Becoming a Free-Range Parent

This week's article summary is A Conversation with a Free-Range Parenting Pioneer, and it's a follow-up to an earlier summary on helping students develop self-efficacy.

To me, Free Parenting suffers from poor brand naming—the term implies parents being overly lax with their kids.

Most parents conceptually understand the importance of children having unsupervised opportunities make decisions, to solve disputes with peers, and to figure out how to entertain themselves without adults or technology.

Yet parents also worry about the potential dangers of the world. Jonathan Haidt in his popular book Anxious Nation bemoans that parents give their kids too much freedom online but not enough in real life.

Throughout the country, schools have been tightening their technology policies to limit or ban student-owned devices at school. Yet for the most part, schools and parents have ignored Haidt’s other major recommendation: letting kids play with other kids without adult supervision.

Parents today are fearful of what could happen to their child in real life even though Haidt reminds us that the world today is actually very safe for kids. I fault the 24-hour a day news cycle for this: highlighting the dangers and violence of the world is good for ratings but adversely skews our world view.

While technology plays a role in the rise of loneliness, anxiety, and depression in kids, I also feel children’s lack of unsupervised play time is a critical factor as well. The positives of giving kids opportunities to do things by and for themselves include building self-confidence, self-efficacy, and independence.

I have a vivid memory of one particular night when I was eight. I was in my pajamas watching TV in the living room. My dad’s car wouldn’t start at his office, so he called my mom and asked her to come pick him up (a commute of 15 minutes each way). My mom told me to put on a coat and jump in the car to pick up my dad. I asked if I could stay home by myself as it was only going to be a half hour alone in the house. Somehow I convinced her and she let my stay by myself for the first time.

It was pitch black outside and after about 10 minutes I was scared. I had the TV to keep me company but I heard all sorts of noises inside and outside the house. Thirty minutes felt like an eternity. My parents finally got home, and I remember being nonchalant about being by myself for 30 minutes. But, as this memory is deeply etched in my brain, it clearly had an impact on me. I had accomplished something and felt more confident for it.

I know it’s difficult for parents today to be less hovering over their kids, yet as the article recommends, they can start by doing little things to give their kids opportunities to build their confidence.

Joe

--------

Lenore Skenazy was once reviled as the worst mom in America for letting her 9-year-old son Izzy take the subway by himself.

The newspaper columnist has since become a champion of the “free-range kids” parenting style and helped spark a national movement, Let Grow, which encourages parents to gradually give their children the kind of small freedoms they were allowed as children, such as walking to school or to the park.

Skenazy recently took a few moments to chat about what she sees as the serious developmental impacts of curtailing the natural impulse for free play and how we went from a country where it was normal for children to ride the bus to a nation where parents try to manage all aspects of their child’s schedule.

Amid the deepening youth mental health crisis, Skenazy suggests that free play is a serious matter for human development. She suggests that coddling our kids may limit their cognitive potential, holding them back from peak educational experiences, pointing to research showing a link between lower independence and higher anxiety. Independence, she says, is the key to developing happy, well-adjusted children.

Do you think that giving kids more independence can help fight anxiety? 

We’ve taken out opportunities for kids to practice becoming independent. You were allowed to play outside as kids, weren’t you? We were allowed to have free time after school. Kids today aren’t. You were allowed to be unsupervised sometimes, and our kids aren’t. This has resulted in a massive downturn in child mental health, We need to give them back some independence and free play

Why do kids need time interacting with their peers face to face?

You want kids to be off their phones, learning how to interact, learning how to make things happen, learning how to deal with frustration because you can’t all be first. And also learning empathy, the older kids helping the younger kids and learning a little bit of maturity, because the little kids don’t want to look like babies. These cool older kids, you need to have them interacting like humans. Playing. That’s how they have always interacted and that’s how they make friends. We’re worried about loneliness. How do kids make friends? They make friends because they play with them. This is the way kids used to spend their entire childhoods.

How do you convince parents to let their children do the things they took for granted?

There’s something called the Let Grow Experience. It’s a homework assignment that teachers give their students, and it says, go home and do something new on your own without your parents. They could do anything from making pancakes to walking to school to walking the dog or using a sharp knife. 

Does that help parents feel empowered as well as kids? Does it give all of us more agency?

The reason we love this project so much is that once your kid goes and does something on their own, parents are generally so excited and so thrilled that that rewires you. You are excited to send them out again. And then the kid gets rewired because, instead of my mom loves me, but she doesn’t think I can go to the store, she knows I’ll screw it up, or I’m too shy or whatever. Then the kid says, wait, no, my mom believes in me. I can do this. And knowing that somebody believes in you turns out to be the greatest gift to a kid’s psyche because, sometimes, somebody has to believe in you for you to believe in yourself.

How do you feel about the proliferation of ed-tech in the classroom? A lot of schools are deeply invested in ed-tech as a way to make kids smarter. This is the opposite of that. Is it hard to make an argument for the relationship between free play and intellectual development?

