Let your kids ride the bus alone

Afterward, the administrators at Oak Knoll, one of the local grammar schools, came up to me and said We want to do a project like this. Oak Knoll’s theme for the year was confidence, and clearly the project dovetailed perfectly. So the school sent its 700 parents an email announcing the undertaking, along with some materials by me saying basically the same thing you’ve just read: Kids don’t get a chance to do much on their own, but when they do, it changes them. So why not encourage your son or daughter to do a completely voluntary, ungraded Free-Range Kids Project?

I don’t know how many kids begged their parents, “Pleeeeease!,” but about a third of the parents signed on, and, reports co-principal Kristen Gracia, “It was a huge success.” With the school’s endorsement, even anxious parents were willing to loosen the reins a little. They let their kids ride their bikes to the park, play at playgrounds unsupervised, take hikes, bake cookies, run errands—for a couple weeks, the highest-tech place on earth was a throwback to 1972.

But the most amazing part was not the transformation of the kids or even the neighborhood. It was the transformation of the parents.

“This has really changed our lives!” wrote a mom named Gina on a post-project survey the school sent home.