Set kids free

For generations childhood was a time of free exploration, trial and error and learning yourself. However, society has become deeply controlling and demanding regarding parents and caregivers. This limitation isn’t good for kids. In fact, behavioral scientists have begun to write extensively about the damage that too much supervision does. One parent reported to us that the police were called when their 14yo was in the car alone.  A 14yo who was legally able to learn to drive in less than a year later.

The article by Public Discourse highlights so many of the net positives of free-range kids. 
“Haidt argues that the core of the problem is that in trying to keep our children safe, we are actually supervising the wrong parts of their lives. We dramatically oversupervise children’s real-world activities and undersupervise their online ones, especially their smartphone, social media, and gaming use, where the greater dangers to children’s health lie. Citing the work of play and mental health researchers, Haidt further notes that unsupervised or lightly supervised, risky, real-world play is actually safer than highly supervised, non-risky play.”
As parents and caregivers it’s up to us to create the real-world play that is unsupervised or lightly supervised giving kids the ability to grow their decision making capacity.

It’s important to note that it’s not just about a singular parenting style or relationship between parents and children. Children who are raised by caregivers who were labeled as “helicopter parents” show decreased wellbeing scoring much higher on anxiety, depression, life dissatisfaction and emotional dysregulation.
Psychologists theorize that the ability to make decisions allows deeper neural pathways to self-trust that is needed to navigate even bigger decisions. So it becomes up to the parent to find situations which offer a lot of freedom within boundaries that, in the end, keep kids safe.
This is why we’re hosting the NH Educational Freedom Festival.  Children should have the ability to express themselves. This is an environment that offers a level of supervision that is free from complete control and it’s good to consider what might be the best options.