“Free Range… Kids”?
When I first read that headline, I thought maybe I was gonna see a good diet article on how my omnivore friends can eat a baby goat without the guilt. Alas, it was just another article on bad parents. Ones who let their kids run around town free “without the worry”. And by “without worry” they mean “without supervision”. I’m actually not sure where the “without the worry” bit comes from (Ostrich-head-in-the-sand-syndrome?). This may sound strange, since I’m all for not living out of fear – but that’s irrational fear that I don’t condone. I am for abiding by reality while working toward solutions on how to improve that reality. That’s, ya know, if I had a kid of my own to make any of this hypothetical concern relevant.
That said, I have exactly one problem with this movement.
Nothing.
Hear me out. In the grand scheme of things, in 500 years when you, I, and and these kids are all dead anyway (whether of natural causes or something far darker), will it really matter? When the only rock in the sky we can presently call home is issuing moribund cries itself under the weight of too many stupid people residing on it at once? Yeah, it’s kinda stupid to leave a five, eight, whatever-year-old unattended. But you know what? That kid’s also not mine. So I don’t get to tell you what to do. I mean, in the old days, my mom used to walk her six year old ass to school and back on the daily, no worries. And while times have changed, the way I see it is this: we’re overpopulated anyway, so why not let idiocy do the work of Darwin? I mean, is there not a difference between compassion and coddling the ignorant with laws they refuse to follow until there’s too many of us and we start falling off the earth, just there beyond the horizon? (dumbception).
Only in part.
And I sense that you might be getting worried ’cause I sound a bit like a sociopath. I promise, all evidence to the contrary, I’m not totally heartless. If I see your kid getting dragged off by a Chester, I’m going to morph into Beatrix Kiddo and turn his body into a stack of standing sliced meat, starting with the nads and flee with the miniature human to safety. But I suppose my point is this: if you’re dumb enough to let your progeny get Lovely Bones’d by the coke-bottle bespectacled neighborman with a trap door leading into the earth, then ya know what? At least when that 500 years comes to pass, the regrettable bloodline infused with the “neglect” gene won’t have survived to spread any more indirect misery amongst the (literally) lost youth.
Still, I like to end on a nice, good-messaged note when I can. Offer some positive advice. Especially when I love the idea of not sheltering your kids till they end up all crazy and anxious like me. I concede, that the intention here is excellent. So today, my suggestion goes thusly: How about, instead of genuinely letting your offspring wander around aimlessly and eventually into a blacked out candy van, we instead let them think they’re discovering the earth unobserved. And, like, secretly actually follow them. Ya know – like the mom from “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”? It’s all the benefits of hands-on learning and independence without any of the risks.
Please say you’ll consider it.
I mean, if we can improve the I.Q. of your genetic line, maybe it won’t have to die off.