These questions are not unrelated, according to a new non-profit, Let Grow. By watching over our kids 24/7 and taking away age-old opportunities to play, get lost, think for themselves, and learn the social skills that develop naturally when making teams and resolving arguments, we have made our kids too safe to succeed.
Founded by Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids, NYU Business School Professor Jonathan Haidt, co-author of "The Coddling of the American Mind," Boston College Psychology Professor Peter Gray, author of "Free to Learn," and Daniel Shuchman, a New York investment fund manager who is also chairman of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Let Grow believes we need to make it easier for parents and society to give kids back their freedom. If we do, resilience and self-reliance can grow.
Right now, says Skenazy, our culture has decided that for some reason this generation of kids can't handle the kinds of adventures, risks and disappointments that previous generations learned from. For instance, she says, Parents Magazine published an article called "The Playdate Playbook." One question it posed: Your child's old enough to stay home briefly, and often does. But is it okay to leave her and her playmate home while you dash to the dry cleaner?
Absolutely not, averred the magazine: "You want to make sure that no one's feelings get too hurt if there's a squabble."
And that, Skenazy says, could be why we have safe spaces with cookies and crayons on our campuses today. "The experts told us to protect our kids by not letting them learn how to solve their own problems." That kind of advice has been stunting our kids' development into functioning adults.
"We have raised a generation of young people who have not been given the opportunity to experience failure and realize they can survive it and persevere," adds Gray.
We have also been teaching our kids that even everyday slights (not being invited to a party, being called a mean name) can be not just upsetting but traumatizing and emotionally paralyzing. The result can be kids walking on eggshells so as not to risk offending anyone, even unintentionally -- or being eggshells themselves, easily broken. Asks Shuchman: "How likely are they to consider free speech essential to themselves and society if they start learning in fifth grade that you're forbidden to say – or even think – a continually expanding list of forbidden ideas, especially at school?"
"Protecting our kids from germs, bruised feelings and even a frisson of fear has had the ironic and unintended consequence of hurting them," says Haidt. After all, kids grow when they push themselves to the edge of their comfort zone – when they climb ever higher on the monkey bars, or have to make their own way home on a broken bike, in the dark.
Let Grow is creating programs for schools, communities and parents that make it easier for them to step back so kids can step up. The cover story in this month's Reason Magazine lays out the organization's vision.
Bottom line: Society has to make it safe, legal and normal for adults to give kids back unstructured, unsupervised time to goof around, screw up, explore widely, read widely, argue, make up, grow brave and discover their own capacity to learn, question and think for themselves. That's what Let Grow hopes to make happen. Because otherwise?
We may all need a safe space.
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