For more info: LetGrow's Website

Torrance Test of Creativity

Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy: Amazon link

Often, so often I will forget to do something or have a parenting misstep that causes me to look around the room, throw up my hands, and announce “Parent of the Year Award” right here kids!  Um, if you work with kids, if you parent kids, or if you have basically any human interaction, you will have most likely felt that, that moment . Okay. And the difference between labeling ourselves versus being name called is huge. And my guest today is amazing. She transformed the way I viewed adolescence with my children. And yet in 2008 was granted the title/name called America's Worst Mom. Following a column she wrote, documenting her decision to allow her nine-year-old son to take the subway home by himself. I cannot wait to unpack this. Welcome to Healthy Screen Habits, Lenore Skenazy!

Lenore Skenazy: (01:21)

Well, thank you, Hillary. I'm happy to be quote unquote here. Yes. In cyberspace with you.

Hillary Wilkinson: (01:27)

Exactly. The benefits of technology, right? Yeah.

Lenore Skenazy: (01:29)

Really. This is great. Wow.

Hillary Wilkinson: (01:30)

It's a coast to coast. Exactly. So, Lenore, let's start with what I jokingly refer to as the article heard round the world . And this is, this is that piece that I feel like, I mean, you had been a writer for years, you had a career, but it was the piece that really launched you into kind of zeitgeist, I think. And, um, it gave you, like I said, the label I referred to earlier. Can you talk about what led up to it and what led you through that?

Lenore Skenazy: (02:05)

Yeah, sure. Um, this is a long time ago already. We're talking 2008. Um, our younger son named Izzy started asking my husband and me if we would take him someplace he'd never been before here in New York City where we live, and let him find his own way home on the subway, which I think is the suburban equivalent of like, will you take me to the library and let me ride my bike home, or something like that. And so husband, who is not called America's Worst Dad,  (of course!)  and I, yeah, really isn't that interesting? I I, it's an omission. I'm sure they'll fix that. Um, anyways, we talked about it, you know, does this make sense? Our older son hadn't asked us this. We hadn't thought about it before, but finally we decided yes, because we're on the subways all the time. It's how we get around.

Lenore Skenazy: (02:49)

We don't have a car. Um, yes, Izzy feels he's ready and, you know, we know him. We know our subways, we know our subway stops. I'll take him. So I took him up to Bloomingdale's, which is a, a fancy department store, and a fancy zip code. And I left him there after telling him today was the day. And, uh, Bloomingdale's has its own subway stop, little known fact. And so all you had to do is go downstairs in Bloomingdale's, and you're on the subway, basically. And so he took the subway down a few stops, and then he emerged actually on 34th Street, also famous for another, uh, department store, , you know, Macy's. And then, uh, then he took the bus across town and came into our apartment levitating with pride and sort of excitement and that feeling you get when you've done something and you can't wait to, like, I did it!! You know, you feel proud and you're happy that your parents trusted you, and it's just an exciting mini milestone in life.

Lenore Skenazy: (03:43)

And that's literally what it was. And I, I didn't, even though I had a column, a newspaper column back then, I didn't write about it at, at the, at the time because it didn't strike me as a big deal. But a couple months later when I had nothing to write about, I asked my editor, “should I write about is he taking the subway?” And she said, “ Sure”. You know, what are they gonna say? You gotta fill that page. And so I wrote Why I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone. And two days later I thought on the Today Show, M-S-N-B-C, Fox News, NPR. And, um, and the, so that weekend I started a blog that I called Free Range Kids, because you don't always get to, you know, direct the conversation the way you'd want when you're on the, on tv, but when you got a blog, you get to say exactly what you want.

Lenore Skenazy: (04:25)

And what I wanted to say is that I love safety. I love my sons. I want them to outlive me by decades and decades. And so I didn't do this heedlessly and I don't not care about danger. And I, I do things that I think rationally make a lot of sense to keep my kids safe. Uh, you know, back then there were, you know, they were in car seats and helmets and mouthguards, and I love seat belts, but I, I don't think that kids need us supervising them every single second of the day, especially when they're outside the home. Um, I think it's become really, I mean, I found this out right , that it's, it's unusual to let your kids have, um, any kind of old fashioned independence in the real world now. And I think that's just not fair to them. It's not fair to us as parents to make sure that like, every, every time we want our kids to be outside, we have to be out there with them. That that is boring for them and boring for us and also not even developmentally great for our kids.

