Free Range?

Catching up on some of CBC Radio's As It Happens podcasts in the middle of the night, I heard two stories related to modern-day child-rearing.

The first was an interview of a Mississippi mother who let her 10-year-old son walk to soccer practice (less than a mile through a residential area). Police arrived to chastize her after neighbours called 911 and reported the child alone walking on the sidewalk. To the credit of the town's police chief, the mother was reassured that it really was a safe neighbourhood (er... neighborhood).

The next was a repeat of a 2007 interview with a London-based researcher on what he called "Generational Roaming". He recounted how successive generations of one family had less and less opportunity to go anywhere, any distance, from their home, unless they were being driven or accompanied by an adult. This increasingly short leash is, in his opinion, doing harm to children and depriving them of learning opportunities.

These two stories reminded me of another interview I heard a few days ago on CBC Radio's The Point about "Free Range Kids". The mother being interviewed here was trying to allow her kids some of the freedom that modern-day kids are being deined.

Remember the days as a kid when you went out with your friends for the day and were told to be back for supper? Despite the increasingly irrational fear of everything that our society seems to be developing, it's good to see that at least some parents are bucking the trend.