My 11-year-old daughter and her friends need pedometers. I want to know how many steps these girls are clocking on an average day. They’re walking everywhere, to each other’s houses, the local pizza shop, the nail salon — all over the neighborhood.
I give my children this freedom very mindfully: I want them to be confident, resourceful, and independent. Once, another mother wanted to have her daughter join a walk the girls were taking to the pizza shop. She asked us, “Is it OK if I follow behind them in our car?” Thankfully, the other mothers and I were on the same page and simultaneously replied, “No, we’re not OK with that. The point of the outing isn’t the pizza. There’s a greater purpose behind letting them have the freedom to get there on their own.”
I track them with an AirTag in her fanny pack. Sometimes, I get a call from the pizza shop’s landline:
“Mom, can we go to the drugstore and buy candy with our leftover lunch money?” or “Mom, it’s really cold. Can you pick us up?”
Once, I even called the pizza shop myself to ask if she could grab something for me on the way home.
They’re living a wonderfully retro, ’90s-style childhood — one that feels increasingly endangered by helicopter parenting and overzealous legal authorities who seem to have forgotten their own childhoods.
Just 10 years ago in my county, Danielle and Alexander Meitiv were actually accused, even charged, with neglect for letting their children do exactly what mine do every day: walk around unsupervised in broad daylight.
The only thing that scares me about letting my daughter have this degree of freedom is that some busybody might call the police and that the law enforcement responding to the call might feel similar to the ones who harassed the Meitiv family a decade ago.
Thankfully, that anti-freedom attitude is starting to change, largely thanks to the work of Lenore Skenazy and her organization Let Grow. Lawmakers are slowly waking up to the idea that protecting families sometimes means stepping back, not in.
On her site, Skenazy recently shared this: “Just a few months after Georgia mom Brittany Patterson was arrested for not knowing her 10-year-old son had walked to the store alone, her state passed a Reasonable Childhood Independence law. It now goes to the governor. The bill clarifies that ‘neglect’ only applies when a child is put in serious, obvious danger — not simply when they’re out of sight.”
It’s wild that this level of common sense needs to be legislated, but here we are.
When Patterson was arrested, she asked the deputies what the charges were.
“For reckless endangerment,” one replied.
She asked, “And how was I recklessly endangering my child?”
The second deputy answered, “Turn around. We’re not talking about it.”
If law enforcement can’t answer that question, they shouldn’t be making the arrest.
Now, I’m not reckless. My children roam the neighborhood, yes, but they’re still in booster seats when we drive. Because statistically, being in a car is more dangerous than walking on a sidewalk. That basic understanding of risk is all that’s required from lawmakers, from law enforcement, and from everyday people who, for some reason, see a child walking alone and think the right response is to call the police.
Skenazy also recounted the story of Melissa Henderson, a Georgia mother of five arrested during the pandemic. She let her 14-year-old watch the younger children while she worked (and all forms of childcare were unavailable), but when her 4-year-old wandered outside to play with a neighbor, that neighbor’s mother called the police. Henderson was handcuffed and jailed. Authorities said the child “could have been bitten by a venomous snake.”
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Three years later, the court ruled in her favor. Three years of stress and legal fees to conclude that a venomous snake was unlikely to attack a child briefly playing outside. I don’t spend much time in Georgia, but I wasn’t aware it was teeming with deadly reptiles.
While Skenazy fights to restore childhood freedom, her bigger mission might be to bring back basic common sense, especially for those who treat a child walking on the sidewalk like a public safety emergency.
Bethany Mandel (@bethanyshondark) is a homeschooling mother of six and a writer. She is the bestselling co-author of Stolen Youth.