Hillary Wilkinson: (05:21)

 I, it's interesting that you brought up, I think this is the suburban equivalent, I think for many people, you know, many country mice out here who who don't identify with city mice. I think that the thought of navigating subways on their own is, is frightening. So I do think there was probably that element. I think it's interesting that you bring that up because I'm like, oh, I, I can see how, I mean, the subway seems so

Lenore Skenazy: (05:51)

Daunting.

Hillary Wilkinson: (05:52)

Daunting is the perfect word, right? Mm-Hmm. . It's just this maze and network and their tunnels, and yes, it's right. And

Lenore Skenazy: (05:59)

Yeah. And, and the subways are, as the word sub suggests, subterranean, and that has a lot of connotations of its own. Yeah. But you really do have to think about it as something that was extraordinarily familiar to us. I mean, that's, we got

Hillary Wilkinson: (06:30)

Anywhere,

Hillary Wilkinson: (06:30)

Right? So what's the deal? Like? Why knowing, knowing that we've got parents that, I mean, it, it should be very normal for me to, like, like I said, when in 2008 when your story came out, I was raising a toddler in an early elementary school age child, okay? Mm-Hmm. . And within two years I was being, you know, I was, I felt like, like your work helped me push my boundaries to tell my son. Okay. Like, like, go ahead and take the dog for a walk, you know, around the block. Mm-Hmm. . It's not like it's this far off exotic place and he had the dog with him. Exactly. But even still, I had, you know, just this raising feeling of like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Where is he? Where is he? Okay. And so what's the deal? Like, why are parents more afraid, anxious, paranoid? Like, fill in the blank. Why are we this way, ?

Lenore Skenazy: (07:37)

Well, I wondered that myself, um, because I certainly was raised, I'm 64, so let's just get it out there. I was raised in the sixties and the seventies. And back then you would walk to school on your own starting in kindergarten or first grade. And my mom, who was a nervous mom, who quit her job to be a full-time, stay-at-home mom, nonetheless didn't walk me or my sister. And we walked separately. We were old, uh, different ages. And so how could it be that somebody who, who was devoting her life to raising the kids safely and happily in the suburbs, which I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, um, nonetheless, would say goodbye and not see me. Like literally not see me, not track me, not know how I was until 3:30 when I came home and had my snack and either went outside or went upstairs to read.

The big thing is, I mean, I can tell us how we got here with, you know, there's an explosion of media and we live in a litigious society and an expert culture.

Lenore Skenazy: (09:13)

But, uh, what it really boils down to is, well, I have to go backwards for one second and say, whenever I was doing these interviews, you know, about letting Izzy take the subway, often there was a pause. And then the interviewer would ask this question supposedly, reluctantly, but it didn't seem that reluctant to me, it seemed like they were coming in for the kill. And it was, but how would you have felt, you know, he, he came home, it was great, but how would you have felt if he hadn't come home? And it, it took me a very long time to figure out what to say. I still haven't figured out exactly what to say. What to say? Bad , or, yeah. Right. What, you know, like, uh, disappointed, you know, what you supposed to say. Right? And, and it finally occurred to me that there's no good answer to that because it's not a question.

Lenore Skenazy: (09:58)

Obviously, everyone who asked that question knows exactly how you'd feel if your child did come home. But what it really was, was implanting that, that storyline into a story that was one of ease, joy, and triumph. And they took that from him and from me, and turned it into a story of near disaster. And wouldn't I have been the, the one who, who caused it? Shouldn't I be remorseful even though it didn't happen? But what if it had, I mean, it's like you're supposed to go to this sort of hypothetical situation every time you let your kids do anything on their own. And the hypothetical situation is always the very worst case scenario. I was actually just, just trying to edit down a letter that a, um, a, a mom wrote to me. She'd heard Jonathan Haidt, who I work with mm-Hmm. , give a talk about, uh, the anxious generation, um, how phones and a lack of independence and a lack of free play are sort of changing childhood.

