Scoutmaster Podcast 125

And now the old Scoutmaster. So let me get my intro in here.

Okay, is it schnazzy? It's schnazzy Unfortunately rhymes with crazy.

Okay, I will not point that out undermines the argument. Hey, this is podcast number 125.

Well, welcome to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green, right there in the intro. That was our guest today on the podcast, Lenore Schnazzy, who is the author of Free range kids. But we're we're gonna talk about that more in a moment. Let's first look into the mailbag. RNC jr, Who is an assistant Scoutmaster somewhere in the world, wrote in to say: hey, great reference page on summer camp.

I found useful stuff and all the links. In fact, I'll probably print a few and take them to camp next week. Thanks for your blog, Clark. I find it very instructive and helpful.

Well, thank you. Thanks for being in touch. Mike loads wrote in about our post on discipline and accountability in scouting. He said: excellent post. I was actually at summer camp explaining this to an assistant Scoutmaster That we weren't drill sergeants when you posted this and I found great reassurance that I wasn't all that off base. We do our best.

We do our best to try and help you out there. Mike. You can get in touch with us and I appreciate when you do. That's really the lifeblood of the whole operation here. I need to hear back from you. This is a conversation about scouting and It's kind of hard to have on your own.

So be in touch And you're gonna find out how to do that towards the end of the podcast. And speaking of the podcast, This is just a big, sprawling summer novel of a podcast. It's about an hour long. My guest is a very well-known author who coined the term free-range kids and Literally wrote the book on the subject, and I'm speaking, of course, of Lenore Scanesi. She has a lot to say about raising resilient, confident children and the part that scouting plays in doing that. I, talking to Lenore is a real shot in the arm.

I Mean she makes one of the greatest arguments for scouting that any parent could ever hear, and I think After you listen to this podcast, you ought to play this podcast for families who you are looking to recruit. It's just got a lot of good thinking.

It's got a lot of great stuff, If I do say so myself, and I do now. If you go to the blog at scoutmastercgcom, you'll find my review of Lenore's book free-range kids and Find information on how to purchase the book.

You'll find a link to her blog in the post that contains this podcast, and I think you're really going to enjoy this interview. I know I did So.

Hey, let's get started, Shall we?

My favorite all time, Lenore Scanesi, joins us today. She's a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and you might remember one particular column that she put in the New York Sun about four years ago describing her controversial decision to let her nine-year-old son take the New York City subway, and That kind of unleashed a flood of reactions that led to the creation of the free-range kids blog and the book Free range kids: how to raise safe, self-reliant children without going nuts with worry. Lenore, Welcome to the Scoutmaster podcast. Oh, very happy beer.

I salute you, Clark, So I'm excited to talk to you. I've been following free-range kids for a while. It's pretty. It's been really interesting. Interested in a couple things is the idea that we're becoming safety junkies.

We become unwilling to accept even the the tiniest amount of risk because we take risk for risky and so, yes, there is a risk that You know your child might fall out of a high chair, as if that means that obviously This is a dangerous product that shouldn't be in anyone's home. If I, I think, if you sold a hundred and eighty thousand of a product and one child scraped his knee on it, That's what's called regular life, And you can't expect anything to be safer than that. We feel like we're living in, like everything is a danger to us And we really. It reminds me of drug addiction. It's like saying no, no, I need more, I need more safety. This isn't safe enough.

And I feel like saying, if you don't accept anything is safe enough, You're going to end up constricting your life, and especially your children's life, in weird ways. And so, in the interests of creating hyper safety for our children, we end up keeping them inside and parking them in front of a screen and keeping them sort of- you know, ignorant of all the joys and frustrations of what childhood used to be: that: the joy of going outside and playing outside, the frustration of getting lost or Not being able to make the little bridge You're trying to make until your fifth attempt, and then you do it, But we're saying: no, even that's not safe enough, Let me keep you inside.

So of what has changed? Childhood isn't an inability to distinguish between Risk, which is inherent in life and risky- something that's truly risky- that you want what your kid to do.

You know, I'm right there with you because in the world of of being a volunteer scout leader, Constantly barraged with Managing risk, and some of the things we do are truly risky, right. So we need to learn those things without Somehow giving into this crave and fear that we shouldn't even attempt these things because, oh well, it's possible Somebody will fall down. It's possible Somebody will get lost.

One of the things that started happening at a school where I live, New York City, is that there's a sixth grade teacher who Every year gives her students free range kids project, a project sort of inspired by you know The time I let my son ride the subway by himself when he was nine, And what she does for her class is: she says they're they're 10 and 11 year olds. I want you to pick something that you haven't done yet, that you think you're ready for, And you just have to ask your parents if they'll let you do it. And in fact it has to be an extra credit project for the class, because when the kids ask their parents, some of the parents always say no. But last year a kid told me that What he did for his free range kids project was he decided he would take a city bus by himself To go visit his younger brother who was in grammar school- remember, this is a sixth grader.

And so after school that day, He got on the bus To go visit his brother and as the streets were going by, he started realizing: Oh my god, Oh my god, I don't know where I'm going. This is not the right way. This is I'm definitely going the wrong way.

And- and he said he was so upset that he almost screamed at the bus driver, But instead he held it together and he said: I Excuse me, I I'm trying to go downtown, to West 4th Street. I cannot find where I'm going, I don't know what's happening. And the bus driver said: hello, Oh, I see what happened.

Relax, You got on the uptown bus, but you wanted to go downtown, So what you have to do is here, I'm gonna give you a transfer, go a block over and That at the bus stop there, That'll be a downtown bus. Just wait for the bus, give the driver this transfer and you'll be going the right direction.

And so the boy got off the bus and he went a block over and, sure enough, He took the bus down and he ended up, you know, greeting his brother safe and sound. Everything was fine.

But when he was telling this story in class, he said- and you know, believe it or not, For some reason I still carry. And he opened up his wallet. He said: I still have the transfer From that day.

And I and I said: why, why do you carry that? That's, that's sort of a, that's a piece of paper from a day when everything went so wrong that you were Reaching out in public, you know, practically crying.

And- and he Sort of smiled a little embarrassed- He said: you know, I don't know why I carry this. And then, the more I thought about it- And why does he carry that? That's weird is that I realized, oh, oh, I get it. That's proof that things can go very wrong. He can totally screw up and He can make it better. Right, he can, he can figure it out.

He's that grown up and that ticket is his ticket out, It's his ticket to adventure, It's his ticket to remind himself that, even when it seems dark and bad, you're okay, You can do it. So for him, that bad experience of getting lost Was one of the most empowering things in his life, to the point where he had to carry around the talisman from that day To remind himself of it, to give himself strength in the future. And imagine if he, if he had Decided to go visit his brother, and his mother said: that's great, I'll pick you up after school.

And then she went with him and they skipped over the wrong bus stop. Of course, she got to the right bus stop, They went down their mile or whatever it is, and they visited the kid and that was that. That would be a completely meaningless, on Exciting, unmemorable day for the kid, but instead the, the the adventure of having something go wrong.

Exactly what we're trying to take from our children's lives- and we move from their lives because we're so worried about that- is- Is the super vitamin that we want to give our kids, that kind of confidence and self-reliance that we long to see in them. We take away from them because we are afraid.

Your decision at some point to get your boys- You have two boys, right, I have two sons, They're now 14 and 60. Okay.

And to get them involved with scouts, Yeah, how did all that come about? I mean, was that something that was in your past and your family's past at all, or not to a big extent. I was a girl scout for a couple of years. We never went on a single overnight. I finally quit. I'm thinking I quit and discussed who knows, Yeah, I was probably ten.

So let's just describe: Yeah, Yeah, a great motive for me. But I really don't remember. I do remember making a lot of things out of yarn And yet never learning to knit. And my husband was a boy scout for a couple years And I don't know he faded out before too long neither, but my sons Just love it, and- and the reason we got the older one involved first is that it was probably the age Oldest reason in the book.

His friend was a scout and his friend was cool and his friend had a knife and his friend went on overnights and his friend Just seemed kind of, you know, cooler and more macho. And so my son came along to a meeting and the meeting begins.

Before the meeting begins, It was held in like a, like the, the nursery room of a, of a church, And so all the kids would take out the tricycles and- and these were boys of you know, 9, 10, 11- And ride around them like banshees. And of course this was thrilling.

And so between you know, being cool and grown up and then having just this wild time at the beginning of each Session, my son signed right up And of course he was taken, very taken by the, by the badges and the sort of the idea of Having a way to prove you're growing up and that's what badges are and that's what ranks are, and You don't get that a lot in the outside world. So he, he loved all of it.

And then My one day- you know, I think you get a badge like if you can recruit somebody new- and lazily He said to his younger brother: He doesn't particularly get along with. You know, I need to bring somebody to the meeting tonight. I guess I'll bring you.

You know, closest possible person to grab, and. And then my younger son fell for it too. He just, he just loved being around All the different age boys.

You know he looked up to the older, taller kids and um, and the leaders are incredibly dynamic. They're in troop one in manhattan.

I mean, beat that and um, and then they love it. I remember when my younger son came back from his first overnight He said it was the most fun he'd ever had in his life.

So I love, I love the, the, the scouts, for all that, for the leaders, For the leadership for the fact that as they grow older, they're expected to take care of the little kids and and help them become, You know, quiet down in mature. I mean The first time. I was just at the- uh, the court of honor a couple weeks ago And I watched my younger son dealing with kids who were like a foot Shorter than him, saying, come on, kids, You gotta, you gotta be quiet lineup. And I'm thinking, Oh, my god, That's what I say to him.

You know, Hey, you know, this is, this is like, you know, it's the. The greatest pride a mom can see Is when your older kids start becoming, you know, a little grown up and taking care of something You know younger and sillier than them. It's just great.

So the first time he's going to go on an overnight, Let's take the, the older boy. He just joined scouts, He's going to go on an overnight. Mom, Mama, has no reservations about this at all, She's not frightened by it, She's not concerned about it at all.

Well, I don't think I actually know what goes on at these overnight. I didn't know then And I don't probe too much now.

I think one of the reasons we're often so much more afraid for our kids today than our parents were for us Is that we know too much. I mean, if you're with your kids all the time, even when I'm with my kids- now I told you 14 and 16 and I see them crossing the street- I'm still like practically grabbing their hand and saying what, both ways, you know, they're like mom, We know. They say mom, We know, because their voices have changed. If I knew everything. When you watch your kids, you're naturally going to want to jump in and do things For them, or just hector them, or at least that's that's my inclination. But by not seeing exactly how they start a fire or how close they get to it or how far they wander Or what kind of bugs There, I have never seen the latrine there.

Um, I live in this blissful ignorance. They just come back And they're happy and they smell like fire, Um, and yet no parts are singed And uh, and that's you know, that's all I know.

And when I was sending my son off for the first one, I just knew that, um, the mom of the other kid, you know the one he was following and said, Oh, they love overnight, She'll see. And- and that was enough for me.

Do you get war stories when they come home? Do you hear about how tough it was? And, uh, I hear sometimes about how cold it was.

Or sometimes, you know, I hear little dribs and drabs. Um, As I say, we spend up some, uh, our summer upstate in new york, which is where I am now, and, um, about a week ago, Um, somebody wanted to have a, a campfire in front of their cabin, And so my son said, oh, we'll build it. And it was the first time I'd seen a campfire that they built.

And I was like, Oh, my god, You know, that's like, you know, like Joan of Arc could be in the middle of that. That's a serious fire. I, in my mind, I was imagining the fire the size of the badge, You know.

You know, the campfire badge. Um, this was, uh, a fire made out. It was like a, It was like a house on fire.

It was so big and I'm happy that I I didn't realize until now Just how gigantic the, the overnight the, the campfire, um, fires are. The difference between you And the mom, who's kind of paranoid About this, is not that you're immune to these concerns and these fears and everything. But you've just looked at them, rationally or not looked at them.

The other thing that did not look at them- I mean children- have always had a world of their own. Um, I know I did. I would go off and and sort of wander through the woods- And I'm not even a particularly woodsy, outdoorsy person at all, But as a kid I did that some of the time and my mother wasn't three feet behind me.

Um, if she was, she might have said: you know, don't touch that, or aren't you getting hot, or is it time for a snack, or, You know, let's rest a while. But she wasn't with me and that was my world and I, I love the idea of my kids having that too.

I think that there's so much you get both from nature, You know, from sort of seeing your place in the universe is under the stars. Um, to them, having a place in a troop where, as you get older and you get promoted through the, through the ranks, It's not just more fun and games, You have more responsibility.

I think those things are so wonderful that I'm willing to take a step back and say, okay, part of my job, as as a parent, um, is to Be as afraid as I want, but not voice that upon them, not make it so that my fear Us waging, my fear becomes the be all and end all of their existence. You know, I have to sit at home And, uh, you know, maybe once in a while flash on the idea of a bear and then flash it off And then let them, let them be there.

Have the boys ever seen a bear? Have they got?

Have they seen one out in the wilderness or do you know? So, um, no, they haven't seen a bear. Uh, on a camp out.

The thing is also, My kids are our scouts in new york city and my favorite thing is how they get to their camp out. Can I tell you sure, Okay, they store their equipment, um, in a church. That's across from The wall door, pastoria, Literally the wall door. That's where the president stays when he comes to america.

The sultan of brunei stays there, You know, movie stars the bread pit it that wall door. So that's where they start their camp out um evening, And then from there they take their equipment and and, um, in that age old tradition of boy scouts, They, they go to the subway And then they go all the way down to the bottom of manhattan, whereupon they catch the statin island ferry To go to statin island, where the uh, where the forest is, They- I don't know what the preserve is, that they have their uh camp out at.

And then, once they get off the ferry, They take a cab- So to me It's, it's worth it for that anecdote alone- from the wall door to the, to the subway, to the ferry, to the cab. Then they're in what, what passes for the wilderness in new york city, But they actually are in a, in a very large forest preserve. You don't see Civilization. Where they are camping. They really do have to erect their tents and it really is freezing cold in the winter And, um, and it's pretty primitive, and they do build their, their fires and cook their food over it And, uh, I don't know, somehow they wash their stuff off.

You know barely. I might add um, but uh, whatever I was saying, I love what they're doing.

Well, they're going to camp pouch on statin island, Exactly camp pouch, Yeah, Um, which they love. It's their place, I mean, it's their magical place, and also it's their place there That I think that children deserve Some of their own places or their own exploring, and camp pouch is definitely theirs.

I know they go on walks And, um, I don't think you're supposed to take electronics So clearly. Something was smuggled in because later on One of my sons- and I won't say which because I don't want either of them to get kicked out of the troop- was showing me photos he'd taken of, I guess, some trees and of the clouds, and I've never seen him take a picture of anything in nature other than On the hikes, and I think that's because he's not aware of nature any other time.

And and I love him Appreciating the trees and the clouds and the birds, I, I think that's, That's an, you know, that's an inherent part of all of us. That could certainly be lost in suburbia, and even more so if you're living, you know, in new york city. We, we kind of agree that we live in this kind of environment That tells us that bad things are going to happen to us.

Yeah, I love the word are, because I think that's the problem. Um, bad things may happen to us, Bad things sometimes, but rarely happen To children. But when you see it on the news, it's: your children aren't safe, They are going to be kidnapped. If you aren't with them at all times, They are going to be harmed.

I mean, you know, watch your child They. You know somebody could snatch them.

