"Remember, honey, transfer to the "F" train at 34th street"

Izzy and mom (MSNBC)

I was born and raised in a smallish town of about 20,000 souls. From the time I started kindergarten at age 5, I walked to school, a distance of about 3/4 mile. I crossed one street busy enough to have a traffic light.
Were my folks guilty of child abuse? Lenore Skenazy is a columnist for the New York Sun. The other day, she found herself shopping with her 9-year-old son Izzy in a midtown Manhattan department store. Like any sensible boy, Izzy wanted to go home. So she gave him a subway map and twenty dollars (plus two quarters in case he needed to use a pay phone), and told him she'd see him later at home. He took the Lexington Avenue line downtown, and transferred to a crosstown bus. Yes, of course he made it home. He was quite pleased by his mother's display of confidence: "I was like, 'Finally!'" MSNBC quoted him as exclaiming. His mom wrote a column in the Sun about Izzy's new independence. “Half the people I've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse," she mused ruefully. MSNBC's own on-line reader's poll showed 52 percent of respondents saying they would never have allowed their own child to duplicate Izzy's excellent adventure. Thirty-five percent said yes, a guy's got to face the world on his own, sometime. The others just didn't know. Skenazy used her son's experience to make a point.

I just think about all the college kids who are still sending their essays home to be edited by their parents. I talked to one lady whose daughter sends her pictures when she’s trying on clothes: ‘Mom, what do you think of this? What do you think of that?’ At some point you have to let go and let them live their life.

A generation ago, parents had to beg their kids for a monthly call home from college. Now the generations seem to live together in a perpetual mind meld. Somewhere, of course, there's a happy medium, and you don't necessarily have to agree with Lenore Skenazy's actions to feel that more independence by some of today's kids would be a good deal.

I've spent time in New York. I've also known nine-year-olds. A few kids that age can't be trusted to tie their own shoelaces without falling on their face, but many or most can negotiate a subway ride on their own. I, for one, agree with Izzy's mother. And yes, I do know there are weirdos out there, but, as Skenazy suggests, Izzy could also be struck by lightning -- or by a refrigerator falling from a five story roof -- as he walks down the street. Prudence is reasonable, but mother birds know enough to push their fledglings out of the nest just as soon as their wings will support them.

The human race escaped the jungle through a sense of adventure. We shouldn't try to keep our kids on a leash, simply because we fear the world's dangers, real or imagined.

So, here's to you Lenore Skenazy. You're my kind of parent.