Why You Should Spend Less Time with Your Kids | Lenore Skenazy | TED

Let your child be independent

When my daughter was between 9 and 14 I let her play outside with her friends, go to the mall by herself. Even visit a friend by train from 12 onwards.
Now she's 17 and I drive her to her babysitting job, cause I don't want her biking alone at night.
Kidnapping is a very insignificant threat statistically speaking. S.A. sadly is not.

Nobody is spending time wirh kids. Thry are physically with their kids. What is desteoying kids is that we are taking care that they dont murmur and for that they get cellphones. What she means is that parents is searching security for their kids and they dont believe in their kids so they do things for them , thus stealing their selfesteem .

When (and where) i was growing up, this doesn't sound unreasonable.

These days, hmmm i am not sure.

The white van kidnapping joke got no laughs btw...

Society is unsafe. Thats what changed

Another thing to tackle is city design. There are children in my neighborhood. I see them waiting for the school bus in the morning. However, I rarely ever see children walking around the neighborhood. There are no sidewalks in the neighborhood. Between the neighborhood and the nearest park is a busy road. Even parents that want to give their children independence have to consider the dangers of traffic. My friend lives in a neighborhood built during The New Deal. They specifically designed the community with walkability in mind and the children can take walking paths to school, the park and the community center. We need that in more places.

So true. Overparenting is everywhere, even here in Italy, but I think our environment gives us a bit of a breather from that constant hum of anxiety. At least, it doesn’t feel as intense as it sometimes sounds from afar. As a mum of two and someone who plans family trips here, I see this up close. What’s beautiful is how a curated trip to Italy can naturally ease those overparenting tendencies. Italy’s walkable towns and visible piazzas and kids friendly community give kids real, safe spaces to practice little freedoms, age-appropriate responsibilities, and situational awareness.

What a great idea. Very powerful. I think she's spot on.

But if something bad happens who’s fault with be? Parents. Let alone that the guilt would kill me

She is great! Wearing World’s Worst Mom as a badge of honor. And she’s 100% right with the free-range thing.

Nothing beyond normal for 10 year old kids to go alone on the bus in Poland. It's a matter of general safety. I would allow my kids to come home from school but not to go on the metro in a new city

title is misleading !!!!!!!!

😂😂😂

great speech i know it i had it i did it i will do it to me kids and best teaching ever. kids are the future

To the grownups in the chat when driving down the street and you see a kid walking or at the park by themselves, don't call the cops, roll down your window and have a conversation. 'Are you good? ' Too many stories where a kid trying to learn independence or help out and go buy milk, then the parent gets arrested. To help these kids become functional human beings, let's treat them like one.

Beautiful

Flirting?

As a millennial parent of young daughters, I find a lot of this info naive and out of date. Especially at 5:10 and especially without mention of child abductions and trafficking stats. I agree that kids need their own time to get through challenges on their own and that growth for her 9 year old must have been incredibly transformational. But the world has changed and it’s not quite the same as far as safety for kids. Parents are hovering for good reasons, and it is completely exhausting. Carving out that time for transformation is even more important than ever, but for many it is difficult to find balance.

Didn't a woman get arrested in USA last year for doing exactly this? She let her 10yo go to the store alone. 🚓 🚨

I think This is relevant for the middle Class Kids

I suspect she is the child of Ms Frizzle and professor Trelawney

The title of the video is wrong. And we shouldn’t spend less time with our kiddos but just stop micromanaging 💡👏

Is it really so bad it needs a law for that?! Or is it like with those useless laws USA is so famous for?

Excellent ❤

It is crazy how anxious American parents are.

Here in Denmark, my daughter has been playing on her own and with friends in the yard of our apartment building since she was three years old. No trackers, no phones. She’s five today and often I have no idea where she is, when we’re at home - probably playing with a friend somewhere in the building. You call around and sure, she’s having dinner at a friends place. This grows independence and life skills. Kids should have privacy - also from parents. Otherwise the kids will grow weak, immature and moronic, in my opinion.

This is the real positive parenting method. 12:10

❤❤

5:25 depending on where you live. I live in South Africa. Every single day there are at least two children that are abducted. That's just what gets reported. Those of us who live here know for a fact that there are MANY crimes that go unreported for various reasons. So no. You can not say for certain that "your child will not be kidnapped." That is delusional at best.

Just the other day, my child was almost taken whilst we were in a shopping mall. It's very real.

Take it from a gen z. This is not why some people in my generation are depressed. It's cuz their parents are divorced, or the kids were exposed to drugs, or they're terminally online 🤦

most importantly they have no sense of purpose.

I agree with the idea but we live in Mexico, where the insecurity is increasing 😢

This talk should be mandatory for every parent!

Fully agree, but this is Only relevant in the USA ... and its obvious why. Not even safe in school. Go figure.

You mean it’s legal in 9 states!
ie it’s ILLEGAL in 41 states !

spend as much as they need you, especially if they are non-neurotipical kids😢

5:10 tell this to the parents of the 460,000 kids that go missing every year....

I was a young parent. I was overprotective. This is incorrect. Tech is the issue. Not age.

I grew up in probably one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Europe. After 10 years of age I was going to school alone, I was allowed to take the bus and I was allowed to play on my street or the next street until sunset. All kids in the neighborhood were like that. Yes, kids occasionally got robbed or there was a scuffle, but this freedom allowed me to learn responsibility and be self-sufficient. And nothing serious ever happened to anyone around me, although there was a heroin epidemic and rampant crime in the city. In a world of extreme individualism, people have lost faith in their communities and have become paranoid that someone constantly wants to hurt them or their families. To feel safer, we need to build stronger communities, not obsess over safety.

I wish I had this growing up. It's embarrassing to admit, but I still feel like I'm living on the wild side sometimes when I go somewhere by myself.

I take a step forward and quota from another video: 🇳🇿 “don’t spend time with the kids. They just waste your time” 🇳🇿

She didnt say spend less time with the kids, she said spend less time with dickheads, they just waste your time.

Disgusted with her sense of humor

Incredible video - as a father of a 7 month old, good things to start thinking about

I agree with just about everything she is saying. Problem is im surrounded by garbage parents that give their kids phones at age 7. I let my son free range to the park at all the kids there are watching TikTok videos instead of playing. I let him ride a bike to a friend's house only to find out they played ps5 for 3 hours. We moved out to the country to change the culture but now we don't have a neighborhood full of kids for him to interact with. Its actually very hard to do the activities we did as kids