I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

When I was six years old, my family moved to a house with a creek running behind it.

It was the ideal suburban backyard for three little girls with wild imaginations.

My two younger sisters and I spent hours, so many hours, waiting in the water,

catching minnows and crawdads, and building rock bridges from one side to the other.

We even tried to raft down it once or twice on inflatable pool rafts,

Huck Finn style, with no real success.

I grew up pre-internet, pre-cell phones.

For most of my childhood, we didn't have cable TV or a VCR.

If I had free time, I was riding my bike, playing outside, or reading a book.

We call it free range now, the idea that children don't need to be constantly supervised and entertained.

There's something about being left to your own devices and having to be resourceful.

Free time is an incomparable gift.

It's time to dream, time to imagine your way out of your own boredom,

time to invent games or build things with your own two hands.

I'm raising my own children as free range as possible. or build things with your own two hands.

I'm raising my own children as free range as possible.

Their summers for the past few years have looked a lot like mine growing up.

Most days my son leaves the house after breakfast and only comes home for meals or to reapply sunscreen or grab a drink.

Sometimes he shows up with a rag-tag group of friends, their hair damp with sweat, their

knees grass-stained.

Mom, he asks, do we have enough popsicles for everybody?

...