An alternative to paranoia regarding the safety of your children: Free Range Kids

Remember the woman who was criticized for allowing her highly competent 9-year old boy find his way home on the Manhattan subway? Her name is Lenore Skenazy. She's a syndicated columnist and she's not retreating a single inch. She has created a website called Free Range Kids. In April, 2009, she published a book called Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. Here's how she sums up the widespread American problem:

Somehow, a whole lot of parents are just convinced that nothing outside the home is safe. At the same time, they’re also convinced that their children are helpless to fend for themselves. While most of these parents walked to school as kids, or hiked the woods — or even took public transportation — they can’t imagine their own offspring doing the same thing. They have lost confidence in everything: Their neighborhood. Their kids. And their own ability to teach their children how to get by in the world.

Lenore reminds us to consider our own "dangerous" childhoods when thinking of extending your own child's leash--and she has drawn hundreds of lively comments. What is general solution?

We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less. This site dedicated to sane parenting . . .

I started this site for anyone who thinks that kids need a little more freedom and would like to connect to people who feel the same way. We are not daredevils. We believe in life jackets and bike helmets and air bags. But we also believe in independence. Children, like chickens, deserve a life outside the cage. The overprotected life is stunting and stifling, not to mention boring for all concerned. So here’s to Free Range Kids, raised by Free Range Parents willing to take some heat. I hope this web site encourages us all to think outside the house.

This is a well-considered site with lots of ideas for tempering our paranoia about child abductions and sexual predators. Here are a few additional Free Range Children stories that I recommend from Lenore's site:

The end of the Super-Mom Era.

How cell phones can stunt your children's emotional growth.

Here's another article detailing the subway adventure. And here's Lenore's three-minute video describing her approach.

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Defusing Gatesgate

Thanks to Barack Obama's ingenuity and his faith that human beings should always be challenged to figure out their differences with empathy, we have a wonderful resolution rather than an interminable ugliness. Bold, beautiful move. Here's how Henry Louis Gates now sees things:

Let me say that I thank God that I live in a country in which police officers put their lives at risk to protect us every day, and, more than ever, I’ve come to understand and appreciate their daily sacrifices on our behalf. I’m also grateful that we live in a country where freedom of speech is a sacrosanct value and I hope that one day we can get to know each other better, as we began to do at the White House this afternoon over beers with President Obama.

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Repercussions of Kevin Bacon

I was watching the one hour documentary "How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer" and thought I'd share a few thoughts. Presumably anyone reading this already knows the principle of "Six Degrees of Separation" and the game involving this actor. My thoughts have nothing to do with the actor, but rather with the field of study that actually emerged from this Urban Myth: Network Theory. One thing that jumped out at me was that network theory appears to neatly show how organization and information growth are necessary results of random connections. In other words, organization Just Happens. This has always been observed. It was historically explained as either the result of very, very sophisticated design, or a "goal" of evolution. But now there is a mathematical model showing that systems become organized because of entropy, not in spite of it. Unfortunately, those who doubt evolution usually never get far enough in math to see this. Another thought I had was in response to the observation that a network becomes efficient given many points (or nodes) with few and local connections, plus a few nodes with many and far-ranging connections. These widely connected nodes are the key to the usual success of the game of six degrees, or the stability of the internet, or the synchrony of crickets, or the efficiency of our nervous system, or any other network. I asked myself, "Given a choice, would I want to be a social node of local, or widespread connections?" I'm not particularly interested in how useful I may be as a connection in a game of Six Degrees, but rather how much fuller is ones life given wider connections. More points of view lead to understanding more ideas. I talk to people in all lines of work, of any political or religious affiliation. I converse to listen. Ideas that conflict with what I "know" are interesting to investigate. (At least until I understand why they conflict, and then they are inflicted repeatedly by those who don't understand the conflict.) Although I am a social stick-in-the-mud, I've met relatives who live on 4 continents, and have visited yet another. I gravitate toward people who also collect people. This blog (for example) has authors from several continents. I have also traveled to a few places, many shown on this "Cities I've Visited" vanity map:

And I am always asking questions, and making connections. I enjoyed the TV series, too.

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Longitudinal study tells us what makes people happy

What makes people happy? On quite a few occasions, I've posted at DI with regard to ideas that I learned through reading various books and articles (a search for "happiness" in the DI search box will give you dozens of articles). What does that reveal about me, I wonder? Today, I had the pleasure of reading an extraordinarily thoughtful article on this same topic: "What Makes Us Happy?" by Joshua Wolf Shenk appears in the June 2009 edition of The Atlantic. You'll find an abridged edition of the article here. Shenk's article is anchored by the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest running longitudinally study of mental and physical well-being in history. It was begun in 1937 in order to study "well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), and it has followed its subject for more than 70 years." The study was originally known as "The Grant Study," in that it was originally funded by W.T. Grant. Despite all odds, the study has survived to this day--many of the subjects are now in their upper 80's. Along the way, the study was supplemented with a separate study launched in 1937 dedicated to studying juvenile delinquents in inner-city Boston (run by criminologists Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck). You'll enjoy Joshua Shenk's work on many levels. He writes with precision, providing you with a deep understanding of the featured longitudinal studies. You will also enjoy his seemingly effortless ability to spin engaging stories (there are dozens of stories within his article) and his exceptional skill at crafting highly readable prose. I'm writing this post as a dare, then. Go forth and read Shenk's article and I guarantee that you will be thoroughly enriched and appreciative. The Atlantic also provided a video interview of George Vaillant, now 74, who since 1967 has dedicated his career to running and analyzing the Grant Study. As you'll see from Shenk's article, Vaillant is an exceptional storyteller himself. The Atlantic article, then, might remind you of one of those Russian dolls, and that is a storyteller telling the story of another storyteller who tell stories of hundreds of other storytellers. For more than 40 years, Vaillant has not only gathered reams of technical data, but he has poured his energy into interviewing the subjects and their families and melding all of that data into compellingly detailed vignettes of the subjects. Telling stories is not ultimately what the study was supposed to be about, of course, and Vaillant also tells us what those stories mean for the rest of us. Truly, what makes people happy? Vaillant offers answers that you will be tempted to immediately apply to your own situation. Vaillant has a lot to say about "adaptations," how people respond to the challenges they face in life. As a Shenk explains,

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Celebrating a good divorce

Arianna Huffington is on vacation with her ex and their two daughters, having a great time. She is celebrating the relationship she has developed with her ex, going so far as to note the 12th anniversary of their divorce. It's an interesting read, no doubt applicable to millions of divorced parents:

The surest sign that my ex and I have reached a better place is a newfound willingness on both our parts to not let our pet peeves get in the way of our having a good time. Even in the happiest of marriages, there are little things that each partner does that inevitably set the other one off. These annoyances are magnified ten-fold when you are no longer together as a couple -- which is why making an effort to avoid them is one of the secrets of a good divorce.

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