Not that in that you know that somebody Might- and I saw it once on csi or I heard about it happening in california once and might happen. Now it's. It's always presented as um, As a definite thing that's going to happen if you let go of your child for even an instant.

And I think what one of the things that boy scouts does is actually prepares them to be more safe, I think sometime on their own, growing confident, um, growing, you know the kind of, You know not I wouldn't say swagger, but the kind of Self-reliance that is at the core of scouting. I think that's what makes your kids safer. And it's not just me who thinks this way. I mean, really for my book, I I interviewed the head of the national center for missing and exploited children.

When I spoke to him about, like you know, how can you keep your kids safe? You know what?

About stranger danger? He said your message, my message, is exactly the one we are trying to convey.

You know, stranger danger is is really not the problem. You know, first of all, most crimes are committed by people that the children know very well. But secondly, that, um, you want your kids to be confident.

Because those are the kids who, if god forbid anything bad happens, You know anything, even up to the worst, you know an attempted kidnapping- Are the ones who are most likely to get away, because they're the ones who have the confidence to say get away. They are the ones taught to be prepared, think on their feet, develop those, those, those smarts and those instincts That will serve them well. And the idea that we are helping our children by keeping them in the back of the suv, That doesn't help them.

That's a kid who doesn't know his directions, Doesn't know you know how to run, He's been, he's been sitting in the chair and he's um, you know, He's growing. I won't say fat and lazy, but I think a scout- a scout teaches agility And endurance, and so your kids are safer if they get what scouts can give them: the, the confidence, the speed, the awareness and the self-reliance That make you able to exist as, as you grow older in the world, turn you into a more savvy adult As you're growing up, as opposed to keeping you a beautiful little baby stuck in a car seat. You're talking about what every parent has to deal with. They're they're torn between the safety of their children and wanting to see them Do interesting, wonderful things that help them develop, to help them develop this kind of confidence. Right, I'm saying they go together.

So it's not really a trade-off between you. Know, on the one hand I want them safe but on the other hand I want them to have adventures. In a way, having these adventures in a sort of Tried and true environment, which is the scouts, makes them safer. I'm saying having your kids do those Interesting things that maybe are not perfectly safe but are still safe.

I mean you know you have, you have trained scout leaders Who are there and you have older kids who have learned a lot and are are willing to Look after the under kids. You know scouting is not Dropping your kids off at the side of a highway and saying go into the forest, I'll pick you up in three days. It really is a way to train kids, to become just More competent as a part of being a parent in scouting and everything. You. You've looked at that first part of the scout handbook- The uh protecting your child from abuse- like an hour before I was talking to you. I was on a radio show in australia which, by the way, was the middle of the night.

The host was saying: but we want our children to be safe And so shouldn't we just keep them away from bad people and keep our watch on them at all times? And I said, actually, I think the the best way to keep our children safe is to teach them what the scouts does, Considering that most abuse of children is committed by somebody that they know and not a stranger, You know could be a stepfather, a cousin, whatever. The way to protect your children- Uh, because you never know when it's going to happen or if it's ever going to happen- is to teach them the three R's, which are what the boy scouts teach, which is recognize, resist and report abuse.

A guy called into the radio station and said that he had been molested as a kid by an uncle And he never wanted that to happen to his kids and that's why he was keeping them so close. And I was like, well, if you never wanted have to happen to them, You have to keep them so close that they're not in contact with any other human, because you're you're not going to know, Um, necessarily who it is and it's not necessarily going to be some creep at the playground.

So if you teach kids to recognize What abuse is, nobody can touch you where your bathing suit covers- You can teach them that at age three, long before they're a boy, scout- Resist. You know, Child molesters are like anyone else, like they go where it's easiest. They look for the low-hanging fruit. If your kid is the one screaming running, Chance is sorry. He's going to say, oh, this isn't worth it.

Right, calling attention, you know It's, it's just a great line of defense. But if, god forbid, the worst happens and your child is a victim, You teach him, uh, to report abuse, because that's the, that's the, That's the best way a predator has of keeping somebody under his thumb. It's to say: don't tell anyone. Or if you tell anyone, i'll kill your mother. Or if you tell anyone, Um, I'll, you'll really get it. Or if you tell anyone, something terrible will happen.

Or you, you did this with me And now you're dirty too, So it's our little secret. Any time an adult asks you to keep a secret, Um, the idea is to tell. And you have to tell your children that if they do tell you which they should, You won't be mad at them.

So you take away the guilt and the fear of recrimination. And that is not only what the scouts say will keep Children's safest from abuse. But I talked to the head of the crimes against children research center. It's sort of the number one think tank about crimes against children, as you might guess. It's up at the university of new Hampshire And david finkle whore, the director there, said that's what he endorses too, even more than You know. Expanding the sex offender list or longer sentences for for anybody, It's um.

Teaching your children to recognize, resist and report abuse Is has been proven to be the best way to keep children safe. So I I'll not only endorse what what the scouts say, I'm promulgating it.

Um, you know, literally around the world. So I've I've encountered parents who are kind of reluctant to have that discussion because they feel like They're taking away some part of their child's innocence or something like that.

