KEVIN COURTNEYon free-range kids.
Free range kids. I wouldn't eat anything else.
Ha ha. Free range kids are children whose parents let them roam a little bit beyond their usual boundaries.
So they're allowed to go all the way to the end of the garden?
Even further afield than that. Free range kids can walk home from school by themselves, go to the shops unaccompanied and even travel alone on the New York subway.
Who would let their kids do these dangerous things?
Leonore Skenazy, a columnist from the New York Sun, after being pestered by her nine-year-old son to let him find his own way home, dropped him off in Bloomingdale's in Manhattan one afternoon, gave him 20 bucks, a Metrocard, a subway map and a few quarters, and said: "Have fun! See you later!"
Abandoning a child in the middle of New York! Is she mad?
Some parents feel that keeping their child under surveillance 24-7 is detrimental to their development, and believe that children should experience a little independence. They reckon that a whole generation is being smothered by "helicopter parents" hovering over their kids and watching their every move.
But aren't they just keeping their kids safe? It's a perilous world out there.
Not as perilous as people believe, apparently. There's a growing school of thought that believes modern parents have become paranoid, imagining paedophiles hiding behind every tree, and traffickers waiting at every street corner to abduct their children and sell them into slavery. The reality is that the world is a much safer place for kids, and "stranger danger" is on the decline, despite high-profile news stories about child abduction.
Still, isn't it a bit irresponsible to leave your child to fend for himself in New York of all places?
According to Skenazy, New York is now as safe as it was in 1963. Of US cities with a population over 100,000, New York ranks 136th in terms of crime, so she figured that her kid would stand a pretty good chance of making it home safely.
But what if he hadn't come home?
That's what some critics of Skenazy's "experiment" asked, accusing her of being a negligent parent. Other, more hysterical parents even called for her to be charged with child abuse. She has now started a blog, freerangekids.wordpress.com, in which parents relate their tales of letting kids do such daredevil stunts as ride a skateboard, walk two blocks to the playground and (gasp!) eat snow.
Come to think of it, other generations took all this freedom for granted.
Skenazy and other parents want to give their children back a little bit of freedom, and help them develop into independent teens and adults. They do not, says Skenazy, advocate irresponsibility or dereliction of parental duty. "Most of us grew up free range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less."
Try at home:"You just wait till our son gets home - he told you not to play with his X-Box while he was out."
Try at work:"All that time we let our kid out alone, we didn't realise he was hanging out at Wall Street - now he owns the company."
