It’s too late for many of us, but what do you think of this man’s transformation of his home and neighborhood?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/magazine/the-anti-helicopter-parents-plea-let-kids-play.html
I thought his ideas were interesting. I definitely think it helps to live near a park. His ideas about letting little kids walk on his roof would also frighten me.m
I have seen this kind of parenting play out through the college years. It is a parent’s responsibility to teach safe behavior, and what happens when they don’t is that teens engage in lots of unsafe behavior.
I can’t imagine the size of the liability rider he’s going to have to carry on his homeowner’s insurance to cover the inevitable broken arms and smashed noses.
Bet me that his insurance company reads that article and promptly drops his coverage. We’ve had ours dropped for having hail damage on a roof-I can’t imagine any insurance company wants to cover that guy.
“Mike is a deep believer in the idea that “kids have to find their own balance of power.” He wants his boys to create their own society governed by its own rules.”
Geez, lord of the flies much?
Really, he has some good idea-more socialization within the neighborhood, having areas of walls to draw on to express creativity, but he loses me on the kids determining their own social dynamic-that’s what adults are for.
Kids don’t naturally exhibit selflessness, cooperation, support, and collaborative behavior. All of those are learned, and his belief that those values aren’t important (he calls such kids sissies) means the rest of his philosophy is a non-starter for me with regards to raising kids.
@MotherOfDragons --Yeah, I’m a huge fan of free-range kids, with less scheduling and more autonomy, plus more community interaction. But this guy’s version is more like extreme-competitive parenting (my kids have more cool stuff than yours do), with all possible play ideas handed to them, rather than developed by them.
But more importantly, as you discuss, the dog-eat-dog libertarian paradise he espouses, plus the misogyny (it’s all about boys being boys. Moms create sissies, etc., let the kids work it out --while it’s his kid threatening someone else), really undermines what is, in a vacuum, a great concept.
I see the point in allowing kids some freedom (although in many neighborhoods, there are almost never other kids to play with because so many are in day care or summer camps because both parents are working). I do not see the point in deliberately creating unsafe situations (such as doubly unsafe trampolines – no net and no supervision).
Even in the distant past (by which I mean my own childhood) when kids were supposedly free-range, families in my neighborhood who had swimming pools did not allow children who were below high school age to go in the pool unless an adult was present to supervise. And if anyone had owned a trampoline, I suspect they would have had similar rules.
Haha good point about the insurance company reading the article!
I also cringed at the bullying and misogyny. He has 3 boys. I wonder if they had a girl or girls if he would still talk like that.
This is a rich kid’s playground that is every bit as contrived and artificial an environment as a “safe” playground with padded surfaces, etc. This manipulative parent has more in common with the helicoptering parenting style than he realizes.
Yup–extreme competitive helicoptering.
If he was really concerned about giving kids - all kids - access to free play and such, his privileged self would look at ways to incorporate play spaces and more open spaces into the neighborhoods of those less privileged than building this Lost Boys utopian playground in his own yard.
We played a lot like that back in the 50s and 60s. We all turned out okay - well, most of us. The boy who came with the real bow and arrow was marched back home by one of the neighborhood moms… I think he went to juvenile hall a few years later, the family moved, and we continued to play kickball in the middle of the street. We were never on the roof of our two-story home.
Our kids had freedom to play in our yard or the next-door neighbor’s yard at a certain age (maybe 5) but had to let us know if they were going any farther. We also had rules like no trampoline or swimming pool without supervision. After news about Adam Walsh, Johnny Gosch, Jacob Wetterling, and others, I was probably a more protective mom than I would have been.
I’m of two minds about this. I think this guy takes it way too far, but I remember very fondly my two years in Somalia (ages 8 - 10) where I had very similar experiences. I climbed on our (only one story!) roof all the time. I got a huge electric shock one time when it turned out a live wire was touching it. We played a game of climbing around the house without touching the ground. (I couldn’t walk for several hours!) We had horses in the back yard and would ride out without grownups. One time I fell off and the horse went home without me. I biked to a friend who was a mile or so away. We spent hours in the back yard playing mud roads or in the shipping boxes. I feel like it made me more independent.
I didn’t give my kids quite so much freedom, but we did have a huge 8’ x 8’ sandbox and I’d let the kids and their friends play out there with a hose. They also like to go into the wild area behind our house and cut down knotweed and wack each other with the stuff. I’d never have a trampoline without a net.
