Our "Courageous Parenting" team of experts, ready to help you move beyond "helicopter parenting"

I had already been planning to announce our final roster of Courageous Parenting anthology contributors, and today turns out to be the perfect day to do so, as this week's new Time Magazine cover story by Nancy Gibbs puts an exclamation point on the idea that it's time to end the age of over-parenting. Authors including Lenore Skenazy of Free-Range Kids have been pioneers advancing this trend. Our goal with Courageous Parenting is to expand the conversation by not only providing inspiration to raise independent kids, but also the skills and strategies that parents need in order to do so.

The new Courageous Parenting anthology will be published in March 2010 in paperback and e-book form. If you sign up on MojoMom.com now, we will send you a free copy of the e-book as soon as it is released. How's that for a deal?

My highest vision for this book is that it will improve families' lives. In Courageous Parenting, we show you ways that you can become prepared for your children's growing independence, both by investing in your own personal development, as well as learning parenting tools and strategies that help you reach your parenting goals. This is parenting in the big picture: your kids will not wake up on their 18th birthdays magically transformed into capable, competent young adults. Their development is an ongoing journey! We parents need to learn how to lay that groundwork in small steps that promote increasing capability, responsibility and independence along the way.

It is such a privilege for me to work with these authors. Here is what we will be talking about in Courageous Parenting:

Introduction by me, Amy Tiemann, Ph. D., author of Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family and creator of MojoMom.com

I. The Courage to Invest in Your Own Development

The Transformative Power of Self-Care by Renee Peterson Trudeau, author of The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life, creator of Personal Renewal Groups for Moms and writer for The Journey.

Tools for Career Reinvention, Kella Hatcher and Maryanne Perrin, co-founders of Balancing Professionals consulting.

II. Developing Your Courageous Parenting Style

The Courage to Let our Kids Solve Their Own Problems by Maya Frost, author of The New Global Student, creator of Smart Education Design.

The Courage to Become Your Own Parenting “Expert” by Melissa Stanton, author of The Stay-at-Home Survival Guide, writing online at StayatHomeSurvivalGuide.com and Real Life Support for Moms.

The Power of Personal Significance for Kids of All Ages by Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, offering local and online parent training.

I’m Worried I Worry Too Much But How Do I Stop? by Jamie Woolf, author of Mom-in-Chief, creator of Mom-in-Chief.com

III. Real World Safety Skills for All

Kidpower: Skills for Safety, Skills for Independence by Irene van der Zande, founder of Kidpower, Teenpower, Fullpower International.

How to Say “Yes” to Your Kids’ Online Activities, by Linda Criddle, internet safety expert, author of Look Both Ways, Help Protect Your Family on the Internet, and the founder of iLookBothWays.com

IV. Finding your voice and raising it for the community

PunditMom on Mom Bloggers Raising Their Political Voices by Joanne Bamberger, author of the PunditMom blog.

Activist Parents: Challenge and Progress Through the Eyes of MomsRising.org by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, co-founder of MomsRising.org

It Takes a Motherhood by Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann, founders of TheMotherhood.com

I have spent years developing relationships with these talented experts. Each and every one of them has changed my life in a significant way, and they have the potential to so for you, too!

Sign up now on the MojoMom.com home page to receive a free e-book of the new Courageous Parenting anthology when it comes out in March 2010!

HOW to raise a Free-Range Kid

Last Sunday The New York Times explored the question "Why Can't She Walk to School?" looking at the modern trends that have resulted in many kids leading highly-supervised, sheltered lives. The article tells one story about a well-meaning neighbor who drove a 7-year-old girl home from a playdate only five houses down the block, on the same side of the street. We are starting to talk about these issues and how we might change, thanks in large part to the Free-Range Kids movement started by writer Lenore Skenazy. I appreciate Lenore's work and the feeling that it's time to turn things around, empowering our children to explore the world. After all, that is the work of growing up, isn't it?

However, there is an incredibly important piece to this puzzle that calls for more attention: the information and skills that parents and kids need to develop, in order to let kids experience more freedom.

I asked my mentor, Kidpower International Executive Director Irene van der Zande, to co-author a response to the NY Times piece with me. Kidpower has just celebrated its 20th anniversary, and has provided personal safety training to over a million people worldwide. I am very proud to play my part in bringing Kidpower training to my home state of North Carolina. Here are our thoughts about the vital skills component needed to raise a Free-Range Kid:

How to Raise a Free-Range Kid

The Free-Range Kids movement is making an impact, leading parents to realize that most important question they should be asking is not whether or not to allow their children to walk to school, but how to prepare their children to do so safely and successfully.

If we lock our children up too tightly in a misguided attempt to protect them, they lose out on the chance to develop the capabilities they need to grow into competent, independent young adults. However, just letting children go on their own in the hopes that they will know how to protect themselves from potential dangers puts them at unnecessary risk.

