How Children Benefit When Their Parents — at Least Some of the Time — Ignore Them

The New York Times printed some surprising advice last week: “Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often.”I agree.In a culture that demands we spend ever more of our time supervising, entertaining, teaching, and, of course, driving our children, the op-ed by University of Southern California psychology professor Darby Saxbe, says: Enough. Doing so much with and for our children is actually stifling them — and driving us adults crazy to boot:“The modern style of parenting is not just exhausting for adults; it is also based on assumptions about what children need to thrive that are not supported by evidence from our evolutionary past. For most of human history, people had lots of kids, and children hung out in intergenerational social groups in which they were not heavily supervised.”Children’s brains — humans’ brains — evolved to expect that kind of mixed-age, “Peanuts”-gang existence. That’s why children are born with so much curiosity and drive. They learn to speak the language, and sometimes more than one, just by being around us. We are not required to sit them down and teach them this.Given more chances to observe, copy, play, and practice on their own, they also learn other valuable lessons: how to share, help, argue, figure things out. In her piece, Ms. Saxbe writes that even when children are with us, we don’t have to — indeed, shouldn’t — always defer to their needs, aka interruptions. Being with adults who are busy with their own lives and conversations is actually a gift.Most of us spent at least part of our childhoods listening to adults talking about things that didn’t become interesting to us for about 20 or 30 more years. Money. Politics. Who was having what “procedure.” And as the years went by, more and more about those procedures.Those things are boring enough that children have two options: Either listen and learn, or, more commonly, come up with a way to do something else. Daydream. Kick each other under the table. Or ask to be excused, then figure out something fun to do.When parents worry too much that they must be engaging or entertaining the children, it does them no favors, writes Ms. Saxbe. “There is evidence from neuroscience that a resting brain is not an idle one. … (T)he mind gets busy when it is left alone to do its own thing — in particular, it tends to think about other people’s minds. If you want to raise empathetic, imaginative children who can figure out how to entertain themselves, don’t keep their brains too occupied.”The author then writes that the only reason she isn’t recommending more free, unsupervised time is because in many cases “that sort of ‘free range’ experience is not an option.”Ah. Yet I am uniquely qualified to refute that one claim — I started the Free-Range Kids movement with my book by that name and now run Let Grow, a nonprofit making that kind of childhood an easy, normal and legal choice again.To that end, we recommend schools assign The Let Grow Experience, a homework assignment that tells children to go home and do something new on their own. Depending on their age and neighborhood, this can be anything from walking to the store to exploring the woods to making pancakes for the family.Anytime a child does something beyond their current comfort zone — and beyond their parents’ watchful gaze — they grow. They see that they, too, are competent and often helpful individuals.A collective problem — overburdened parents, over-assisted children — needs a collective solution: doing something together. First, start by recognizing, as Ms. Saxbe does, that children are born wired for curiosity, adventure, competence, and play — when we step back a bit.Second?Step back a bit.Trust children to do some things on their own, and they will. Simple as that.Creators.com

How Children Benefit When Their Parents — at Least Some of the Time — Ignore Them

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