Lenore Skenazy, who parlayed a column on letting her son Izzy ride the subway alone at age 9 into a career, offers an essay on the new New York version of Huffington Post on, yup, how we baby our children and at what age a child should be allowed to ride the subway alone.
That original column in the defunct New York Sun has been good for business for Skenazy, whose book Free-Range Kids came out last month.
You may have heard about me, too, thanks to the fact I’ve been on every TV show from Dr. Phil to Nightline to The View. (I love those ladies! Yes, even Elizabeth!) Or it could be because I’ve been lauded and/or lambasted in newspapers and magazines from Chile to China to Malta. (An island. Who’s stalking the kids there? Dophins?)
Or it could be you heard me on NPR one of the six or seven times they interviewed me about the topic. Or on the BBC. Or on the Today Show. Or Australian TV. Whatever.
Skenazy hears from a man named Irving, who was 10 when he rode the subway to visit Grandma in the Bronx for Hanukah…in 1929!
Irving says his solo voyage was one of the great moments in his life.
Now here’s a guy who has been married for 66 years. He has children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and even two great great grandchildren, which I wasn’t sure was humanly possible. He fought in World War II. But one of the defining moments of his LIFE was that first time he did something “grown up” by himself.