A lot of parents are worried about the well-being of children across the United States. It’s not unfounded: Nearly three-quarters of students are not proficient in basic skills, and many struggle with the fundamentals of math and reading, this year’s annual KIDS COUNT survey found.
Approximately one in five U.S. youth between the ages of 3 and 17 has been diagnosed with a mental health condition or behavioral disorder, according to the CDC.
And smartphones are cause for mounting concerns, as parents, children, and researchers explore the relationship between screen time and decreased academic performance, wellness, and social skills.
But one mom, Lenore Skenazy, thinks that kids need a bit more room to breathe.
In 2008, Skenazy wrote a New York Sun column about letting her 9-year-old ride the subway alone. It turned into a book called “Free Range Kids,” and later, she worked with other parents-turned-activists to found a nonprofit called Let Grow, which advocates for increased childhood independence.
Let Grow offers tools for parents, school leaders, and even policymakers to adapt new norms around childhood independence.
In nine states, a Reasonable Childhood Independence Law has been passed, thanks to the organization’s advocacy. In schools, Let Grow’s approach looks like a simple assignment added to the curriculum.
“The Let Grow Experience is when teachers give kids a homework assignment that just says: ‘Go home and do something new on your own, with your parents’ permission, but without your parents,’” Skenazy told Good Good Good at the TED 2025 conference in April of this year.
“The reason we do that is because once parents see how incredibly wonderful it is that their kid went and walked the dog, or went to the store, or made scrambled eggs, they realize how great it is to let go.”
She said the anxiety surrounding younger generations belongs to both the child and parent, and building a community around it creates a new norm for parents, while also empowering children to build skills and experiences for themselves.
“When we take those experiences out of our kids’ lives by always being with them to help them and high-five them … they get anxious because they don’t see how much they can do, how much they can handle, on their own,” Skenazy said in her TED Talk. “And we get anxious because we don’t see it either.”
But, as she posits, the solution is the same for both children and their parents: Let kids do something on their own.
The Let Grow Experience, while organized by adults, really is just a permission slip to play and explore freely, something that Let Grow also emphasizes through its afterschool programming: Play Club.
The premise is simple: Instead of sending kids home to a screen, they stay after school for an hour or so, with access to safe, all-ages, open play.
“The kids have to sign a little contract that says, ‘I won't physically hurt anyone deliberately, and I won't leave without telling anyone.’ And then the parents have to sign a little contract that says, ‘I realize my child will not be happy every minute at the after-school Play Club,’” Skenazy explained. “And that’s it.”
She calls it a “wildlife sanctuary for childhood.”
Over a thousand schools across the country have implemented these approaches. Overlook Middle School in Ashburnham, Massachusetts is one of them. Principal Kristina Bogosh began Play Club after seeing an increase in student mental health and behavioral issues over the last decade.
The club offers kids indoor or outdoor play items like hula hoops, traffic cones, chalk, or cardboard boxes, free for them to use in countless open-ended ways.
If there is conflict, the kids hash it out together in a “Conflict Corner,” and faculty members serve more like a lifeguard, stepping in only if things are too serious for the kids to handle on their own, or if an EpiPen or first aid kit needs to be deployed.
“It’s very liberating to see them solve their own problems,” Bogosh told The Gardner News, a local newspaper.
For Skenazy, this is the blueprint: allowing kids to build an identity, interests, and relationships beyond the “marching orders” they are so used to waiting for, beyond a fear of conflict or tension.
“I think we see kids as people, but we see their time as something to be optimized. And when they're dithering, or daydreaming, or arguing, or trying to come up with something to do, that strikes us as wasted time,” she said.
“What we don't realize is that kids are born to optimize, but they optimize through play and through interaction, through curiosity and through trying. With a little more interpersonal everyday friction, I think you can deal with a little more in real life, too.”
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A version of this article was originally published in The 2025 Education Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header image by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash
