids are going to make mistakes. so our adults, apparently. Exactly. Okay. Well, the next point we wanted to cover is the idea, Lenore of building in free play whenever possible. So the idea that free play isn’t downtime and that it’s crucial for child development. So.
38:07
How does tell us more about this when it comes to giving kids more independence and your definition of what free time is? So, um, so I talked about Peter Gray having studied his whole life about the importance of mixed age free play, but there’s so little of it now because in general, after school, a lot of kids are in some kind of adult run program. If you’re rich, you’re going off to travel across.
38:34
And if you’re poor, you’re at homework help and then, you know, a basketball game. anybody who comes home is generally, I wouldn’t say anybody, but many of the kids who come home never leave the home after that. They’re on their device, you know, they’re on some screen. And one of the reasons is because at least you can play on the screens and at least you can see your friends on the screens and at least there’s nobody telling you what to do on the screens. So I understand the impulse, but imagine if instead,
39:03
they had a chance to actually play and hang out and talk and flirt. I heard a great story about flirting in real life. The flirting story I heard was that at one of the middle schools that had gotten rid of phones during the day, suddenly there was a whole lot more, you know, right. Interacting on a human scale. And, I keep pointing out like as much fun as everything is online, you get three extra dimensions, three new senses if you’re offline.
39:31
you get to smell and you get to taste and you get to feel. how do you create an afternoon where kids can just hang out and whether they want to play soccer or with jacks or with balls or play tag or play with cardboard boxes. mean, all that stuff is really fun, but not if you’re alone. And so
40:00
We recommend that schools stay open for what we call, yes, again, branding. But remember, all our stuff is free. The Let Grow Play Club. And a Let Play Club is before or after school. You keep the school open for mixed-age, no-devices free play. And I was talking to a guy yesterday who wants to start one of these, wants to start basically an after-school place where kids can go and it would cost money. And what would they get to do? They’d get to make things and play things. And it’s like, well,
40:29
That’s exactly what we believe in too. But if you have it at school, you have a lot of problems solved already, which is that the kids are already there, right? And they are mixed ages, right? And whatever they have to pay, you don’t have to worry about transportation payments or whatever. You get a couple of high school seniors to supervise this or, you know, depending on what your school wants or a teacher. And then all you have to bring out is junk, you know, these balls, but people bring like,
40:57
fabric from home and an old pipe braider and a suitcase and the ubiquitous Amazon boxes. And we just have on John Haidtโs substack the other day, Jonathan Haidt substack, he printed a piece by a teacher who had started a Let Grow Play Club at a high poverty school in South Carolina. And at first it was just him. But over the year, in the end, 13 teachers joined him as volunteers
41:25
to oversee this club every once in a while because they couldn’t believe the change in the kids. And thank God this teacher documented it. And he had the numbers like office referrals before play club and after a year of play club and bus incidents and taunting and all these, they slice and dice their problems a million different ways. But basically kids who are so much…
41:51
happier and they made friends. And what if you’re a third grader and you have very few friends because you’re the slow kid or you’re so smart you can’t stand the other kids are so slow. Then you’re with the other fifth graders or you’re giving the kindergartners a piggyback ride. And now when you come to school, it’s like, what are these little kids are saying hello and it’s not this dreadful place that’s prison, right? It’s a place where you’re going to have some fun where you know some peeps where
42:19
where you’re sort of admired because you’re good at soccer, even though you’re terrible at math, or you draw a great owl on the ground. so it just, know, school is pretty narrow. It rewards certain strengths and not most of the others. So a play club, you can shine no matter what you like to do. And maybe it shines just because you found your friend and you talked the whole time. That’s what I would do. was never right. Or because you’re good at jump rope. I mean, it just,
42:49
It just makes life more normal. And the way I was describing it to the entrepreneur is that what you’re talking about creating is like a wildlife preserve, right? This is how children all lived in the past. And now outside of these walls, it’s all different. know, they’re always in a car. They’re always going to something where an adult is organizing it. But in, you know, in this space, in this time, they are just like kids always were.
43:17
which is making something fun happen. And the difference between, you know, I’m not against some organized sports. I think that there’s a role for them, but not the kind of intense way that they’re taking over childhood now with like four day a week practice and then a game on the weekend. I mean, pretty soon there’s like no free time. And the thing that’s different about an adult organized game is that kids are, they’re bad at making things happen.
43:46
I mean, they make things happen, but they’ll come up with an idea. like, let’s all, you know, run into a tree. Now that’s a bad idea. All right. Well, let’s make, let’s do something else. It’s like, okay, well, what are we going to do? All right. We’re going to be superheroes. I’ll be Superman. No, I want to be Superman. So there’s a lot of give and take that whole time, but all of that is so rich, right? It’s not wasted time. It’s figuring out how to keep the other kids happy enough so that you can be a superhero. Okay. There’ll be two supermen.