Yeah, I've heard that too, and and the best way I had it explained to me, which I now repeat, is that It doesn't have to take away anybody's innocence, any more than teaching your children that if, god forbid, you're ever on fire, I want you to stop drop and roll And you look, it's unlikely, it's going to happen. I don't think kids go to bed that night and and, um, you know, and never go near a house again because they think What if it's ever on fire? It's just a little piece of information That keeps them safer.

Um, you know, it's recognizing your reality in the world. It's also um for you, keeping it um in perspective.

It probably won't happen just like a fire, but if it does now, I've given my kids some, Some preparation. Why not? The one thing I heard from a guy who teaches a class is that parents feel better Once they realize they can be confident in their kids, when they see that their kids can Scream, get away, You're not my dad, Whatever. If they watch their kids doing that a couple times, It's a little bit of a relief.

You know it goes from theoretically, could my kid do this? To oh my god, They can, they're, they're, they're piercing my eardrums.

You know parents are very worried these days and and I think they need a shot of confidence too. Preparing your kid not only prepares your kid, It gives you confidence. I'm working on some writing that talks about Those who would abuse children to be kind of like bears or snakes, Exactly. That's a great, great point I love. It's not real likely you're going to run into them, State snakes and bears.

That's so perfect because it is. It's like you know. It's like there's these creepy things out there and you don't.

You know there's tarantulas, you know, Um, and there's pedophiles and, and you just don't want them to hurt you, and so here's how you prepare to avoid them. Brilliant, I love that and I'm gonna use that. Do do. Okay. My son works in the administration at a college.

He has some pretty amazing stories about freshmen Who arrive at at school and really have an any idea of what to do with themselves, how to look after themselves, And who have no idea what to do with independence, Right, right, And there's those. There's the twin fear of them shrinking or them going wild, because this is the first time They've ever done anything on their own and they don't know the difference between Being a mature adult and being a crazy adult, because they never had to be any kind of, they never got to try any of this out in Safer environment, right, or a graduated environment, right? I mean the.

The phrase that comes up a lot on my site is: you know, I'm not raising children. I'm raising adults, so, and the idea that a child is magically mature After not being allowed to do anything for him or herself at age 18 is an odd one. I mean, I wouldn't expect you could do anything suddenly, from zero to competency in anything.

Could I? You know?

Could you suddenly read a book if I'd never taught you how to read? No, What about the tv show? It sounds like it's almost on, and maybe a third to two-thirds of the world.

It's called World's worst mom, and of course that's me, because I was so terrible. I let my son take the subway by himself, Um, when he was nine, But um, so showing in, you know, you name it: australia, all of latin america, a lot of europe, taiwan, India, pakistan, but for some reason it hasn't sold here in the united states yet, and i'm puzzled about it.

I mean the thing that I think is really cool about the show, Which is basically like me being the super nanny, except instead of going to families where the children are absolutely out of control, I go to families where the at least one of the parents is out of control in terms of fear. They're so worried for their kids that they won't let them Go learn how to ride a bike or use a knife or walk to school or play in the front yard or Any of those things.

But the first filming I went to, the mother was so afraid She wouldn't let him use a knife or 10 year old use a knife or ride a bike or go on an overnight And I showed him how to use a knife and then I videotaped him using a knife because, frankly, if you teach somebody to Put their fingers out of the way of the knife and their 10, they can learn how to use a knife. So when she saw that video of her son shopping things and making himself a sandwich, which has never been allowed to do, She was proud.

I mean, ironically, here She's the one who hadn't been letting him do it And now she was very proud. And what I didn't realize is that that would happen over and over again with all the moms. What what I did is I generally took away their fear by showing them how competent their kid was, And it was immediately placed with the desire to brag.

The thing we did- and that was my very first episode- Is she was afraid of him going on an overnight and I said: listen, You know, someday. You want to send him to camp? You just have to give him to me Today.

And she said why? And I said because I'm taking him to Boy Scout camp. And she's like I don't know.

And first she was like she was really upset, But she decided to hold it together and she said: sammy, do you want to go? You're going to be out overnight with the Boy Scouts for one night.

Do you want to do that? And he's like yeah, Yeah, I do.

But then she kept Pestering him so much and we- we actually filmed this and I was a little embarrassed for him. Um, she said: really, you won't know anyone. You'll be the new kid. You're going to be out in the forest. You've never been there before.

Do you really want to go? It's going to be scary, It's going to be cold, It's going to be nighttime. You're going to be by yourself. I won't be there. And by the end of this He was crying.

He was, he was holding a pillow and crying and if you watch this episode, you see him, you know, hysterical because He's now he's really afraid and also he doesn't want upset his mom. His mom doesn't want him to go. He said he wanted to go.

You know there's a lot going on, and so that was the evening. And then the next day I showed up I said today's the day to go to Boy Scout camp and I really didn't know Whether they were going to say, forget it.

You know, Sammy's just too nervous, or we can't do it or we're not ready, or ask us in a year. But in fact there he was with his backpack on, Because for one thing, is his father remembered being a Boy Scout and he loved it so much.

And also, you know, Sleep does a lot. You know he slept on it for a night. Everybody woke up, Nobody was crying anymore and he realized It's a beautiful day, Let me go. And he had such a great time. This was literally his first time away from home with other kids and obviously on a Boy Scout overnight, very first time.

