A Free-Range Family

RIGHT NOW, CHILDHOOD is intensely meh. Maybe you read the recent report in The Journal of Pediatrics that said that as kids' independence and free play have gone down, their anxiety and depression have been going up.

- Lenore Skenazy

Or maybe you picked up Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation and read about how kids need to return to a play-based childhood or else fall off the mental health cliff. Perhaps you saw the surgeon general's report about how kids are utterly miserable-or his newer report about how parents are utterly miserable.

Kids are having less fun growing up oversupervised, and parents are having less fun constantly supervising them. Both generations desperately need freedom. And it turns out that when adults step back, kids step up.

I co-founded Let Grow, where we believe today's kids are smarter and stronger than our culture gives them credit for. We are making it easy, normal, and legal to give kids the independence they need to grow into capable, confident, and happy adults.

If you are ready to start raising free-range kids, here are some goods to make it as easy as falling off a log (something else you should let your kids do). Note: You don't actually have to buy anything to make this happen. Just open the door! But in the interests of capitalism, here are some freedomenabling goods.

FOR KIDS

WALKIE-TALKIE A walkie-talkie is the poor man's iPhone, but better. It lets kids reach you and vice versa―nothing more. Yes, they'll be home for dinner. Thanks for checking in, kids. Now go find a dead body or something.

A LET GROW 'KIDS LICENSE'