We've taken play out of kids' lives, free play when they're doing all that social, emotional work,

and replaced it with a lot of adult organized play where they learn how to kick the ball really well,

they learn how to hit a ball really well, but they don't learn how to make the teams and how to change the rules

and how to, you know, decide who's bringing the snack.

It's all decided by an adult. And so we're just trying to figure out new ways to weave

independence, normal independence, back into children's lives so that parents aren't afraid of it

and kids get to experience it. And so that by the time they are at college, they've had a million

arguments. They've had a million sp college, they've had a million arguments,

they've had a million spats, they've had a million times when they've fallen off their bike and had to get back on it and there wasn't anyone there because we think of that as vaccination,

vaccinated against vicissitudes of everyday life so that they arrive on campus or at their

first job ready to deal with what comes at them.

Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Downe. My guest is Lenore Skenezy.

Lenore is a veteran journalist who became a media sensation and was dubbed America's

worst mom in 2008 for a column she wrote for the New York Sun about letting her nine-year-old ride the subway alone.

The controversy led her to speak out about finding safe ways to allow kids to be more independent,

and she founded an initiative called the Free Range Kids Movement.

In 2018, she co-founded Let Grow, a nonprofit that offers resource materials, school curricula,

and even does policy work with an aim towards helping kids be more self-sufficient,

and just as importantly, helping parents foster this self-sufficiency without being judged or even punished by a safety-obsessed society.

Lenore spoke with me about her work, her own parenting, and the fact that, as she puts it,

there's never been a safer time to be a child in America.

Lenore Skenezi, thank you for joining me on the Unspeakable Podcast.

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