And now he's a Boy Scout. You know, as you're telling that story, I'm thinking of how many parents, how many boys we don't even get through to because They just would never consider this to be a good idea.

I would love to somehow figure out how to show that episode to potential- You know, potential- Boy Scout parents, because the kid ended up so proud and he was singing the oh we are, we are we or whatever. You know I tell them not a Boy Scout, Oh we are, we are.

When they made barf in a bag and he loved that you know which was, I guess eggs or something- I hope it wasn't a barf, and You know. And he spent the night in a cabin and, uh, he just, he just loved it. Obviously he loved it.

He joined and um, and I think you could see that a million times over. But you do have to get over that hump of often It's the parent who's scared. The situation you described, the parent Projects all those fears on the child. Yeah, the child thinks I don't want to go be eaten by a bear.

It's like, uh, you know, I wouldn't really suggest it. That's what I thought I was recommending.

You know I don't want my children eating my bears either. Right, I don't even want them, you know, snacked on.

You know I'm on with all their limbs. You know, maybe a cup of bruises, You know a mosquito bite or two, That never underwear, that isn't changed. I mean, whatever I send them with, all their whatever clean clothes I send them with, come back still folded. I don't think they folded them again put it that way. I don't think scouting saves on laundry bills.

It's, you know, it does, it does, although you'll you'll never get those. Okay, so let me just so.

So for some reason, World's worst mom is showing all over the world, But not in america, and I think it's because we are sort of the avatars of fear. So there's like four major things on the news: There's news, weather, sports and kidnappings of children.

Um, so when you live in a society like that that exports fear, Um, and it's sort of a, it's a growth industry Somehow, when you push that button, people react, and they react very, very strongly. And so you just keep pushing that button because hey, um, when you have that Society that starts out with baby knee pads because crawling is too dangerous, And then gets to the point where it's carrying you around And then sends you off to college without you ever having spent a night away from home because Mom or dad is too scared about that and anything could happen.

You could be molested on an overnight or and rest of the you know, molested on a sleepover. When you have that, It's the norm For your society.

It is hard to convince anybody that what i'm suggesting, which is just letting kids have an old-fashioned childhood Is okay, you know, is not crazy, is not negligence. It's actually really fortifying for the kid.

Well, in the in the book you discuss the influences that have kind of created this paranoia. Can you tell me a little bit about them? Um, there's obviously the media, which will go to the ends of the earth To bring you a horror story involving generally a young white child, Which is why a lot of us here in america Have heard the name of maddie mccann, the, the four-year-old who was taken from her hotel room in portugal. When i give my lectures, i ask people to raise their hand if they can tell me any other fact about portugal, Anything that's happened there in the last 500 years. And no one can, because the only fact we know from portugal is the only one that's important to tv, Which is that there was once a child kidnapped.

And the fact that they would go to the ends of the earth to bring that story back shows you two things: how valuable it is That they'll send the reporters and how rare it is, like a spice, like you have to go to a you know a far away place, Because if there just aren't that many in any given year. And if you want to keep them on the tv all the time and people watching, you have to find new ones.

And so you go scouting for them, as it were. So the media loves that story, and then they will.

You know, They'll replay it with bells and whistles on law and order or csi or the mentalist or whatever criminal minds, And so you feel 24 seven. You can turn on the tv and see a child being kidnapped, And it starts to feel as if that's true in the real world too. It must you know. If you, if you can see it all the time on tv, It starts to feel like 24 seven.

If you let your kid outside, He or she would be kidnapped, even though my, my favorite statistic i uncovered for my book was that if you actually wanted your kid To be kidnapped by a stranger and held overnight, Do you know how long you would have to keep them outside unattended for this to be statistically likely to happen? Sort of like How many lottery tickets you would have to buy to be statistically likely to win.

But anyways, how long would you have to keep your kid outside to have them kidnapped? Well, i'm cheating because i saw the talk, but, um, I will say for the purposes of the podcast: I don't know, you don't know people, people guess like a day or a week, and some people say an hour And some people say five minutes, And the answer is 750 thousand years, 750,000 years.

You know, the times quoted me and they got it wrong. They said it was the 750,000 hours, Which I don't even know how many days that is. But it's not as scary, the fact is, it's not as unscary. The fact is 750,000 years, and your child would be likely to be kidnapped.

You're not around, so it's no work, right, right. Right, it sort of moves, But anyways.

So one of the reasons is that the media is more It's it's it's international, It's 24, seven, And it has become obsessed with this one story because it's a ratings grabber. Just ask nancy grace.

And then the other things are that we live in a litigious society, and so You start thinking like a lawyer anytime: Is this safe? Is this not safe?

What about? You know There are.

There are playgrounds with no merry-go-rounds anymore and no seesaws, No tall slides, because you know somebody at the park district worried, What if something bad happens? And so they just preemptively Take all those things out And parents start thinking that way too, and it's like: well, What if something bad happens?

And there is a tiny chance that something bad will happen, and I, you know I could get not only what I feel bad, but it would be my fault. And so you start taking out a lot of the parts of childhood that that seem, even In a far-fetched manner, to be dangerous.