44:13
Right? then what are we going to do? You’re bringing a, know, Wendy’s little brother is coming and he’s going to whine. Well, let’s give him a job. Okay. You know, you’re going to be the bat boy. What’s that? That means you have to go all the way over there and come back when we say the word bat. Oh, okay. You know, so it’s coming up. It’s being creative. It’s changing the rules. It’s getting buy-in. It’s face-to-face interactions, which we’re so worried that kids aren’t getting because they’re on their phones. I mean, they’re FaceTime to FaceTime, but are they in real life? Like, you know,
44:43
So if you give kids back that, you’re giving them back the building blocks of a functioning life because they’re learning how to make friends, how to make things happen, how to compromise, how to deal with frustration, how to deal with other people. And you’re so desperate to have fun that you tolerate all the stuff that’s tough, like being mad or feeling it’s not fair or not getting your way. And these are all the skills that
45:13
teachers are trying to teach kids now through these curricula of like social emotional learning and we’re all going to breathe out and we’re going to pay attention and we’re going to listen to the bee buzz. And it’s like fine, but you know, evolution already worried about that for like the first million years and figured it out by having kids be in a group trying to have fun. So you’re so spot on. Yeah. So yes. Oh my gosh. It’s so true. So true. And
45:42
when it comes to, like, I just think it’s so interesting what courage it takes and tenacity to, build these type of pods or groups or advocate for it, because, like, here in Southern California, it is just, I mean, it is just so far outside people’s realms, because, again, like, every single kid, every single kid has just got the iPhone. I mean, now it feels like it’s, like, it feels, since eight.
46:09
But like the courage to, think just advocating for for parents to find the courage to when you’re listening to this and you’re inspired, really go create it and advocate for it. Or be, if you just have one hour to volunteer, even if it was just a few days a week to get a pod together, to have this type of thing happen. mean, to hear this one, this one teacher’s citations of all the behavior, you know,
46:37
improving. mean, if that’s not enough to inspire you, but just have the courage to actually do it because it’s just so worth it. I remember we really tried hard to create the pod around waiting till high school for the phone. And that was a long time ago, right before it was even a thing today. And I thought everyone was going to say yes. they all said no. They basically all said no. And Stella went on to be the only kid in that elementary school and middle school that didn’t have the phone.
47:05
But I’m still happy that I asked, you know, like I still happy that I tried. I think now that it’s been a decade or so, not quite, but it’s been quite some time since then. I think people are becoming more and more aware of the dangers. And so hopefully there’s going to be a resurgence of these pods where it’s like, Hey, let’s get, let’s advocate for the let grow free time experiment or the let grow experiment and the let grow free time after school. Let’s advocate for the
47:32
phone free till high school pods. just pray that the courage in parents to advocate for that and be different is growing because you you know you just is wild how most most people are just not doing this work or having this conversation and so you can you do end up feeling a little bit like a rainbow unicorn. I suppose there are circles you know where maybe there’s like a ton of Montessori or
47:57
Yeah, parts of the world that maybe are different than Southern California, but in Southern California. And we do have the social emotional literacy programs at our school. Like they’re amazing. And we feel so lucky to have that. But there’s also just most people, you know, I think Will would be like, no, that’s silly or that’s weird. And then you just have to like, just still do it, still do it and advocate for it and then be the volunteer to create it. I think it’s such a wonderful.
48:25
purpose if people listening are inspired could do that and experiment with it. Right. And I would add that you don’t sort of have to find a pod. You don’t have to find people to buy in. If you offer this as an after school activity, I mean, I worry that we call it the let grow play club because people think play is so worthless. It’s too much. But if we called it the let grow executive function, frustration, tolerance, focus and leadership class, which is what can get out of it.
48:54
Right? Maybe they would do it. But now I think because parents are worried about phones, just the fact that it is a swath of phone free socializing time. I think that that’s almost enough to get a lot of buy in. You’re not saying you have to take away their phones forever. You don’t not give them a phone. It doesn’t matter. It’s just it’s an hour after school. It’s two hours after school. Kids will have fun. They’ll be with their friends. It should be pretty cheap. All you need is a couple of supervisors. And it’s right there at school so they don’t have to go someplace.
49:24
If you offer it, if you have your school offer it, it’s just an easy way to at least make sure that your kids have another couple of free hours without a phone, making things happen. So true, Lenore. OK, awesome. Our last point that we can chat about real quick before we wrap up is just creating more time in the real world for your kids.
49:46
because we know as the virtual time goes up, their time in the air quotes real world goes down. So your tips on that. Well, first of all, I would recommend trying to get your school to do the let grow experience because that is in the real world. It really is send your kid out to do something that they want to do in the real world. And you should know that there was a, um, like if you need a talking point with the teachers or the administration,
50:12
There’s a pilot study done using independence, this kind of independence, as therapy for children with a literal diagnosis of anxiety, kids who had the fast beating heart and headaches and were terrified to go to school, terrified to go up or downstairs in their own home. A girl who was 10 wouldn’t sleep in her own bed. And rather than traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, you’re afraid to go upstairs in your house. Tonight, you got to go up for five minutes and see how that is. Just five minutes.
