Back To Basics: Free Range Kids - How To Grow One

Back in the 60's when I was a kid, all of us were what they are now calling Free Range Children.

We:

• Played 'dolly house', in cardboard boxes out in the backyard.
• Sipped on deliciously flavoured mud tea and ate leaves for cakes
• Ran bucknaked with the dogs
• Bathed outdoors with hoses
• Sat under the mango trees and ate the fallen fruits
• Walked to and from schools alone or in packs of 6 year olds.

Today, after 10 years of running wild and free, most of my childhood playmates are still going strong. With doctorates, bachelor's and master's degrees in law, communications, medicine, theology and many other fields, we all became geniuses at the most coveted field - "Thrivers in Life."

Recently, I shared a story of how my daughter and a playmate fell while horse playing. As there was no money to seek medical treatment for both, my Abigail got her first lesson in mind control. She learned many other lessons prior to and after that on the open fields of life.

Among them, Abigail learned:

1. To sleep whenever and wherever she needed to through years of slumber swaddled on trains across Europe.
2. To eat and appreciate most foods at least once and be respectful to her hosts who provide for her. This was taught to her through many meals of Spam, sardines and chicken back - all we could afford at points in our journey.
3. To entertain herself after spending many hours with other kids in the nearby caves, playing alone with sticks and stones and feeding the pigs and chickens at her grandparents' home in rural Jamaica.
4. To focus, having done her homework or slept on the floor under my desk or my ex's desk in a noisy newsroom.

If by free range parenting they mean - allowing your child to explore the colours, texture and variances of our world with open eyes and hearts, with parental guidance of right and wrong and a compass to get back home - I am all for it!

Quoting from the National Public Radio:

"Last December, parents in Silver Spring, Md., allowed their two children — 6 and 10 years old — to walk home from a park about a mile away. Someone reported seeing unsupervised kids, the police picked them up and then the parents found themselves under investigation for neglect by their local Child Protective Services (CPS) agency.

The parents, Danielle and Alexander Meitiv, say they believe in "free range" parenting. They want to instill self-reliance and independence in their children. But now they are under investigation again. Earlier this month, police picked up the children as they walked home from a park and took them to the CPS offices. They were returned home hours later." Read more 

Image source: pinterest.com

Although there are other pending charges for other incidents of their setting their children free, news broke this morning that the Mietiv's were exonerated by the Courts. 

Yes, there are people around who have ill-intentions towards children. I personally have had that experience. In my case, however, they were not out by the ballpark where my posse of 7 year olds had gone to play. The predators in my story were right in our house or next door.

When I opened our doors and unleashed my child, it was with her head loaded with information about: which 'pasture' she ought to roam in, mealtimes, description of the wolves and foxes and what to do if one showed up and not to wander off from her fellow chickens!

In a digital age, it is comforting to know that there are technologies available for us to monitor the whereabouts of our children. The flip side, however, is that so many tie their children's living to an app or device.

Mahalia in her open field

Being a "free ranger" myself, I am not immune to this. My daughter and I got into a debate on this when I declared that my granddaughter's first birthday gift from me will be a Tablet! Hypocrite!

My neighbours have two lovely children - free range kids. This gift seems to be very much one from their grandmother, who is about the same age as myself and who grew up on a farm here in Alberta. She is a "do it yourselfer" extraordinaire - around the house and in the yard.  As she is out and about, with or without the children's mother, and the kids can be seen sitting in the dirt having a ball! Not once have I heard either mother or grandmother warning them of bacteria, bugs or getting their clothes messed up. Winter time the same deal. They are out in below zero temperatures - cold but warm enough to be outdoors, making snowmen or beating the crap out of each other with snowballs. And these are not children short on toys, books, gadgets and televisions to watch!

Balance - it is all about balance.

That is the key to parenting that supports a child's development, natural curiosity, well-being and in fact, health. A new buzz word it might be but there is nothing new about free range parenting - that is how we 50+ plusers grew up! 

As for that Tablet for Mahalia? Maybe Canada Day 2016, her birthday. Give her some time to eat dirt, wild flowers, ride a donkey and pull a dog's tail.

There is no manual for parenting. We all do the best we can and hopefully that leaves room for children to explore, be and evolve into their full selves.

Namaste

Claudette