Free Range in the City

Since the weather broke, we've been allowing Maxon, who is 11, and Ezra, who is 8, to ride their bikes and scooters around our neighborhood just south of Center City. I set boundaries, which includes the playground up the street. In the afternoons I can see them see them whiz past the kitchen windows as I'm cooking dinner, a blur of hoodies and hair, and I remember what it was like to speed through my mother's suburban neighborhood unsupervised, as I often did because helicopter parents didn't yet exist.

Now, do I worry about them out in the neighborhood parentless? Yes. But one of my biggest fears is that someone might call the cops on me, like the concerned Maryland resident who called 911 when she spotted a 6- and 10-year-old walking home alone. A few months later, the same children were picked up by police at their local park when another person called 911 because the kids were there without parents. This family and their story made headlines and introduced more people to the term "free range parenting."

You may be familiar with this type of parenting, because you most likely had it as a child. When I was in elementary school, I'd play unsupervised in those orange hours after school, usually along the creek behind my friend Jenny S.' house. We were often on a Charlie's Angels mission and avoiding quicksand. We rode our bikes to playgrounds and spun around on equipment that inspired 1,000 lawsuits. Even in the city, from the time I was 11, I ambled around with my sister or my girlfriends — to the arcade behind the Burger King, to the Deluxe Diner for a Bagel Deluxe, to the movies, to Urban Outfitters, to The Goat in Rittenhouse Square to eat a Froz Fruit...

So I wonder why there isn't more acceptance of this today. Because when someone calls 911 on kids walking home instead of asking the kids themselves if they're lost or need help, the community isn't working the way it should.

I want my boys to enjoy the same kind of unsupervised freedom that I experienced growing up – the kind of afternoons Maxon has when he visits his friends who live in the suburbs. There's an abandoned car with the air bags plucked out in a woodsy area behind one of the communities, squatting on its flat tires and providing housing for mice and beer cans. Maxon told me about the games they played on the car, the golf cart they found, the strange doll in a tree. I felt guilty for not being able to provide Maxon and Ezra with their own secret spot peppered with odd treasures. I wanted to give them more independence. 

The Talmud outlines few guidelines for parents to follow, which include teaching your child Torah, teaching him a trade and teaching him to swim. In Jewish thought, the goal in parenting is to foster independence, even in situations that seem dangerous, such as a big body of water. Wendy Mogel inThe Blessing of the Skinned Knee puts this concept together quite elegantly: "By giving them a chance to survive some danger and letting them make some reckless or thoughtless choices, we teach them how to withstand the bumps and knocks of life."

So I pulled out the bikes, told them the boundaries and cooked dinner. I watched them whiz by the windows, laughing with each other, racing and actually enjoying each other's company.

Then one recent afternoon, there was a knock at my front door.

When I opened the door I saw young man standing with Ezra, Ezra's bike, and Ezra's bloodied knees and elbow. I readied myself, expecting to be chastised for my negligent parenting. 

"Hi," the man said. "I'm working on the house around the corner and I saw your son fall. It looked pretty bad. I wanted to make sure he got home OK."

It’s a wonder I didn't French kiss him. That is a community working.

After I dressed Ezra's wounds, I walked the boys over to say thank you with a few beers from my fridge. Maxon and Ezra continued to bike in the neighborhood for another hour, and every so often they sped past the windows, their laughter audible even though they were out of sight.