Lenore Skenazy: (10:55)

And in his talk, Jonathan talks about Let Grow, which we co-founded, and the Let Grow experience where kids get a homework assignment to go home and do something new on their own with their parents' permission, but without their parents. So one mom, Larissa, I'd never met her before, wrote to me and said, um, she heard this and she was so excited, and she remembered her own childhood and how much she wanted to be big. You know, she wanted to use her older sisters could peel an apple with one peel the whole way around using a knife. And she was like, I wanna learn to do that. And as most of us recall, the desire to be big, the desire to be grown up, the desire to make it, you know, be somebody in the world is a very normal, um, drive in children. And it's good because it makes you do things that are a little scary or hard or risky.

Lenore Skenazy: (11:43)

And so you grow up and you're not afraid of everything. Anyway, so she told her daughter, okay, look at, I, I listened to John. He is talking about the Let Grow experience. How about you do one, maybe you could walk home the 10 blocks here in New York City with your friend, her daughter's in fifth grade. And the daughter's first question was, can I bring Mace? So she was thinking ahead already, sort of having absorbed that worst case scenario it feels like this new path, um, from ordinary activity, whether cooking, I'm gonna burn down the house, walking, I'm gonna get lost, uh, waiting at the bus stop, I'm gonna get abducted.

Lenore Skenazy: (12:35)

Um, this, what I call worst first thinking has become so habitual that it feels like it's instinct. So anyways, the girl, I, I have to tell you, this girl took her walk. I wonder, I don't have it right in front of me, but she wrote, so I said to the mom, can you have her write something for me?

Lenore Skenazy: (13:19)

'cause I'd like to hear it from the kid herself. And what the kid wrote was that the first time that it was like two weeks ago, it was the first time that she did it, she walked with her friend, and her friend was carefree because her friend had done this before. He's a boy. And, and she said, but me, I was looking in every van, every car. And I think she was looking for like, you know, is somebody gonna steal me? Is there some kidnapper there? And she couldn't relax the entire time, but they made it the 10 blocks. And that was that. And then she did it the next week. And she said, and what's weird is that I wasn't afraid anymore. I felt almost as carefree as my friend. And I'm thinking, I wish she'd speak into the mic. I guess I'm speaking into the mic for her, because I've seen this over and over and over and over and over again, which is that the first time you do something, it seems completely impossible.

Lenore Skenazy: (14:11)

So scary, so many chances to screw up, so unlikely that you can do what others have done. You know, you just feel inadequate. You feel anxious, and you do it. And it turns out to be surprisingly not that bad. Even if something goes wrong, it's like, oh, I turned on the wrong block, and then I had to go on the right one. I, and I once had a wonderful story about a boy who took the bus the wrong direction, and then he had to get the transfer, and he took the, he got two transfers for some reason. He went, um, in the right direction afterwards, and he kept the extra transfer in his wallet for the rest of the year, because getting on the wrong bus turned out not to be a disaster. It felt like it, he said he was about to cry on the bus, but he didn't. And he got on the right bus, and now he cares to transfer with him because it shows that I'm okay, you know? Yeah. I'm okay. Even in the quote unquote worst case scenario, “wrong bus about to cry.”

Hillary Wilkinson: (15:01)

No, they call that exposure therapy, you know, where they do stepping into hard things, for lack of a better word, or into things that you're very afraid of. You, you know, you have kids that are very afraid to swim. You don't avoid water, you get them in the pool because it can save their life.  The thing that I think comes through again and again, which is so interesting to note, is here we're supposed to be, you know, raising children in our digital age, and, you know, we've got all these little technical savants and all of the suggestions from Let Grow are primarily offline living

Lenore Skenazy: (22:10)

It. Oh, for sure. They're, they're just, they're just real world experiences. Yeah, yeah. Giving them back the world. So,

Hillary Wilkinson: (22:15)

Because this is healthy screen habits, do you have, what role do you think tech is playing in this generalized anxiety land?

Lenore Skenazy: (22:26)

Um, I think it's pretty big lately. And I concern myself less with the time that kids spend looking at their phones or devices. You know, I work with Jonathan Haidt, that's his big thing. And, um, my big thing is the, the time that we spend watching our kids via devices. Mm-Hmm. . Because I feel like, um, kids are being tracked so many ways, so much of the day that, you know, the people we used to track like 15 years ago, the only people we tracked was anybody who was a felon on work release. Mm.

