What I Have Learned While Walking my Son to School

The drop-off and pick-up line at my son's school is a winding nightmare of tired parents and car exhaust. I get that some don't live a comfortable walking distance and some are in a rush to or from work. For some, it may be physically impossible for them to walk their kids to and/or from school. But even those that live a reasonable walking distance to the school seem to drive instead. I pass the same two or three parents on foot every morning when I walk my son to school.

I've gained a lot from walking my son to school. Not only do we get to spend precious time together, but we are also moving our bodies. It sets a positive tone for our day. We talk about things he's interested in. We act silly We observe what's going on around us. He holds my hand, a precious act I know he may soon grow out of. And when we get to the school I can give him an unhurried goodbye because I don't have a line of cars behind me, impatiently waiting to drop their kids off. I think it's very important to set a positive tone for the day for our kids to help them succeed, and taking the time to walk him to school does just that.

I stop and get to know the crossing guards on the way back home. Now that my schedule has changed and I mostly work from home, having that adult contact is awesome. But even when I was walking back home to hop in the car and drive to work, I enjoyed slowing down and talking to these very important people keeping our children safe. I wouldn't want their job. People driving through stop signs, on their cell phones, just totally unaware of their surroundings, driving too fast. They put up with a lot.

Walking him to school allows me to observe our neighborhood in a way I don't have time for when I am driving. I can pick up on which kids are struggling at home. I get to see the delight in the kids walking home when the unharvested kumquat tree is full of ripe fruit. I can actually look into the eyes of other walking parents and give them a warm greeting. Occasionally we may get chased by the chihuahua that regularly escapes her backyard. She's an annoying little ankle biter. We get to really know our neighborhood.

I see a lot of newer neighborhoods building schools where it is just plain unsafe for kids to walk to school. The schools are built around buses and cars. This, to me, is sad. It's a missed opportunity for community and parent/child connections, for slowing down and really seeing your neighborhood.

If you have the opportunity, walk your kid to school. Slow down your mornings. Bond with your child. Get some exercise. Observe your neighborhood with fresh eyes. Not to mention the environmental impact that you will be making by not starting up your car.

Raising A Free Range Child in the Modern World

This past summer my boys got to enjoy a couple carefree days exploring their grandparents' woods and pond. They spent an entire day undisturbed, building the framework for a hut and sharpening sticks into daggers. I only interfered long enough to make sure they ate. At the end of the day they were dirty, tired, and happy. It was a rare taste of freedom to explore the world on their terms that modern parenting seems void of. I want more of these moments for my boys, for all children.

Fear seems to rule parenting these days. I get it. There are horrible people out there who harm children in unspeakable ways. There are nosy neighbors who call CPS over a child playing alone in the yard, no matter the age of the child. Things can happen, and fast, though statistics show that our fears, for the most part, are anomalies. We are afraid that our kid is going to be the one in a million and we'd have to live with that guilt the rest of our lives. So how can we provide the freedom of exploration to our children within a framework that best protects them?

When my brother and I were growing up, we'd be gone for hours, playing in drainage ditches with the neighbor's children, exploring fields and forests, and climbing trees. It was a wonderful freedom and it taught us a lot about our world. I'm sure it also gave Mom a break. Our explorations are some of my favorite memories as a child. They instilled a sense of independence and a love for the natural world that I still have today. What has changed? Certainly not the risks involved in such free play.

Lenore Skenazy, a leader in the movement to reclaim childhood freedom describes the reasons why children are no longer as free to roam as they once were. She says we live in a hyper media culture where stories about hurt and endangered children quickly grab our attention and play on our fear. We have also become a culture of experts who judge others and the way they parent.

Our society seems to hold the view that children must be protected from all risks of injury. Here's the thing, risk taking, independence, and discovery all lead to increased confidence. Our fear of our children being harmed could be creating fearful children who avoid risk taking and are void of the kind of creative thinking skills needed to succeed as an adult. Overall, children are better at assessing risk than we give them credit for. They are not the fragile, inept little beings we label them as.

 So what can you do in this modern world of limitations, especially if you live in an urban area? First of all, allow your child plenty of unstructured time. Give him or her unsupervised access to things like scraps of wood, a hammer, and some nails. Let an area of your back yard grow wild for exploration and fort building. My seven year old can spend hours playing with the dog or the chickens in the overgrown shrubbery while I am in the house cooking or writing for my blog. Yes, kids need to spend time with their parents, but they need time without us as well. Let them get dirty, scrape their knees from running, climb trees and get stuck, build forts, and sharpen sticks into daggers. Give them room to explore their world on their terms, without an adult standing over them telling them how the world should be. After all, they are tomorrow's problem solvers and if we don't give them the chance to figure smaller things out on their own now, how can we expect them to work out the larger things later?