Free Range Parenting is Not Just for the Birds!

Let’s Grow Independent Children One Neighborhood Block at a Time via The Montessori Method

Mom and Dad: Have You Prepared to Let Your Child Go Outside Alone? It’s Called Free Range Parenting!

How can we parents prepare our kids to go outside alone and play without our supervision?

It’s a tough question given all the over-protectionism we’ve built into our kids’ lives.

How can we build our kids’ skills and confidence if we don’t let them do by themselves and be by themselves? How can they be independent if we are shuttling them from one supervised, structured activity to another? How can we give our children the ability to ride their bike or go to the woods if we’ve got them tethered?

Perhaps Baby Boomer kids lived an Americana life—riding our bikes and playing until the street lights turned on and mom called us in. It’s a wonder we survived the lurking Stranger Danger while biking to the park!

But why have Gen X parents changed the backdrop? What are you afraid of mom? The man across the street who thinks you’re a bad parent because you leave your child in the car alone?

What is the problem—why can’t kids walk or bike anywhere now?

You’ve got visual, audio and alarmed security devices. You’ve got cell phones for your child. You’ve got mobile apps for the rest of it. All kids need is an okay to engage in outdoor childhood independence! Ah, freedom!

Experiments in Independence

Recently, a group named Let Grow conducted a homework experiment in one dozen elementary schools in Long Island, NY.

• The children’s assignment:

  • Kids decide to do something on their own that they haven’t done before—like walking the dog around the block, walking a few aisles over in the supermarket to get mommy an item the family needs or making dinner.

• The school’s assignment:

  • Create clubs of mixed ages, no structure and no adult direction.

• ​Teachers’ takeaway:

  • More self-assured, confident children who discovered new skills

  • Kids learned to fail and overcome obstacles

  • Tried new ideas and approaches and

  • Became resilient in the balance

In other words, by giving children the ability to do for themselves inside the classroom and out in the world, they learned to communicate, collaborate and problem-solve in different ways.

Free Range Play = Kid’s Control

Following the Baby Boomer generation, children’s freedoms began to decline. At the same time, their anxieties and depression increased.

Why?

Is it because kids have someone controlling their every minute of every day, or parents continue to hover and break the child’s every fall?

Mom: can you prep yourself and your child to allow some risk into your child’s life by letting them go outside alone? Risk factors in reward, you know.

Prepping Your Child for Outside Play

So, how do we get our kids ready for the process of being alone and enjoying an unstructured hour or two?

Via the Montessori Method, children as early as three years-old learn through practice to build a language of steps and boundaries so they can practice self-discipline later.

The result: building an internal foundation of communication and problem solving to become capable of not being with an adult at all.

The Montessori Method teaches responsibility, cautiousness and accountability so your children can ultimately walk or bike to a friend’s house alone. And, with every foray into the neighborhood, the mystery of the unknown is peeled back one block at a time.

Summary

Do you want your 18 year-old high school graduate to walk gingerly or confidently across the campus at night? Are you going to teach them to handle themselves when they are young?

Mom and Dad: it’s okay to prepare your chicks for flight today by letting them outside in the free-range world. Or, you watch your chickens come home to roost and ask you to do their laundry for them. For more tips on confidence and independence, check out our Pros and Cons on Free Range Parenting.

This article is an outgrowth of multiple sources, including “To Raise Confident, Independent Kids, Some Parents are Trying to ‘Let Grow,’” by Deena Prichep, September 3, 2018, heard on Morning Edition, National Public Radio; Kristin Edwards, M.Ed., Director of Lifetime Montessori School in Santaluz, a private Elementary school in San Diego; and Dr. Maria Montessori, founder of the 110-year old teaching method that bears her name.