4 things to know about ‘free-range’ parenting

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[billm]

Japan has done this for years..Youtube has videos of children as young as 7 taking the subway to school...of course the crime rate there is almost non existent. I personally think a parent should strive between being a helicopter parent and a free range parent...somewhere in the middle...

[MariaMartinez-researcher]

Curious. In my country, Chile, most kids above 9 years old that live close enough to the school walk there unaccompanied. I did it since I was 11 every morning, by the afternoons my dad went to pick me. He was already retired; I was the only one that had a parent going to look for me at the school.
I read about French kids in the 50's, they also went alone to school.
Little House on the Prairie TV series, every kid walked to school by themselves; nowadays I bet most kids in rural areas in the world do the same. In Chile of course they do; they even row boats and cross rivers.
As an only child, I loved that time walking alone to the school in the morning, thinking my own thoughts. I guess this is something related too with the #neveragain movement. No kids around the world, war zones excepted, worry about getting shot while walking to school.

[ArielCasey]

Does anyone remember the "latch-key kids" days? We got ourselves to and from school by ourselves and nobody called CPS. And I was raised in Maryland!

[Mohamed-jbyx]

I was raised "free It is good in Africa where the community is interconnected and there is no privacy. But I would never let kids alone here in US where there is a massive privacy and bad guys can do anything

[KINGKACE]

Wow this is really making news like it is new!

[caseymassey]

blows my mind...I lived in Utah for a considerable amount of time...long enough to realize it has a very conflicted society. The eighties is when I remember asking my oldest son to walk his sister to school because blonde, blue eyed little girls were being taken from our very calm, vanilla neighborhood. The school was five minutes walking distance from our house. There is free range, and there is "free range" . Even "Free range" chicken ranchers watch out for their chickens. Utah Mormons have traditionally had large families and kids watch out for each other, but that may have changed. Now I live in a low income housing situation in California and so many free range children makes my heart hurt. It is all a matter of perspective, I guess.

[waynebrinker]

I saved this to watch later. Just looking at the title, I honestly thought I was going to see "The Onion", to which I also subscribe. Free range eh?....who'da thought eh?
I grew up in rural Alberta, Canada and in the 50s/60s and, looking back, I was raised
FreeRange++ S'pose things have likely changed bigly, so blame the terrorists.

[Tony-bvgz]

Utah, where Darwin said he does his best work.