A third thing is that there's expert culture out there, and Experts have to have a market, and so they have to come up with something to warn you about, so that they can tell you how to Avoid it. And so Parenting magazine and parents magazine every month will will come up with new things that you had no idea, That you had to be worried about. One of the magazines- I can't remember which one- had had a four page article on how to have a, a fun and safe day With your child outside, outside of the house, outside of the house, as if it takes four pages of instructions.

Otherwise, you know it's just too dangerous to contemplate, and if you do it on your own, all bets are off And, oh my god, anything could happen. And of course, at the bottom of the page There's about seven different things that you could buy.

Buy this kind of stroller with this kind of break, Buy this kind of lunchbox with this kind of antimicrobial thing on it and make sure everything is chilled So nothing goes rotten. It's like by the time you've bought all that, you know you're living outside, You can't afford a house, But they exist to sell you things, and so if they make you worried about something, Then they can sell you the advice, and then they can also sell you products, and- and that's the product They sort of intensely.

The intense market That there is for safety is is the fourth thing that, I think, makes us nervous, because once you walk into a babies are us or, And you see all the products that are there To save your child from things that you didn't realize were dangerous before you start thinking that your children are really endangered every turn. You can buy a Helmet called the thud guard, Which is to put on your child the minute they start trying to tattle.

Um, And the way it's sold on its website is: you know, nobody wants traumatic head injury and i'm, like you know, huck, that I agree with. I do not want my child to suffer traumatic head injury. Um, but it's not.

Like You know, evolution hasn't prepared babies for the toddling stage. It has, and that's why they've got big fat bottoms to fall down on.

And now they have, You know, parents over that and then they have a skull, Which is there. You know, if your head was protected, if your brain was protected by a thin, Uh, saran wrap, you know, then I'd say go get a thud guard.

But fortunately, you know, 1.4 million years, or whatever it is, of evolution have already Created, um, a way for children to learn how to transition from crawling to walking without most of them Ending up with traumatic head injuries. And in fact, when I interviewed the head of a giant, uh, the st Louis children's hospital, He said the number of children he'd seen coming in from traumatic head injuries from toddling was zero. Um, But if they start selling you this and if you're flipping through the pages of a magazine and you see, Oh, the thud guard and trauma, and your, your child will be brain damaged for life, You start thinking it actually is a dangerous thing To have your child learn how to toddl without a helmet.

And so, By having all these products out there, the products placed Here in the parents, so that the parents will have to buy something to alleviate that fear. But the fear just keeps growing because, um, like I said, these, these companies can come up with a new thing every day To make you nervous about, and they have.

So Those things are kind of creating this paranoia right, a culture of fear, or whatever you want to call it. Um, You know, and- and that's why I don't even blame parents, I mean, you know, if you Innocently picked up parents magazine or parenting magazine and it had four pages on how unsafe it is for your children to go out Before you buy a seven hundred dollar stroller and a refrigerator to carry their food in. And if somebody else is telling you I read that bottles Are dangerous. If a kid eats something out of a plastic ball, He's going to grow breasts.

And then if you turn on the news and it's like this, just in the child who was missing in 1979, and then there's a whole story that reminds you that in 1979 a six-year-old was taken from the The uh bus stop, and it feels like it was yesterday, because there's the picture of the child again And there's the distraught parents again and your, your heart wells up, as as it will, because you're a human being If that's the society that you're surrounded by. No wonder you're scared to let your kids do anything. The message you are constantly getting is that your child is in danger. Your child is in constant danger unless you are there with him and circling around him and holding on to him and fending off All the horrible disasters that are are looming in front of him.

So I don't think of it as like individual neurotic parents, Like how could we all have gone crazy about the same things at the same time. It is a society-wide panic and what i've seen, ironically, that helps me is actually Letting them go, because when I let them go, and especially when I let them go on overnights, Be surrounded by boys, be surrounded by nature, be living on the ground, Be, be making a fire, when I let them do these things and they've come back Not scarred for life, but happy and confident and Shine- you know shining. In a way that has helped me.

You sometimes have to leap into the void and say, okay, I'm gonna trust the world, I'm gonna trust my kid, I'm gonna trust my own parenting, that I did a good enough job And I'm gonna let him go. And when you do and the kid comes back, You are so proud and so happy and so grateful. In the book too, You talk about, you have the 14 Command commandments, but that kind of helps walk people through a more rational approach to parenting. One of my favorites is, uh, A chapter called relax. The commander, I guess, is relax.

And then the subtitle is: not every little thing you do has that Much impact on your child's development, Because so many parents, You know, because of this advice industry we're in- that tells you how to do everything, As if nothing can be natural, as if the child won't ever develop. You get to the point where you think that everything you do is so significant that you better do it right Or all bets are off. It's a weird thing that we think that every second of the day must be optimizing this child, Otherwise They're left fallow and unformed.

So there's chapters on blamers, because people love to say, oh, you let your kid do x, y, z. Well, what if something bad happened?

And then they, they rack their brains for some far-fetched scenario That you should have been worried about instead of letting your child walk to school. What if they were, You know, lured away by the ice cream man and then they got into his truck, and then You know, either he was murdered or they over ate on sugar And they got a sugar high and then they missed their test. I mean anything that they can think of, they will think of to to blame you for not being Scared because they're threatened when you're not scared. There's a chapter on Turn off the tv because the tv will drive you crazy with bad story after bad story, And it goes on and on.

