Free Range Boys---and Girls

In some areas of our country we still have what I call "The free range barefoot boys of summer." They wear cutoff shorts and roam the streets of our small towns---when they aren't deep in the swamps, woods, and creeks. I know we live in a society that frets about boys with too much freedom, and you can certainly point out the danger of splashing through back water swamps with poisonous snakes slithering out of the way. And I'm sure you can see the problem in climbing an old abandoned fire tower, or throwing rocks at each other, or maybe even using a sling shot to have a fake war.

Well, you'd be right, and if my mother had ever seen me climb that rickety fire tower she would have passed out---but she didn't and outside of that time I reached in a water-filled hole to pull out a crawfish and instead pulled out a deadly Coral Snake, I didn't really put myself in any more danger than a kid from New York does trying to cross Fifth Avenue against the light.

Are we overprotecting our kids? I grew up in the old oil fields of south Arkansas where big power stations without guard rails temped us to ride the rods---dangerous to say the least, but we survived and in fact we grew up relishing life because we had such a variety of experiences as we explored everything from abandoned hotels to snake infested beaver dams. It seems to me that free range boys---and even girls---come through their formative years better rounded and more capable of tackling the complex world we live in, than do sheltered kids from a gated subdivision.

If you want to get a glimpse of how I grew up as a free range kid, check out my novel The Red Scarf. Yes, it's a novel, but it's like John Gresham's A Painted House--he lived it and I lived The Red Scarf.

Free Range Kids--I think it's the way to let a kid be a kid. So give your boys---and girls--a little slack and let them experience life.