I’ve always wondered how Christian parents who teach their kids “Don’t talk to strangers” manage to reverse themselves, unteach the learned fear of outsiders, and then teach their teens and young adult children to value differences, to cultivate a healthy curiosity about others—and to demonstrate this by speaking to strangers, shaking their hands and even looking them in the eye. For Christian parents, it’s still another leap to take the Good Samaritan seriously and support a child who wants to help a stranger in need. Too risky?Lenore Skenazy, a Jewish columnist raising her kids in New York City, has taken on this culturally exaggerated fear and many others in her book Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. “Somehow,” she says,
Even those of us who looked forward to parenting without too much paranoia have become anxious about every possible weird, scary, awful thing that could ever, just maybe, God forbid!, happen to our kids.Skenazy advocates for a child’s right to separate (yes, gradually) from a parent’s assistance and to learn the joy and self-confidence that comes from trying out independence. And yes, this includes a careful return to neighborhood trick-or-treating come October.
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