Kids Need More Freedom. Here Are 25 Ways To Give It To Them.

Last year, a letter in the medical journal Pediatrics argued that the frightening decline in mental health among American kids can be partly explained by a lack of independent play. When kids don’t get to solve their own problems, the researchers wrote, they develop a belief that they have no control over what happens to them, stoking depression and anxiety. Effectively, the prescription was: send them outside, without phones, to find other kids to play with.

Easier said than done. Forty years of changing parenting norms persuaded us that structured, supervised activities were the best and safest way to encourage kids’ development — and time use studies show that, on average, moms today spend two more hours a day hands-on parenting than our grandmothers did.

Still, every family knows the thrill of loosening the reins: the confidence it gives kids and the convenience it affords parents (once the panic and dread wear off). In the spirit of giving ourselves permission to be less attentive parents — for our kids’ sakes! — Romper asked our friends, our group chats, and our favorite parenting experts: What’s one thing you let your kid do, even though it scared you? How did it change your kid? How did it change you?

Let Them Find Their Own Way, Literally

Over and over, parents told us how transformative it was for their kids to have more autonomy in their daily commutes, from preschool to high school.

My 3-year-old scoots to school

I don’t have a scooter and don’t want to have to run alongside him while he scoots, so I said to him, ‘Okay, here’s the deal. You must stop at every corner, every alley, every parking lot. And if you hear me yell stop, you have to stop. If you can’t or won’t do that, then there’s no more scooting.’ We had a hiccup where he didn’t stop when I yelled ‘stop,’ but I very calmly said, ‘if you do that again, there is no more scooting.’ He knows I mean it when I say something like that, and he never did it again.

— Doree, Los Angeles

My 7-year-old walks home alone

I’m a military spouse, and my American family has lived in Germany for about three years. My daughter walks to school alone, which at first felt like so much. We don’t do this in the States at this age! But she walks in a group with tons of kids around, and German culture is like, all the grandmas watching out the windows. And being the Americans we are, we bought her airtags. But she’s so excited: She’s so proud of herself for walking to school and her after school program without a parent.

—Jamie, Bavaria

My 8-year-old bikes home

We started letting my eldest bike home from school on her own at the beginning of 2nd grade. It scared the crap out of me, but when I picked her up from school she was always in a bad mood and wanted to be by herself (restraint collapse). One day she took off by herself on her bike, and that was it, I couldn’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. It made me SO NERVOUS but other parents stop and tell me all the time how safe and responsible she is on her bike.

— Susan, Oregon

My 9-year-old takes the ferry

The school bus drops her at the pier. She had some anxiety about the social part of sitting alone on the ferry, or sitting next to someone she doesn’t know and existing there for 25-30 minutes. The first few days she would FaceTime me but now she gets out her homework and finishes it so she can meet a friend or chill once she’s back.

— Shelby, Hong Kong

My 12-year-old takes the light rail

We've begun letting our 12-year-old and his friend take the T from our neighborhood to Downtown on their own. They’ll hit up a toy store or Target for Pokemon or just hang out in a public square, people watching. Around the holidays they went to the ice rink and skated. It’s rewarding to see the ways we’ve encouraged our kids to trust themselves and their own judgment pay off in big adventures.

— Lauren, Pittsburgh, PA

If You Let Them Do It, You Don’t Have To

Talk to a bunch of parents about giving in to their kids’ demands, and you’ll be surprised how much of what kids want to do amounts to, basically, chores.

My 1-year-old brushes his own teeth

I started letting my little one brush his teeth. I know that sounds so trivial but when his pediatrician told me that he needed to brush them twice a day for at least two minutes, I wanted to get an A+ in that department. But my little man wasn't having it. He didn't want me anywhere near his mouth and it was such a big fight every morning and night. Finally I stopped fighting him and let him do it. Even if all he did was lick the tooth paste or gag on the brush which was nerve wracking as hell. I took a step back and let him do his own thing as I brushed my own teeth to show him.

Children are so observant anyway, and after a few weeks he began to mimic me.