And then there's a whole section in the book Um, you know, i'm a reporter by trade. I was.

I spent 14 years at the new york daily news on staff and two years at the new york sun, so i'm good at research and so I researched, um, Whether certain things really are or are not dangerous, like these fears of parents, to see which are warranted and which maybe aren't. It gives you this approach outside of this whole.

I think you call it the soup of fear. Yeah, Yeah, we're kind of boiled in and you, you can look at the world a little more rationally and when you really Either do the research or crunch the numbers, a lot of it just fades, a lot of it just goes away. Really. But what i've seen in terms of like, if there's two approaches to reassuring parents. One is to present them with all the evidence, which is what I do in the book, and the other is to Show them their kids doing something without them. The latter wins, Oh my god.

So if there's any way that you can even, You know, convince parents like just this once, let him Walk to school. Let's see if he even likes it. Just this once haven't come to uh, on a scout overnight. Just this once, do Whatever it is. And it's almost like With the tv show. When I had the parents let me do these things with their kids, I would almost be assuming the blame.

Like you know, if something goes wrong you can blame me. It wasn't that you let them go, It's that Lenore said they could go.

So that removes one layer of fear, the fear of blame, When they, when the kids, come home and they've had their lemonade stand, or they made their fort or they, you know, Climbed a tree and all they can do is they might be won't believe it. We made this lemonade stand and then this guy came by and then I realized I hadn't put the lemonade.

You know, I hadn't put any sugar in, and he made this face. It was so funny.

But then we made 23 dollars and then everybody else was jealous because they wanted the lemonade stand. I said, no, it's my lemonade stand. When they see their kids Thrilled with something simple, a simple part of childhood, I'm not saying that they have to go around the world in a raft.

I'm saying when they've had a lemonade stand or an overnight, and they come back So excited about being a kid And being part of the world, That's what changes parents. Because it does two things: it reminds parents of how happy they were when they got to do some things on their own. And also, parents naturally want the best for their kids and suddenly the best, instead of being hovering, becomes letting them grow.

And You know, parents, they, they, they weep at the end when they realize. You know, I don't know why, I didn't believe. And one mom said, After she let her child first go out on her own and go on- No, even go on- a play date to a friend's house, She said. When her kid came home, She said it was like meeting her for the first time. It's like meeting somebody that she hadn't known.

Well, there's, there's a lot of experiences that we had as kids That were transformational, they were simple, they weren't, You know, world changing, but somehow they were just transformational for us And that's why I mean, that's why I invest my time in scouting, because I think it has. It's a very rich field for those kind of transformational experiences And I totally, totally believe that and I, I love what scouting is doing for my sons, You know, I mean it really it.

They have to grow up and And they might not even want to sometimes, I mean, sometimes it really involves, You know, putting away the tent, which is what I hear is a total drag. Or Or getting the little kids to, you know, clean up the litter, which is hard to do and and it's like me, cleaning up, That's like easy to just do yourself, But no, they have to get the kids to do it.

And then they come home and they're a little different, They're just, I mean, I want them To grow up and be responsible and be proud and reverent and brave and true and all that stuff. And- and weirdly enough, You know it's- I don't think scouts would be around for a hundred years if, if that wasn't, you know, If the there wasn't proof that that's what happens. Here's something that I see too, And I'm just curious if this is something that you've seen.

I think that, um, What children do Is heavily affected by the presence of adults. That if, if, for instance, The the scouts, are given a little bit of latitude to set up a campsite that's At some remove from where the adults are camping, and they get to Fix their own meals and somebody's just not breathing down their neck all the time, They, they act differently, They act more confidently And they- and they really do develop that confidence in that skill set that we're looking for.

I think that everybody knows this. I mean, I remember it even from when I was a kid, like I was so Desperately hoping my mom wouldn't come on field trips Because I was a different person with her and without her and I didn't want her to see The other person that I could be. Um, and not even that I was maybe more mature, But even that I was like if I was flirting or anything, I just I was growing up.

You know they say children grow when they're asleep. I think it's the children grow when they're away from their parents. I know, I've seen it in my own kids lives, that when I've I've come in and I thought I was like You did that on your own. How come I was doing that for you all along.

The other night We were having over This kid who had graduated from college, from high school. Um, my son's on the debate team. This was the older kid.

Um was coming over who had already spent a year at college from the debate team, And suddenly my son's room was really clean, You know, because he wanted the older kid to see that he is responsible. You know, now, if my sister was coming over and I said, clean up your room, I don't think it would get clean. But to do it for a fellow kid and show that, like, look, i'm growing up like you, it worked. Yeah, that could that kind of, uh, positive peer pressures and having to do stuff.

I mean, when I went to the court of honor the other night, um, And before it starts, you know you have to get the, the younger or the cub scouts into their chairs Or whatever, and I saw my kids doing that with the younger kids. I was like wow, You know, They looked so old to me.

Uh, in a good way, You know, it was nice to see and clearly they've been doing that without me there. So, linoire, thanks so much for joining us. Uh, I really appreciate your work. I appreciate the, the book and the whole uh concept of free range kids. And thanks for joining us on the Scoutmaster podcast, Clark.

You know how much I love the boy scouts, So this was a pleasure for me.