Lenore Skenazy
Founder, Free-Range Kids · President, Let Grow
Lenore Skenazy is the founder of Free-Range Kids and president of Let Grow, the nonprofit she co-founded with psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Peter Gray to make childhood independence normal again. In 2008 she let her nine year old ride the New York City subway home alone, wrote a column about it, and within two days was defending herself on national television as America's Worst Mom. She turned that moment into a book, a movement, and a campaign to pass state laws protecting reasonable childhood independence.
Reviewed July 2026Lenore Skenazy is an author and childhood-independence advocate who co-founded Let Grow with psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Peter Gray. In 2008 she let her nine year old ride the New York City subway home alone after he had been begging for the chance. He came home levitating with pride. She wrote a column about it, and within two days she was defending herself on the Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR against the title that stuck: America's Worst Mom. She turned that moment into Free-Range Kids, published in 2009 and re-released in 2021.
Her work makes the case that childhood independence, not constant supervision, is what builds resilient adults. Through Let Grow she runs free school programs like the Let Grow Experience and the Let Grow Play Club, and she has helped pass Reasonable Childhood Independence laws in 13 states, covering more than half the population and usually with bipartisan support. She argues that independence is how children build an internal locus of control, the felt sense that they can handle things, and that removing it feeds the anxiety parents are trying to prevent.
On The Ryan Vet Show, Lenore Skenazy traces how American fear of child abduction got distorted. She lays much of the blame at the media, pointing to the 1980s arrival of 24 hour cable news, a handful of high-profile kidnappings, and missing-kid photos on milk cartons that left out the context. Most missing children, she notes, are gone because of custodial disputes or running away, not strangers. Her favorite statistic: a stereotypical stranger kidnapping is so rare that you would have to leave a child outside unattended for roughly 750,000 years for it to become statistically likely.
The cost of overprotection, she argues, is not neutral. Drawing on Peter Gray's work in the Journal of Pediatrics, she connects the decades-long decline in children's real-world independence to rising anxiety and depression, and she frames tracking apps as replacing faith with certainty, with around 86 percent of children now tracked. The conversation connects to Ryan Vet's Generational Pendulum, which he traces from latchkey kids to helicopter parents to today's digital leash, while Lenore keeps the argument grounded in her own research and Let Grow's programs.
The episode closes on what works. The only thing that changes anxiety, Lenore says, is action, and she walks through Let Grow's free programs, the Reasonable Childhood Independence laws now passed in 13 states, and a Harris finding that kids themselves rank free play first and time online last. They are online by default, not by desire.
It is very hard to stay sane in a culture that keeps saying that your kids are in constant danger.
Anxiety is when you think that you can't handle something. If you try you will fail, and if you fail you will never recover.
Too much safety, like almost too much anything, can backfire.
Who is Lenore Skenazy?
She is the founder of Free-Range Kids and president of Let Grow, a nonprofit she co-founded with Jonathan Haidt and Peter Gray to make childhood independence normal again. She became known as America's Worst Mom in 2008 after writing a column about letting her nine year old ride the New York City subway home alone.
What does free-range parenting mean?
It means giving children the independence to do age-appropriate things on their own, like walking to school or running an errand, so they build real-world competence and confidence. Skenazy argues this independence is how kids develop an internal locus of control.
Is it actually safe to give kids more independence?
Skenazy argues the risk is far lower than most parents assume, noting that a stereotypical stranger kidnapping is extraordinarily rare. She makes the case that the greater risk is the anxiety that grows when a child is never trusted to do anything alone.
What are Reasonable Childhood Independence laws?
They are state laws clarifying that parents can give kids reasonable independence without it being treated as neglect. They have passed in 13 states, covering more than half the population, usually with bipartisan support.
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