Free-range kids movement - New York News | NYC Breaking News

Free-range kids movement

School has just been dismissed and the Ancient Playground in Central Park is bustling with children and their watchful parents. But some parents aren't keeping such a close eye.

"All of us remember walking to school or going to the candy store," said Lenore Skenazy. "For some reason we don't let our kids do that and I think that's because we've been trained to go to that worst case scenario in our brain."

Skenazy, a New York City-based writer and mom to two boys, is spearheading the "free-range kids" movement.

"Free-range kids is a movement of parents and other people who believe our children are not in constant danger, therefore we shouldn't hover over them as if they were," she said.

Skenazy even went as far as to let her son Izzy, now 14, take the subway by himself when he was 9, earning her the nickname "the worst mom in America."

But skenazy she said the city is safer than it was in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s.

"I think that's something we should celebrate by letting kids have more freedom in their lives," she said.

But child psychologist Nava Silton said a lack of supervision could be dangerous as well as detrimental to a child's development. 

"Children really benefit tremendously from structure, and when children have the sense that they have a figure that they could depend on," Silton said. "It gives them a whole sense of security and they feel like they have a natural base to explore and to be creative and to stimulate their imaginations."

Other parents we spoke to at the playground said they wouldn't turn their backs on their kids for a second.

"That's not a good idea because there are pedophiles there are kidnappers," one mom said. "I mean I wouldn't do that."

Skenazy was charging $350 to not watch these kids; three parents left their kids with her, but she said she waived the fee for them. We should point out those parents were friends of hers.