It’s really easy to make the argument. It doesn’t necessarily land, but the argument is this: The brain comes ready to be wired, right? How do you learn to deal with somebody who’s annoying? How do you learn to come up with an idea? How do you learn to innovate? How do you learn to solve a problem? You have to do all these things to learn how. People love solving problems and love coming up with ideas and love playing. Ed-tech did not get us to this place in human history.

The rub is that taking the screens away is a really hard thing to do. 

You can’t just take the screens away and leave them staring at blank walls. But if you have become the entertainment center, you’ve goofed. The world is actually more entertaining than the phones because you can smell it, taste it, feel it. So you just have to give them back the real world. Take away the phone and open the door.

How to Be More Optimistic

This week's article summary is  How Learned Optimism Can Improve Your Life.

I used to have a fixed mindset that people from birth fell into two categories: those who by nature were optimistic and those who were inevitably prone to pessimism. Your outlook on life was based on the luck of your gene pool.

I considered myself lucky that I inherited the positivity gene from my parents. In nearly all situations I see the proverbial glass as half full, not half empty.

But as you’ll see in the article below, even if you inherited the negativity gene from your parents and view the glass as half empty, you can train yourself to be more positive and optimistic.

Just as Carol Dweck pioneered the importance of  developing a Growth Mindset, Learned Optimism was developed by psychologist Martin Seligman. People like me naturally see the positive, but others can also see the best through the practice of Learned Optimism. It’s all about one’s attitude and the way we handle misfortune.

We all know life is far from perfect and filled with disappointments (which I’m constantly reminded of as a New York Jets fan).

But like the ancient Greek/Roman philosophy of stoicism and the precepts of Buddhism, Learned Optimism advises us to accept and manage both the highs and lows that befall all of us.

Optimists don’t have better luck than pessimists; they just cope better with setbacks.

As you’ll see in the article, there are many benefits having an optimistic outlook, in particular stronger physical and mental well-being.

So, as we leave the back-to-school honeymoon period of a school year and your students begin to struggle and you get tired and frustrated, this article is an apt reminder to maintain your natural or learned positivity and find the good in all and everything!

 Joe

------

When it comes to how you view the world and your everyday experiences, you probably fall into one of two categories: optimist or pessimist.

For people with pessimistic tendencies, or a “glass half-empty” mindset, it can feel like second nature to talk down to yourself and expect the worst in each situation. There’s a way to break out of that negative self-talk and teach yourself how to become more optimistic—this concept is known as “learned optimism,” and it was developed by psychologist Martin Seligman. Learned optimism involves recognizing and challenging negative thoughts to develop a more positive outlook.

The concept is rooted in the belief that anyone can switch their mindset, no matter how pessimistic they are to begin with. Optimism is one way to achieve resilience so that you're not stuck in a rut and you're able to flexibly navigate a situation. Just a glimmer, a micro-experience of optimism, can have profound and transformative outcomes.

“Learned optimism is a core mindset of resilience and well-being that helps people to approach challenges and navigate adversity,” says Karen Reivich, from the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center.

The term “learned optimism" was coined by Seligman, who’s widely considered the father of positive psychology. This branch of psychology that explores the many tools, techniques, and skills that allow people to thrive. During his earlier clinical studies on learned helplessness—which is the belief that you have no control over negative situations or life events—Seligman found that people who are more resilient and optimistic are better able to resist feeling helpless and apathetic in the face of adversity.

“Seligman wrote: “One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think.” He argued that, through resilience-building strategies, anyone can learn to break out of a pessimistic, powerless mindset and become more optimistic. The word ‘learned’ emphasizes that we can all develop, practice, and strengthen this perspective.

When a person starts to believe that they have no power over what happens to them, they begin to feel helpless and unmotivated to take action. In turn, this may contribute to the onset of several psychological disorders—such as depression and anxiety--and can lead to a vicious cycle of continually giving up, avoiding certain situations, and having little to no motivation to take care of yourself and make positive changes.

“Learned optimism is the opposite of that,” says Reivich. “It's developing a belief system of agency—the belief that you can affect change in your life and you can bring about better outcomes.” For example, a person experiencing learned helplessness will likely give up after failing or repeatedly struggling to succeed at a particular task, whereas a person practicing learned optimism won’t blame themselves for the failure and would likely keep trying until they succeed.

There are a number of benefits associated with having an optimistic mindset. Among the many advantages of practicing optimism is better mental health. “People who have a more optimistic mindset tend to be happier and have greater life satisfaction,” says Reivich.

People who are more optimistic also experience better physical health outcomes, such as having less pain, fewer complications after surgery, and shorter hospital stays. Optimists have a lower chance of developing infections, cancer, and diseases as well. This is likely because optimistic people tend to have better coping skills when dealing with major stressors and setbacks. As a result, they usually engage in activities that promote good health.