The reason that parents feel so unsafe that they are driving children home from play dates down the block is because they need better information about how to teach their kids to navigate the world independently. This is why Kidpower International has worked tirelessly for twenty years to teach personal safety skills to over one million people worldwide. Our approach is skills-based, success-based, and never uses fear as a motivation. Instead, we practice role-playing the safest choices in a wide variety of situations.

Parents tend to focus on fears of kidnapping, but there are many more common child protection issues that are related to the scenario of walking home from school: crossing guards, safe sidewalks and roads, and the significant yet often ignored issues facing millions of children who return to empty houses, where they are left unsupervised until their parents come home from work.

It is too easy to forget the downside of not letting our kids develop independent skills. Kids may be so protected from situations in which they have to say “no” to bad things that they do not have many opportunities to say “yes” to good things. What they need is plenty of opportunity to practice, little steps at a time, in situations that are safe to explore.

Sleepovers, summer camp, kid-organized sports games, experiences with babysitters, visiting family, and community service outings can all be steps to independence if we give our kids the skills to handle these activities without hovering over them.

When we keep our eyes on the future, the path toward independence becomes clearer. When you look at a ten-year old girl, you can picture her in six years, getting into a car to go on a date with a classmate whom her parents might not know well. This is actually a high-stakes situation, one in which she will need to be able to assertively state what she wants, be prepared to take care of herself, and even be ready to ask for help if things go awry.

We want her to be ready for dating when that day comes, and the practice steps along the way don’t have to be scary. Independence may not look just like it did when we were kids. The days of Mom shooing kids outside to let them roam, saying, “Come home when you hear the dinner bell ring” are probably over.

But that makes it all the more important for parents to look for opportunities to practice. Parents of younger kids can teach children how to state what they want by ordering their own ice cream cone or slice of pizza. We can consciously make a plan to teach our kids how to walk to a friend’s house or school, rather than being complacent in our habit of driving everywhere. We can preview the route, walk with them at first, and talk about ways they could get help if they needed it. Then we can take the brave and conscious step of letting them do it on their own.

We will never eliminate uncertainty from life, but there is an answer to that worried parent’s question, “How can you argue against ‘just in case’?”

We can tell children and ourselves, “We are going to practice until you are ready to do this on your own!”


Irene van der Zande is the Executive Director of Kidpower International. Amy Tiemann, Ph.D., is the author of "Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family" and Center Director of Kidpower North Carolina.

Mojo Mom Podcast with Free-Range Kids

This week has been a blur in many ways, but we managed to get the podcast produced. Sheryl was on the run between class and a presentation, so she called in from her car, which reminded me of The Jeannie Tate Show. (Actually, Sheryl is the opposite of Jeannie Tate, but that video still cracks me up.) Sheryl is about to finish her Masters' degree and we're all so proud of her!

This week's podcast guest is Lenore Skenazy, a very interesting writer and the author of the Free-Range Kids book and blog. Lenore is all about giving kids independence and freedom to explore. Her book is a really interesting corrective story to all the scary stories we hear about the worst-case scenarios of child abductions and deaths, the rare and awful tragedies that make headlines. Lenore points out that we don't need to lock our kids up to keep them safe, and in fact we are not doing them any favors by doing so.

Here's this week's episode of The Mojo Mom Podcast.

Listen to the podcast now:



Amy and Sheryl are really on the go this week. Amy is recovering from last week's successful Mojo Recharge Retreat, and Sheryl has many end-of-semester balls in the air, but still finds time to call in to do the podcast!

Then Mojo Mom talks to Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids. Last year Lenore became (in)famous for her article describing letting her 9-year-old son ride home by himself on the New York Subway, and now she has continued to explore the issues of giving kids freedom and responsibility in her book and blog.

As Lenore writes, "Do you ever let your kid ride a bike to the library? Walk alone to school? Take a bus, solo? Or are you thinking about it? If so, you are raising a Free Range Kid! At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less."

I really enjoyed Lenore's book. Whether or not you agree with all evderything she says, she does us a service by starting an important conversation about what we should expect our kids lives to be like. She wrote a brief investigation of the things we can do to teach our kids to stay safe.

In the other side of my own professional life, I teach whole workshops on these skills as a Kidpower instructor. If you are looking for resources on how to teach your kids to be safe and independent I recommend that you check out www.Kidpower.org as a starting point.

Police pick up ten-year old boy for walking to soccer practice alone

Last week I had just interviewed Kidpower founder Irene van der Zande for The Mojo Mom Podcast, talking about teaching kids skills that enable them to navigate the world independently. The next thing I knew, one of my neighbors told me that her ten-year old grandson who lives in Mississippi had been stopped and picked up by the police because he was walking to soccer practice alone.

The soccer field was at the elementary school about a half mile from his home!

Here's an excerpt from the Columbus, Mississippi local news coverage:

William made it as far as Seventh Street North, near what used to be Barnhill’s Buffet, when a Columbus Police Department cruiser stopped the boy. The officer was responding to several 911 calls made by people who had seen William walking the sidewalks alone.

The officer drove William the rest of the way to soccer practice, and then went about the business of tracking down [William's mother] Lori Pierce.

