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Reblogged:Standing Up for Independent Parenting

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"Don't you know that hiding under a rock is the best way to avoid being hit by a meteorite?" (Image via Pixabay)
Over at Let Grow, where "free range parent" Lenore Skenazy has set up shop, is some advice for parents who wish to counteract today's widespread pressure to adopt a hypervigilant parenting style. Professor Barbara Sarnecka of the University of California-Irvine recommends three broad strategies: comparing commonly-exaggerated risks to other de minimis risks, shifting the focus of the discussion from avoiding risk to fostering independence, and reminding adults of relevant positive experiences from their own childhoods.

I think each strategy can be a valuable part of helping others re-calibrate how they assess risks, reconsider the propriety of doing so for others, or both. Sarnecka's discussion of the first tactic was on the money, and will probably also make anyone weary of a constant stream of ninnyish advice smile a little:
When you drove here today and you parked your car, did you choose your parking space based on the possibility that there could be snipers on the roofs of the buildings around you? Did you say, "Well if I park here, snipers on that building could get me ... but if I park here, the awning will shield me from snipers over there ..."

Probably not, right? Now, could you really be 100% sure that there weren't snipers on the buildings? No, because it's not impossible. But it's SO unlikely that you just don't worry about it. You would be nuts to plan your parking around it. [bold in original]
Many parents today are scolded or even faced with legal trouble for doing such once-commonplace things as leaving a child in a car for a short time, and this problem is worsening. It will take many of us standing up for ourselves when the opportunity arises for this to begin to change.

-- CAV

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