— Jessica, Illinois

A toddler can care for a pet

Ever since our toddler was able to walk, we would allow her to feed our dogs. This started with her attempting to scoop one or two pebbles and bring it over to all three of our dogs’ bowls. She would attempt to pour it into the dogs’ bowls, with most of it ending up on the ground. Eventually it turned into more pebbles in the scoop, but with more pebbles all over the ground (which of course, the dogs would still happily eat). But now that she’s 2.5, she wakes up every morning happy and excited to successfully feed the dogs! We don’t even ask her, she usually takes it upon herself to do it.

— Betina, Dallas, TX

My 2-year-old loads the dishwasher

While I help with heavier glass items and we skip anything sharp, he’s excited to clean up after himself (yes, he's a Virgo) and it’s helping him to learn that dishes don't just magically appear cleaned the next day. I was nervous about the safety around broken glass, but a few months in, while the risk is still there, it’s not as much of a guarantee as I thought.

I really like the independence it's fostering in him and also the trust it's building for me. As I see him pick up these tasks and (mostly) follow the parameters around these tasks, I start to trust him and his abilities, which is a cool feeling.

— Liz, Chicago, IL

A preschooler can retrieve her lost stuff

When our teenager was 3, we were outside the Seattle Art Museum, halfway down a flight of stairs, when we realized she had left her sweater in the museum’s restaurant. I explained that she should go back and ask someone working at the restaurant if they had seen it. She was nervous, but the wall and doors were glass. She could see me the whole time. Going in, she was clearly hesitant, clearly a bit out of her comfort zone. Coming out, she clutched that sweater aloft like Rocky with his heavyweight championship belt.

— Gail, San Francisco, CA

A 4-year-old can cut his own fruit

I found a Montessori-approved kid safe knife and cutting set with a cutting board. We did a few lessons before allowing him to try supervised. Since then it feels good to allow him to do this on his own with permission, even though it makes me sad he’s getting bigger!

— Deb Padgett, Evanston, IL

An elementary schooler can pour their own milk

My kids weren’t strong enough to manage a full milk jug on their own so I bought a dispenser that fits over the opening of jug so they can easily get themselves their own cups of milk or bowls of cereal before grown-ups wake up in the morning.

— Evie, Maryland

A 6-year-old can put up Christmas decorations

There are a lot of men in this world who don’t know how to do things, and I think that’s because their moms have always done it for them. I want to raise men who participate in the world and in their home. I bought an artificial Christmas tree this year, and my son Samuel, who’s now 6, was adamant that he do the assembly of the Christmas tree: ‘Mommy, hands off.’ It was a proud moment because he was taking care of me and taking charge.

— Rachel, New York

Middle schoolers can write emails

When my children were in middle school, they would lie in bed next to me while I, say, wrote their head of school an email about why a particular math class didn't seem like a good fit; I would narrate what I was writing and why it was important to be gracious. Then there was a long period of coaching. Where the kids would write their own email and show me, and I would offer this or that suggestion. And then after that? They just did these things on their own, however important they were. The kids talked to their guidance counselors or sought clarification from colleges they were applying to or made an appointment with a teacher to discuss a problem or ask for a letter of recommendation.

— Catherine, Massachusetts

A tween can bike to the store.

A few months ago our son (11) asked if he could ride his bike down to Walgreens and back, alone, to buy something. There's just a lot of traffic around and there was the matter of locking his bike, handling money, and maybe engaging with panhandlers. My kid doesn't have a phone and my husband asked me if he should give our son a phone for the trek. I said no, because if anything happened, everyone else has a phone and when we were kids, we went out on our own without devices.

My son made it back safely and brought my husband a candy bar he bought him. I said, "You better eat that candy bar--he went out into the wild and hunted it and brought it back for you."

— Claire, Evanston, IL

My 10-year-old goes alone on the ski lift

… Is that too bougie?

— Carlee, Washington

I Let My Kid F*** Up And Lived To Tell About It

Because, as painful as it is, not stepping in to fix things for your kids is the best way for them to learn.

I let my kid go to school underdressed

My 7-year-old is responsible for remembering the things she needs every day. I have a checklist by the door. The other day, she didn’t wear a sweater under her snow jacket. I knew she’d forgotten it, and I was just like, ‘It’s going to be okay!’ She came home and said, ‘Mom, I didn’t put a sweater on, and I was really cold all day at school.’ If I’d done it for her, she wouldn’t have made that connection.

