Constant Supervision is Making Kids Depressed
You’ve heard it here before. Now comes this short, poignant video by Kite and Key illustrating Let Grow Co-founder Peter Gray’s influential Pediatrics article: “Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Wellbeing.”
Simply put: Constant supervision is making kids depressed and anxious.
And yet we know it can be hard to start stepping back. Want a little help? Take our Pledge of Independence and we’ll send you an independence-inspiring activity a week!
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Before the 1980s, residential streets, front yards, parks, and after-hours school grounds were full of kids as young as five playing, riding bikes (on the street, not the sidewalk), or walking to school, all without any adult presence. Halloween night (not late afternoon), the neighborhoods were filled with kids out trick-or-treating with no grownups. Today, you can drive up and down the streets of my town, or any town, and not see any children. It’s like a “Twilight Zone” episode about a parallel Earth where children don’t exist.