Academy Of Ideas

Recorded at the Batle of Ideas 2015 In a week where opprobrium has been heaped on the parents of a four-year-old child who had to be rescued from a gorilla enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo, while the parents of a Japanese seven-year-old boy face charges after abandoning him to wander in the woods for a week, listen to this session from the Battle of Ideas 2015 where Lenore Skenazy argues that far from being obsessed with what our kids might be up to, we must give them the freedom to roam and explore without constant adult supervision. The term ‘cotton wool kids’ has become part of everyday language. Indeed, many parents, academics and others share a concern that children have become over­protected. The worry is that youngsters no longer have enough freedom to explore, to get into scrapes, have accidents and work out how to deal with situations when they don’t have adults telling them what to do. Discussions about this problem often focus on Mum and Dad: the blame, it is said, lies with ir