My parents were anti-helicopter parents and I have all the scars and whatnot to prove it. No trampolines though- my mom is deathly afraid of heights and that was like the one off-limits thing. In retrospect, I did a lot of things that would scare the bejeezus out of me now. One that comes to mind is doing flips off the couch onto a couch cushion.
But any point this author might’ve had in this article is drowned out by his digs at moms. Yuck.
I found the article very creepy. This guy built a playground specially designed to attract neighborhood children (primarily boys). He speaks very disrespectfully of mothers, and not so subtly pressures moms to get out and leave their kids in his care. So now he’s the cool, fun guy and mom is the downer who’s spoiling all the fun. I wouldn’t let my kids anywhere near it.
I fell off a roof from our one-story house once when I was a young teen. Luckily, I was unharmed. I frequently climbed trees taller than our home and just hung out there. I was a constant victim of bullies at school for years–we and they were pretty free-range, and I would like to think some adult intervention may have stopped the bullying, but ho knows?
I would NOT insure this guy and wonder about the stress his wife has, as an attorney, knowing the liability. We were allowed to explore our hugely overgrown backyard and he neighborhood as kids it’s no adult supervision, as well as rid skateboards and bikes. We let our kids ride bikes, scooters and skateboards around the neighborhood with no supervision.
This guy feels like a bully to me.
I think my husband and I raised a “manly” son. And a daughter who took physical risks. We let them ride their bikes around the neighborhood and hang out with all kinds of friends and explore the town. On their own. We have plenty of natural woods/creeks/reservoirs/beaches/abandoned houses for kids to run wild in. It was up to us to teach our kids about safety and trespassing laws, and hope for the best.
We didn’t create a Disney-style version of NJ’s “Action Park” ( Also known affectionately as “Traction Park” for the kids who came home bleeding) in our own back yard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3Xf1x5GmiQ That’s just creepy. It’s up to the kids to think of weird things to do in their environment. We’re not supposed to create this world for them.
I think there’s a weird nostalgia for the good old days, where we didn’t consider safety. Lawn Darts, anyone? A lot of survivors think it’s awesome that we could do all these cool dangerous things.
But as a child of the 60’s, when we did stupid dangerous things, we GOT IN TROUBLE. Nobody seems to remember that part.
His trampoline is buried in the ground, and the whole playground looks much safer than the construction sites and old sheds where I used to play when I was a kid. Yes, I did get in trouble when my parents found out. Once, when we organized races around the warehouse under construction. Sounds not that dangerous? Our race track was the shaky scaffolding two stories above the ground.
This guy creeped me out. Peter Pan he is not.
“Once, when we organized races around the warehouse under construction. Sounds not that dangerous? Our race track was the shaky scaffolding two stories above the ground.”
OMG, we did exactly the same thing, and ground was covered with rusty wiring, cement, broken glass etc… We also climbed very tall trees, and I had dead branches snapping under my feet many times. Once I have fallen through ice (chest-deep), the other time I have fallen into ice-cold water while crossing a stream (again - no adult supervision). I got nosebleeds from playing a soccer goalie with older boys. And we climbed up and jumped off a roof of an abandoned garage (at least 12 ft tall) more times than I can remember until adults removed an old bench which we used as a ladder. We survived 
I had one of those childhoods as well. Have any of you been to Scottsdale? The downtown Civic Center was being constructed from where I lived down the street, unfenced and a freeplay wonderland. We had forts, dirt cod fights, and a great time climbing on the enormous mounds of dirt and running through tunnels. We ran around the desert, biked long distances in the heat, climbed trees, rode rented ponys through the town.
My main objection to this guy is his thought that girls are not interested in or benefiting from such play. I sure was! I stayed in, read intently, learned to sew, cook and knit as well as play music, but I certainly loved my outdoor life. He sells females short.
But he does excel at community building, and I like the time they spent in the front yard.
Keeping groups of kids safe is a careful balance and you have to know the kid as well as the risk. Some will be fine on the roof, others will try to slide down the downspounts, ruining themselves as well as the property integrity. Careful risk management would suggest that you not allow kids on the roof. Or untrained adults either, as have seen a number of folks with chronic injuries from ladder falls. It is unfortunate that more trees are not allowed to have spreading branches for the most part, as that is a better way to learn to climb and handle heights.
I had a wild, sixties/seventies childhood, too, with woods to play in and little adult supervision. Kids did get hurt: the boy who lost a finger in a dirt bike accident across the street from my house (spent many hours looking for the finger), the kid who lost an arm playing in a dryer, and the kid who lost an eye in a gun accident.