Free-Range Kids, Attachment, & Fear

Trusting in the parental compass.

Free range kid, c. 1996. Made possible by a well-calibrated “compass.”

Dear Friends,

In today’s middle-class family culture, parents are anxious. And children are anxious, too.

Parents want nothing more than to keep their children both safe and growing, but often these two things seem impossible to balance. A safe child is one who is under a caregiver’s careful supervision, most people seem to believe; and yet growth requires some amount of independence. How can we balance our responsibility to keep our children safe with that nagging, deep-down knowledge that children who are under constant supervision cannot learn resilience, resourcefulness, and self-direction?

Perhaps the answer comes from taking a different perspective. Instead of seeing an attached child and an independent child as based on two different, opposed models of childhood and parenting, let’s consider how secure attachment can provide the compass to make independence both fruitful and safe — if we can get our fear out of the way first.

Read more here: “Free-Range Kids and the Parental Compass”

Books mentioned in this essay: The Anxious Generation — Hold On to Your Kids — Free-Range Kids — Family Unfriendly¹

So, what do you think?

• - Did you experience some form of “free ranging” as a child? What was your experience?

• - Have you been able to give your children the amount of independence that you would like to? If not, what would help you and your kids access more of this?

• - How do you distinguish between fear/anxiety and prudence when it comes to parenting?

Have a great day!

-Dixie

1. Affiliate links.