Hillary Wilkinson: (23:02)

Okay.

Lenore Skenazy: (23:02)

Right. Because they had to go straight to work and then straight to home. And these, um, you know, these, these ex prisoners were happy to not be in prison, but they also knew that it wasn't complete freedom. Mm-Hmm. . And so to pretend that we're giving our kids freedom when we're treating them the same way that we treat the felons on work release is sort of lying to ourselves. And it seems to me that if I had to live my childhood with my parents, knowing I, I was a good kid, you know, I mean, I, but still, I had my, I had my independence. I could go to the library and spend a little time at the candy store. I could wander around in the woods for a while and not be pinpointed by satellite. And if I got a grade on my quiz, I brought it home, or I didn't , but my parents wouldn't know about it at the exact same time as me. Right. Yeah. And I walked through the door and hear, “Why did you get a B plus? I thought you studied so hard, I think you should study some more.” That was not my life.

Hillary Wilkinson: (24:05)

Right. And the implicit messaging that we're giving kids by doing all of the tracking is: you can't handle it. So no wonder they don't have faith in themselves. No wonder they're anxious about trying new things because they're being hit with messages of every mass shooting every

Lenore Skenazy: (24:24)

Yes. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Hillary Wilkinson: (24:26)

Yeah. And because of algorithmic push, and if they're on social media, they're being inundated with these scary messages. Mm-Hmm. . And then we are unwittingly backing that call by saying, we need to be, you know, we need to see you at all times. We need to, I mean, tech’s been called the world's longest umbilical cord. And you know, you, you shouldn't have that umbilical cord when you're 16. It's just . It's no longer needed. But I, I, I, uh, yeah. So I mean, clearly I am a Let Grow fan and follower, but I recognize I am not, it, it is not always the popular sentiment.

Lenore Skenazy: (25:09)

So, well, it's not even, it's not even a question of popularity. It's sort of what just becomes the norm. And then it's sort of hard to buck. I mean, especially the grade portals that schools do, which are sometimes also behavior portals. Right. And you find out if your kid was, you know, sitting quietly on the rug or rambunctious today, or he called out the answer without raising his hand it's like living in a surveillance state. Sure. It's, it seems, I mean, I've heard from, from students and from parents about sort of the tyranny of the portals.

Lenore Skenazy: (26:01)

On one hand, you know, you don't want your kid to fall behind. On the other hand, we used to have parent-teacher conferences once or twice a semester, and you get a report card. Do you really need to know homework assignment by homework assignment or in-class assignment by in-class assignment exactly how your kid is doing all the time? I mean, I sometimes feel like children still have the exoskeleton of a human , but inside it's just, you know, it's just wires and supervision and cameras, because we know so much about what they're doing every second of the day, even whether we're with them or not.

Hillary Wilkinson: (26:38)

Kind of going off of that, let's also explore creativity a little bit.

Lenore Skenazy: (26:45)

Oh yeah. I'd love to

Hillary Wilkinson: (26:46)

When we talk to parents, there's often this underlying misconception of, I know they're safe if, say, they're on the couch, kind of a thing. And I think as, the Surgeon General's messaging has come forward and other people have talked, we've certainly recognized that the internet is a place not a thing. And that is complete misconception that your kid is safe if they're actually online on the couch. you

Lenore Skenazy: (27:29)

Actually, that's a great expression. The internet is a place, not a thing. I haven't heard that. That's really cool.

Hillary Wilkinson:

So when we keep kids in this consumption mode, it can, I believe, staunch their creative process because they're continually consuming. And creativity requires an incubationary period. And quite, quite frankly, that incubationary period often includes a little bit of boredom. Right. For, to just stop and think.

Lenore Skenazy: (28:07)

I think, I think boredom is the, um, is a catalyst. Mm-Hmm. But then it's not boring once you start thinking, I mean, we can't call that boredom too. 

Hillary Wilkinson: (28:16)

Yeah. I don't even know that boredom is actually the right time. That's why I like that term incubationary period. You know? Mm-Hmm. , it's just kind of more of like a sitting and staring zone.