50:42
that would be exposure therapy. This was sort of the opposite. This was saying, you’re 10. Tell me about things you want to do that you haven’t done yet on your own. And it turned out, and I was surprised, that even kids who are anxious have a few things that they want to do. They would desperately like to go to the store and get their candy, or they really want to get their own haircut, or they really would like to go walk the dog. There’s something there that in their heart of hearts they really want to do.
51:10
After they were, so the therapy was for the parents to let them. The parents had to go and hear a lecture for like an hour about why independence is good. And then for the next four weeks, they would come with their kid and they would never mention the thing that they were scared of, like going upstairs or downstairs in their own house. was simply what new things are you going to do? And then the kids had to do something either every day or every other day. And at the end of four weeks, these kids with the diagnosis of anxiety went from feeling anxious most of the time, not worried most of the time.
51:40
to feeling worried a little bit at a time, which frankly is… Wow. So in terms of the real world, the real world has always been a place that kids were part of until very recently. And giving them back the chance to be in it, the chance for spontaneous encounters, the chance to realize, I what is anxiety? It’s that you can’t handle something, that if you try, you’ll fail, and if you fail, it’s the end.
52:05
So they have to try something. got to go, get me, you know, toilet paper from the store. Oh, that’s so embarrassing. Okay, here’s $3. Okay. So you go and it’s embarrassing, but you, it was okay. And then you come back and you’ve helped your parents and you’ve been outside and you felt the fresh air and you met a squirrel and there was a scary dog and you dealt with that. You know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve constricted kids lives to, you know, what’s safe and perfect and already sort of, it’s like, it’s like paint by number.
52:33
somebody else already decided exactly what’s going to happen and all you can do is fill in those colors. But the world is way more exciting than paint by number. And when you give that back to kids and they realize, oh, I can paint outside the lines and I’m going to be okay, that is anxiety busting. So in terms of what can you do to give kids back more of that real world and more confidence and get more confidence on your own, either you have your school do the let grow experience or you just do it on your own. And if you want ideas for how to do it,
53:03
That’s also at letgrow.org, our organization. We have basically the same thing that we give schools. You can just download too with a million ideas of things that kids can do on their own. But your kid will come up with a million that we haven’t even thought of. It’s so true. They have plenty of ideas, don’t they? When you ask. I love that. That story about the anxiety going down and the worry going down in those kids is so powerful. So I’m so happy somebody did a real scientific study because
53:33
I’ve seen that in so many stories and so many parents are so grateful. And the thing that parents say the most is, I had no idea my kid could do that. Cause they don’t, cause we haven’t let them, we haven’t encouraged parents to let go. We’ve told parents, if you let go, you’re crazy. So when there’s a collective problem, nobody’s letting go, a collective solution, everybody lets go. And then the parents get the feedback that this is great. And the kids get the feedback that they can handle it. It’s that, it is literally that simple.
54:03
It’s one sentence, let your kids go and you will be surprised. Yes, I love that. Lenore, you are such a gift and your work is so important. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your incredible voice and the work that you guys are doing at Let Grow and let listeners know. I know you mentioned it, but let listeners know and viewers know where they can find you.
54:27
And these free resources, I’m assuming they’re just all on your website, easy to find. But if there’s anything else you want people to know as they go, because I know everyone’s very inspired right now to implement. Let’s hope they are. Yeah. So basically you go to letgrow.org, L-E-T-G-R-O-W. People think it’s let it go, let it grow, let’s go, let’s grow. It is simply let grow, a weird way that does not exist in English except as us. So you go to let grow. And if you’re a parent, you click
54:55
click on parents and there’s all our resources there. If you take the Pledge of Independence, we send you one activity a week that you can do. If you do the Independence Kit, it’s basically the let grow experience just for home people. If you’re a school, all of our stuff is there. You do have to have a phone call or like attend this little meeting online that just sort of goes over how you roll this thing out. But it’s super fast and easy. And if you need to get in touch with me,
55:24
I’m Lenore at letgrow.org and Lenore is probably at the bottom of my name here. Oh yeah, there’s L-E-N-O-R-E at letgrow.org. And I really love hearing the stories of what happens when you do let go because, which is not our name, our name is Let Grow, but when you do let go, it’s exciting and I feel great. I just love these stories and you will have one as soon as you do it. Okay, well, listeners, viewers, you heard it. Go let go and let grow.
55:54
And thanks again for being here today, Lenore. All right. Thank you, Wendy. Thanks for having me. All right. Stop this and then take a quick photo of us and.
