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If You Love Them Let Them Go | Melissa Anderson Sweazy | TEDxMemphis
When filmmaker Melissa Sweazy came across a statistic that American children have, on average, less than 300 yards to roam unsupervised, she made a movie about the dangers of helicopter parenting. When she realized she was making her own daughter a statistic, she understood the truth to be a lot more complicated. In this short, funny talk, Sweazy ponders how we are to give our children the freedom they deserve in a world where parenting has become a full contact sport.
Melissa Anderson Sweazy is an award-winning screenwriter, film and music video director, essayist, photographer, and mother...
About Melissa Anderson
In a 2015 TEDxMemphis talk, Melissa Anderson Sweazy, then a filmmaker and mother, discussed the trend of "helicopter parenting" and argued for giving children more independence. She cited a statistic that American children have less than 300 yards to roam unsupervised and noted that the United States ranked 15th on the World Happiness Report, below Mexico. Sweazy stated that "if you really love your children, you'll listen to the real experts who are telling us to give them some space, because their mental health just may depend on it." Sweazy described making a film called "John's Farm" about a nervous father, calling it a "parable about the very nervous dad." She acknowledged her own difficulty in allowing her eight-year-old daughter to walk home unsupervised, but recounted a specific instance where she agreed to let a neighbor's daughter walk her child home. She observed that the children's play "looked remarkably the same" as her own childhood. Sweazy attributed the loss of children's roaming freedom to a shift from raising children in villages to raising them "from behind computer screens," where "neighbors have become strangers."
Transcript (7 segments)
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Melissa Anderson0:12
When you become a parent, people like to give you things: parenting books that worked for them, baby showers where sometimes you get diapers in the shape of a cake, and advice, lots and lots of unsolicited advice, because if you think about it, not many of us will become experts in our chosen fields, but when you become a parent, you become an expert in your particular field of baby, in the minutiae that makes your toddler a toddler. And after months and years of such intimate, specialized study, we all start to feel rather qualified to weigh in on any host of issues that deal with parenting children, fever, rash, drool, stool, and Greece's economic collapse. But it's why I'm here today: the expert on my two kids, here to give you some unsolicited advice on how, if you really love your children, you'll listen to the real experts who are telling us to give them some space, because their mental health just may depend on it.
But some background first. In addition to being a mother, I'm a writer, and I like to make movies on the things that I write. And like a lot of writers, I ascribe to the 'write what you know' adage. So, it's 2012. I'm a frustrated artist and mother of two very young children. So, what did I know? I knew enough to take on the most important role that I'll ever have. You fellow experts in the room know exactly what I'm talking about. Seemingly overnight, you're handed this brand new, tiny human being who is completely dependent upon hormonally wrecked, sleep-deprived you for its daily survival. And your job is to grow them so that they'll go. At this stage of the game, this sounds insane, because they were in your body, and now they're on your body, and they're going to have drivers licenses and go far away from you. Though, sometimes, you are more than ready for them to go far away. Sometimes, you will have a dream.
So, what did I know? What did I know to write what you know as a new parent? Well, if you're me, you procrastinate and you go on the Internet. Normally this is a bad idea, but I stumbled onto an article that profoundly changed the way that I see things as a parent. It was written by David Derbyshire, and it talked about how in 4 generations our children have lost their right to roam. A hundred years ago, the outermost circle on the map: an 8-year-old child had six miles to roam unsupervised. His son had a similar radius. You get to the 80s: his daughter had close to two miles, but you get to the present day, 2015, the bullseye on the map, and my childhood was not the bullseye on the map. When I was a kid, I roamed in packs, I explored my neighborhood and beyond. I played in the woods, I built forts, I caught frogs. I went home when the street lights came on, and I firmly believe it's this time period that I started to fall in love with the idea of storytelling. So this bullseye stands as the antithesis to my childhood, and a warning about my children's future.
See, there's this thing published every year called the World Happiness Report, and it's always these Nordic and Danish countries that come out on top every year, and the reason that they do so well is that they give their children the right to roam. The United States - we rank 15th on the World Happiness Report. Below Mexico. So, if I was on track to be ruining my children's childhood by not letting them get out of the bullseye, well, at least I should get a movie out of it. And I did! I made a movie about it, and it's called 'John's Farm', and it could just as easily be called 'Sympathy for the Helicopter Parent'. And it's about us. It's a parable about a very nervous dad who knows how terrifying the world can be, but he wants to do the right thing. So he brings his kid to this massive property for an epic free-range play date, but there is a catch: the parent has to wear a shock collar to protect the parent from himself. So, spoiler alert: dad crosses the bridge. And it's not the fine or the threat of expulsion that is his undoing. It's this.
My takeaway was: don't be that dad, because you see what you stand to lose. I felt good about the message, the movie was over, and then I started to see headlines like this: '11-year-old boy played in his yard; CPS took him; felony charge for parents'. And this: 'Parents under investigation for neglect after allowing kids to walk to playground'. Seemingly, once a week there was news about parents getting arrested for letting their children walk to the park. One of the mothers in question said, 'I just want to give them the same freedom and independence that I had. The only thing that's changed between then and now is our fear.' So, here's the rub. We're living in what some have deemed the safest time to be alive in history, but I think possibly the hardest time to be a parent. We no longer raise children in villages. We raise them from behind computer screens. Neighbors have become strangers, and we're just making it up as we go along. Right? And sometimes the most gratifying thing in the world is to take down the one parent you feel is doing a worse job than you are.
If we are to raise the kind of children to become confident and happy, and rank highest on the World Happiness Report, we have to give them the physical freedom to develop these skills, but our fear is sending a very different message. Dr. Brene Brown says, 'If we're always following our children into the arena, hushing the critics, and assuring their victory, they'll never learn that they have the ability to dare greatly on their own.' So, she's the expert. What about this expert up here? Who wants to take that kind of risk when the consequences are unthinkable? The experts tell us statistics are on our side, but what if it's my kid? What if? And what about me? What about the mom who felt so strongly that our kids should have the right to roam that she went and made a movie about it, but still won't let her own 8-year-old daughter out of the bullseye?
I got a text from my friend Sarah. She's a true free-range parent who lives in my neighborhood, wanting to know if her daughter could walk my daughter home along four blocks unsupervised. And I said yes. I went outside with my son, currently home from boarding school, to wait - and amazingly, another friend had joined them. They crossed the street and ran right for my neighbor's sprinkler. And all of a sudden, there was my childhood, and there was her childhood, looking remarkably the same. Thank you.