Lenore Skenazy: (28:28)

If you're alone. Um, and the incubation time with kids is arguing about the rules and what you're gonna play. Sure.

Hillary Wilkinson: (28:33)

Sure.

Lenore Skenazy: (28:34)

Right. And that's also a great time for, you know, fomenting your social skills because wait a minute, they wanna do it this way. If I suggest this, maybe they'll, I'll get buy-in. Oh no, they seem bored. All right. I'll compromise and I'll play it their way. But then tomorrow I'm gonna bring, you know, a ball.

Hillary Wilkinson: (28:50)

Right. With which, if all of that is decided for you on an online format, none of that happens.

Lenore Skenazy: (28:55)

Correct.

Hillary Wilkinson: (28:56)

But I would argue that creativity holds hands with hope.  In that when we talk about anxiety

Lenore Skenazy: (29:07)

 Oh yeah. You can change things.

Hillary Wilkinson: (29:07)

Yes. Yeah. You can change things. You can see a path forward. You can move things. If you remove hope, you have a very dark, a dismal place. Indeed. You do. And so I think there's a link between Mm-Hmm. A lack of creative space, you know, be mental space or physical space, but a lack of creativity in our current mental health crisis. And so that's,

Lenore Skenazy: (29:34)

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting to think about creativity and hope as being linked, because if you're creative enough, you can come up with something.  You have to come up with a solution. Right. So, problem solving. So I do have one cool fact. And, um, the thing that we like to remind people too is that, you know, whatever the internet is doing or amplifying the trends of giving kids less and less independence and more and more adult supervised and structured time has been going on for decades. And in those decades, I have to say, creativity has been falling. How do I know? Um, there's a thing called the Torrance Test of Creativity. I think it's T-O-R-R-A-N-C-E, but I could be wrong. If you look up Peter Gray, GRAY and test of creativity, it comes up.

Lenore Skenazy: (30:25)

'cause I'm always googling this story, which is that there's been a, um, a test given to kids the same way for decades and decades. And it's, it's really like you give them, I don't know, a paperclip and a and a paper towel and you say, make something out of it. And they do. And somehow that's judge-able. And you can figure out where on the, you know, the, the continuum, how creative a kid is, and it sounds dumb, but if we've been doing it for years, it's sort of standardized. And what, um, what they found is that a kid who was average in the eighties is in the upper 15% now, now because the creativity has been going down. And so, um, so it's easier to look like a creative genius, even though you're not very creative anymore. And I'm sure that has to do with, um, it was going down before the internet. And it has to do with when somebody else is deciding what you're gonna do and how you're gonna do it, whether that's the internet or the coach

Hillary Wilkinson: (31:24)

I was gonna say, being overscheduled.

Lenore Skenazy: (31:26)

Right. Um, or, or the volumes of homework. And so instead of reading anything for fun or writing anything for fun, you're stuck, you know, doing yet another homework assignment. There's just less time for your mind to do what you were calling before, whatever you called it. The, the, the fomenting time, the coming up with something to do, um, experience that is creativity. Mm-Hmm. So we really have to give kids back some unstructured, unsupervised time to both be out in the world and also to play. Mm-Hmm. . And so to play, um, the other Let Grow. So there's the Let Grow Experience where kids get the homework assignment to do something new on their own with their parents' permission, but without their parents. And then we also recommend that schools do the Let Grow Play club, which, which we maybe have to rename because everyone thinks, oh, play, that's nice. Downtime from learning, that'll get them revved up to learn again. It's like, I'm like, maybe we should call it the advanced Leadership Creativity and Social Emotional Skills Building. Uh, maybe it's,

Hillary Wilkinson: (32:29)

There's gotta be some fancy acronym there.

Lenore Skenazy: (32:32)

Right? It's the entrepreneurship class after school. What do you do? Well, we get a ball and then we leave them alone. But it's to keep the schools open before or after school for mixed age, no devices, free play. Why mixed age? Well, because , because until recently, the idea of segregating kids by age would've seemed weird. You know, I have three kids, they must play separately because one is five and one is nine, and one is 13. It's like, no, they can play together and they could play with other kids. And, and when you have mixed ages together, that's how you start building empathy. I mean, why are kids, you know, like why is empathy a problem? Well, because when you're only, when you're 7-year-old around other seven year olds, who's the toughest, you know, who's the best ball player? But when you're a 7-year-old, or when you're a 10-year-old, let's say with a 5-year-old, there's no glory in striking out a 5-year-old at bat.

