The fragile freedom of kids today

NIA MAGOULIANITI-MCGREGOR

‘You treat me like a baby!’

Sound familiar?

If you have a teen or pre-teen living under your roof, chances are it’s practically a mantra in your home. And while usually, as parents, our first response is: “Well, then don’t behave like a baby,” perhaps, in a moment of honesty, we may admit they’re onto something.

Because if you were a child in the 60s or 70s or even 80s, you’ll remember walking to your friends’ house or taking a bus to the movies in town. How about swimming alone – with no adult supervision?

Belinda Hollander remembers: “We used to ride around without seatbelts. My mother let me walk to friends. But it was a different time then.”

Now a mother herself, Belinda is a self-confessed anxious mom to her two girls, aged 13 and nine. “Times have changed. We are more aware. I don’t allow them to walk to friends or go to the park without a parent present. I worry about strangers, about traffic, diseases and crime…”

Does it affect them? “They’ve never known differently,” she says. “I know, though, they love it when we visit my sister in Sydney and I allow them to walk to the shops or get on a bus.”

What’s changed in just one generation? And what are the implications for our children?

Waverley-based child psychologist Sheryl Cohen says it’s part of a new mindset. “We are more aware of the importance of childhood – that children should be protected, stimulated and treated with respect.

“We are also more aware of the long-lasting negative consequences when children’s emotional needs are not met, but unfortunately, this has created a generation of overanxious parents.”

Clinical psychologist Judith Ancer puts it down to the advent of global media like CNN and talk radio in the last 25 years – and more recently, social media. “It feeds a hysteria. If a child goes missing in the US or Portugal, like in the case of Madeleine McCann, we hear about it immediately in our homes, and it’s like it’s happening to us.

“It’s led to anxious, controlling and over-protective parents who hover like helicopters.

“We are making the world a very frightening place for kids – ‘don’t use the scissors, that jungle gym is too high…’ and, as a result, seeing a huge increase in the prevalence and diagnosis of anxiety disorders in children today.”

And this protection we’re offering is an illusion anyway, she says. “Children will always do dangerous things.”

It’s not a localised phenomenon. In the United States, a movement called Free-Range Kids, based on a book written in 2010 by Lenore Skenazy, still sets parenting forums alight.

Skenazy caused a furore by allowing her nine-year-old son to find his way home alone riding the subway in NYC. Yes, he was fine. But many parents reading about his adventure, were not.

As Skenazy told media: “A lot of parents today see no difference between letting their kids walk to school and letting them walk through a firing range.

“We have vaccines and we have airbags and we have car seats and we have cribs with the right spacing between the bars. Everything is so safe that we figure we can keep everything terrible at bay.”

“But,” says Ancer, “by being overprotective, we’re not giving our kids the necessary skills to learn to cope on their own.

“Obviously you are not going to let a six-year-old cross Louis Botha Avenue, but you can say: ‘We’re going to cross the road now. Let’s do it together.’ In that way, we’re helping a child learn to face danger.

“Teach them what to do if a fire gets out of control. Give them the skills to walk into a shop and buy something. It’s about giving them graded experiences of autonomy.”

Furthermore, adds Ancer, this stranger danger idea is unrealistic. “Studies have shown kids are more at risk from people they know.”

The first thing we need to do, she says, is try and establish whether our fears are fantasies or based in reality – because what’s really at stake here is not allowing them to find their way in the world.

“You are sterilising life for them, creating a small world. We make the ‘other’ – anyone who is not us – feel dangerous. And, very important, we deprive our children of a sense of accomplishment, of feeling their own potency.”

As Cohen says: “If we want our children to see themselves as capable and competent, we must see them that way. If you’ve put all the safety features in place for your child to explore the new jungle gym, then believe in her to do so.”

But there is another freedom, clinical psychologist, Dorianne Weil “Dr D”, is concerned with: An internal freedom.

“This is a necessary, essential freedom which relies on parental encouragement and courage to embark on a journey towards contributing, compassionate, confident menschen.

“This journey is a minefield,” says Weil, “A veritable obstacle course with disguised, compelling, alluring signs and detours, that actually read substance abuse, peer group pressure, social media, hormonal chaos and crime.”

But, she says, to establish a personal identity, which in the end will mostly encompass values learnt and behaviour experienced, this journey has to be navigated. 

“There are no short cuts. It involves assistance, but not over-rescue. It involves love, but not disempowerment. It’s about allowing our children the freedom to burn their fingers, but making sure they are not third-degree burns.

“It’s freedom within safe boundaries, and it’s a tough call,” she says. “Parents need to be resolute and strong, they should lead by example by being the person they want their kids to be, then pull back.

“Letting them experience their own bumps and bruises, learning to navigate pain, emotional disappointments, rejections and celebrations, ups and downs, all encourage the development of an independent identity.”

In this way, they will emerge with bruises, but with a sense of confidence that they can not only survive, but thrive, says Weil. “The external parent – you – has become their own internal moral compass, which guides them in life’s journey.”

Cohen firmly believes in choices. “Our job as parents is to give children the skills to build an independent sense of self. They need to make their own choices and they can only do that if they know ‘who I am’ and ‘who I am not’. When your son chooses chess over tennis, he is making a choice which helps him to define who he is.”

“Be conscious about exposing them to skills,” says Ancer. Encourage them to go to camps and make friends. “We want to raise kids who find their own rhythm, children who are brave.”

As Weil puts it: “We want to nurture menschen. People with integrity, compassion, empathy, tenacity, resilience and true grit.”