Do you let your kid ride his/her bike alone to the park?
7 comments June 1st, 2009
Interesting story about parenting truths and trends in this story in the Friday New York Times.
I agree with the direction writer Carl Honoré is taking. He calls his approach “slow parenting” — no more rushing around physically and metaphorically, no more racing kids from soccer to Suzuki.
But I don’t totally agree with something writer Lenore Skenazy advocates: “Free-range parenting,” a return to the days when childhood was not ruled by the fear (overblown, she says, with statistics to prove it) that children would be maimed, kidnapped or killed if they did something as simple as riding their bikes alone to the park.
We parents and grandparents are too-ruled by fear these days, and we do need to let up. But I still wouldn’t let kids/grandkids ride their bikes alone to the park. Would you?