— Jamie, Germany

My 5-year-old took off on an unsupervised walk

We live in a rural community in Ohio with a few other families on a country lane we call “the hoop” that runs between several far-flung houses. My 5-year-old son has a good bit of freedom in the woods, so when he asked to go for a walk I figured he would just go to our neighbor’s swings or the top of a nearby hill, as he usually does. When I realized he had been gone longer than I expected, I hopped on my bike to go searching. One neighbor said he had just passed, walking happily. When I got back home, he was happy and proud that he had walked the hoop alone. I just asked him to let me know when he was going to go around the whole hoop in the future... and he did.

— Anonymous, Ohio

We gave up on middle school altogether

With our twins, who are now in high school, we decided to view middle school as “The Mistake Years.” We wanted to remove the safety net and let them fail a little bit. The goal in sixth grade was to not take any zeros. Just turn your work in, period. Seventh grade was all about talking to adults on their own and advocating for themselves — no more mom emailing the teacher about a late assignment. In eighth grade, we decided to let them fail when they hadn’t put the work in and see for themselves how it affected their grades. It’s paid off. They own the relationships with educators now. Not us.

— Heather and Heath, Minnesota

I let my kid mess up an important school project

I didn't ‘fix’ the situation when my 11-year-old came into my room at 9pm sobbing that he wasn't going to finish his huge, months-long social studies project before the deadline (which was, of course, that night at midnight). He'd been working hard on the project but had over-committed in terms of the project's scope and under-estimated how much time it would take. Although I desperately wanted to swoop in and help him, or at least reach out to the teacher on his behalf, I didn't. I explained that grades don’t matter nearly as much as learning from the situation. I helped him brainstorm options for moving forward.

— Melinda, New York

The Terrifying Times Our Kids Put Themselves In Physical Peril — And Survived

We are wired to physically protect our kids, but at some point they have to learn how to keep themselves safe, too.

My two-year-old really wanted to tackle this enormous climbing wall

It was at the playground, probably 10 feet high. She got a few feet up and lost her footing and slipped. She was screaming, but I’m an EMT — screaming is a great sign. You always want them to be crying when it comes to injury. I didn’t see an arm out of joint, and she wanted to try again so I took that as permission to let her try again.

— Zan, Vermont

I let my kindergartener start fires

I first built a fire with my 5-year-old twins on a mommy-and-me camping trip when they were toddlers. My daughter Mikey has a strong interest in fire — at age 4, we were playing outside when she found a lighter and safely started her own campfire. At first I was horrified. My preschooler just started a fire! But I know grown men that can’t do that, so I began to give her a safe outlet for her interest. We now store lighters securely, but we give her chances to build and light fires whenever we can. We also read by candlelight each evening and she lights those candles for me. It’s a safe and cozy way to manage her interest, and while it stretches me as a parent, giving her this freedom (with some ground rules in place) has worked better than just saying no.

— Anonymous

Our 9-year-old joined the indoor rock climbing gym team

...which fucking terrifies me! The kid belaying her is also 9!”

— Hayley, Virginia

I let my kids out of my sight on hikes

My kids would run up ahead of me on short mountain hikes and I would immediately tell them to wait and let me lead. Eventually, when they were about 5 and 6, I decided to take some deep breaths and let them. I still get a little panicky when I feel like they are too close to a ledge or getting too far ahead of me. But, after a couple falls, I notice them stepping a little more carefully and looking out for each other.

— Sadie, Colorado

I let my 2-year-old cook

Like use a knife, mix things on the stove, get her hands dirty, really get in there (of course all under my close supervision). My husband still worries that she will burn herself or cut herself. And I'm sure she will. But she's so proud! She says, "thank you, chef" and "you're welcome, chef.” I love that we've turned this mundane, daily task of cooking dinner into something that gives her pride and makes her feel like a contributor to our family. Of course there are limits, but I've found the more I let go, the more she steps up.

— Nicole Wood, Chicago, IL

Answers have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.