He caught up with her at her son’s soccer practice and proceeded to read her the riot act regarding the safety of her child and potential criminal liability she could have faced had anything horrible happened.

“He told me I could have been charged with child endangerment,” she said. “I was so shocked.”

Although Pierce is quick to point out she never felt anger toward the officer nor the police department, the stern warning given to her by the policeman concerned her deeply.

I feel for today's parents, I really do. I have these questions myself--how much freedom can my child handle? How much leeway do I give her? And importantly, I think we need to consider the cost of letting them grow up without life experience.

William's case seems like a slam dunk to me: of course a mother can analyze the situation and decide that her ten-year old can walk a half mile alone. William wasn't in distress. He had a plan and a cell phone. His Mom was going to meet him at practice in a few minutes. But what do we do when well-meaning neighbors start calling 911?

It's no surprise that William's story was reported on Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids blog. Last year Skenazy caused a stir by allowing her nine-year old son to ride home alone on the New York subway.

I am not going to tell you how you should feel about the Skenazy family's experiment, but the media firestorm that ended up labeling her America's Worst Mom was an overreaction if I've ever heard one!

At the time, Skenazy wrote about the conflicting feelings of today's parents:

Even as the stations (and Web sites and Web logs) were having a field day with the story, people kept pulling me aside to say that they had been allowed to get around by themselves as kids, and boy were they glad.

They relished those memories — and thanked their parents! — and then in the next breath they admitted: They would never let their kids do the same.

Why not? Has the world really become so much more dangerous in just one generation

The world hasn't gotten so much more dangerous, but we have evolved a keener sense of awareness and stricter standards of child safety and supervision. I generally think that this is a good thing. But the problem is that we have few clear societal guidelines or consensus about how to implement safe judgment about when to let our children operate independently. By "locking them up," metaphorically speaking, we may feel that they are safer, but by doing so we may deprive them of essential life experience that can only be gained by doing.

Remember the story of Sleeping Beauty? After it was said that Aurora would die on her 16th birthday after pricking her finger on a spindle, her well-meaning father had all spinning wheels destroyed. So when the witch showed up on Aurora's birthday with the spinnning wheel, what did Aurora do? She was immediately drawn to the spindle and pricked her finger. (Magical intervention allowed her to fall asleep rather than die.)

I am NOT saying that we should let our kids experiment with dangerous things (such as drugs or alcohol), but I am saying they need life skills and chances to operate independently and exercise judgment, within generally safe parameters.

We're confronted with what I call "The Paradox of Parenting," which can be summed up by the classic quote: "Good decisions come from experience...experience comes from bad decisions."

That's why I am so proud to be working with Kidpower, which teaches parents how to give those skills to their kids, so that kids can get experience by exploring the world with safety and confidence.

So what do we teach in Kidpower? Just today I was sent this excellent graphic that illustrates our Kidpower Tools to Live By (follow link for full-size text!). Check it out and think about what the world would be like if all children and adults had the training that empowered them to call on these skills. You can find more information and free resources at www.Kidpower.org

Lenore Skenazy is my heroine

This is really turning out to be my New York week. First I read The Ten-Year Nap, then I visited New York, and today I came across Lenore Skenazy's story about allowing her son riding the subway on his own.

Lenore made waves by letting her almost-ten-year-old son ride home by himself on the subway from a planned outing together. Her son, Izzy, had been begging for an independent experience and Lenore thought the time was right to let him have one.

She described the experiment in her New York Sun column, "Here's Your MetroCard, Kid."

I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.

No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn't want to lose it. And no, I didn't trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn't do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, "Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead."

Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.

Skenazy's parenting decision was controversial enough to land her on The Today Show yesterday for an interview with a skeptical Ann Curry. I am not sure whether I would make the same choice as Skenazy for my child, but I loved that she was willing to go on national TV and stick up for her decision, without regret or apology.

And, I would not make the same choice for my child because she's not a New York City kid. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. I travel to New York a couple of times a year, and I finally feel that I can navigate the city on my own. This week I rode the subway and the bus which felt unfamiliar, but perfectly safe. I can believe that a kid who was totally familiar with the city would be safe there as well. Even better than that, while New Yorkers can be gruff, I have found them to be consistently helpful when necessary.

The paradox of modern parenting is that we've gotten to the point where we think we need to lock our kids in a tower until they are old enough to be on their own. But how will they get enough experience to navigate the world independently if we don't let them explore? A wise teacher once said, "Good decisions come from experience… Experience comes from bad decisions." The key is to give kids enough latitude to explore, even make mistakes, but not seriously harmful ones. Striking this balance is not always easy, but we have to try.

We know that there is a danger in giving our kids too much freedom, but I also believe that there is harm in stunting their independence. No one wants to end up a helicopter parent whose kid can't function on their own in college without calling Mom and Dad on the cell phone ten times a day. For an independent ten-year-old who is confident enough to ask for help if he needs it, a subway ride on his own might be a reasonable option.

I'm going to be writing more on these issues in the near future. In the meantime I encourage you to watch the Today Show video and let me know what you think.