Lenore Skenazy: (33:28)

You know, duh, obviously you're better, you're twice their age. But there's some instinctual delight in throwing the ball very gently. And then the ball the kid hits at like five inches and you go, “Wow, it's a home run! Oh my God, look at Jesse's running a first. Come on. That's the way to first, oh, he is running a first, no one can stop him.” And we smile when we say this because we all know that feeling. And I've watched it, and it's so fun. And the idea of taking that out of kids' lives to give them more chance to develop their skills that are appropriate to a 10-year-old is developing certain skills. It's developing, you know, the ability to hit a ball, which you'll need when you're playing baseball, maybe for the rest of your life. But the skill of being kind, being clever, being creative, being empathic, um, you know, being a good human being and, and of the Yeah. Yeah. I think you might use those even a little more than hitting the ball.

Hillary Wilkinson: (34:30)

I was gonna say all of the things that AI can't touch.

Lenore Skenazy: (34:34)

Right, right.

Hillary Wilkinson: (34:35)

What you're describing is the human experience. Yes. Yes. And what we are outsourcing is, you know, a lot of people are concerned about our human experience being outsourced to AI, but all of the things that you are talking about, we, we can't get.

Lenore Skenazy: (34:51)

We can't, you know, there's, there's, I keep getting all these press releases from this, um, thing that you've probably heard of called Moxie. Mm-Hmm. . It's a little, it's a robot. It looks really cute. It looks like it was designed by Disney, you know, big eyes. And it's supposed to teach your kids social emotional skills. It's like, huh? I mean, I bet it can tell, it can teach a kid to say, I'm sorry, maybe that, but it can't teach a kid to be, you know, creative and throw the ball gently because the little brother is there.

Hillary Wilkinson: (35:32)

We have to take a break, but when we come back, I'm going to ask Lenore Skenazy for her healthy screen habit. 

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Ad Break - Troomi

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Hillary Wilkinson:

We’re back. I'm talking with Lenore Skenazy who says, our kids are smarter, safer, and stronger than our culture gives them credit for. She lives in New York City with her husband and beloved computer.

Hillary Wilkinson: (36:03)

For the record, she used to write for Mad Magazine, which is a fun, a fun little side note. So, Lenore, on every episode of the Healthy Screen Habits podcast, I ask each guest for a healthy screen habit. And this is going to be a tip or takeaway that our listeners can put into practice in their own home. Do you have one?

Lenore Skenazy: (36:25)

I’d better . Right? Otherwise this will never air. Um, yeah. Here's the easiest one. Uh, the whole problem with afterschool time is that kids are so scheduled that the chances that they will run around outside frolicking, like the kids on Stranger Things, but without the monsters, kind of, kind of rare. So keep Friday afternoons free, clear them of piano lessons, kuman, whatever, and try to get the rest of the parents in your neighborhood to do the same for their kids. So that there is a, a gaggle, a peanuts gang, uh, that can go outside and play. And if you're afraid, afraid that the kids are playing outside, take turns, sitting outside, you know, you can, you can scroll through your emails, right? They're not on their phones, but you can be on yours and the other parents will know that there's some adult around and the kids can just play. Because as we were discussing before this mixed age, freeform, um, practically unsupervised play is what kids were built to do. And giving it back will result in a, I can't guarantee it, but I think it'll make a much happier, more creative, calmer and delighted to be alive kid.

Hillary Wilkinson: (37:39)

I agree. And just with the caveat that with those Friday afternoon play times, keep 'em screen free. Keep 'em outside. Announce to friends that these are device free times. And I think you will be a very popular person also because most parents are wanting their kids to be outside doing the things that they remember loving. 

So as always, you can find a complete transcript of this show by going to healthyscreenhabits.org. Click the podcast button and scroll down to find this episode. Lenore, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and for advocating for all of our kids and parents and everyone who is looking to grow.

Lenore Skenazy: (38:26)

Oh, well, my pleasure. Nothing like advocating for everyone right?