The Detached Parenting Movement (trademark pending) was spontaneously founded over a decade ago in St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital at the time of birth of my first child. And my belief in it has grown ever since. At the time of its inception I did not realize I was embarking on a life-long movement, but as I raised my child with a practical, common sense approach that seemed a fairly reasonable way of going about things, I discovered I was an anomaly.
Born out of the belief that parenting is not, nor ever should be, a competitive sport, the Detached Parenting Movement (DPM) sought to promote a more sane, sustainable and healthier parenting alternative – for rational people.
There is no right way for parenting though, as it all depends on the individual. Some parents might find it easier if they get a nanny or an au pair to help them. A lot more people are getting au pairs, particularly as it is now so easy for a young person to apply for the role through sites like Cultural Care Au Pair. However, even though there are more people who are going for this role, you don’t always need someone who can help you when it comes to raising your child. So if you would rather do it alone then that’s fine.
Detached Parenting: The more sane, sustainable and healthier parenting alternative - for rational people. Click To TweetBut mine was a lonely little movement. Coming into practice just as the helicopter parenting model soared to new heights and swept the nation to even greater levels of hysteria, DPM was largely overlooked. Still, the movement persevered, its dedicated membership (me) determined to keep the cause alive.
Armed with neither a PhD nor any degrees in child psychology, I began the movement with something even more powerful: A strong conviction. Not to mention an innate inability to hover.
Following in the footsteps of the Mother of all common sense mothering, founder of Free Range Kids and our lord and savior, Lenore Skenazy, DPM sought to build on Skenazy’s notion, the membership convinced parents could do more (or less) depending on how you looked at it.
While Skenazy sought to liberate kids from their sentences of eternal house arrest, suggesting they cast aside their ubiquitous, isolating, lobotomizing electronic devices in favor of actual interactions with other humans in real world settings also known as play, DPM called for more inaction to be taken on the part of the parents. In short, parents need to be more uninvolved.
DPM acknowledges Skenazy’s concept of free ranging kids may, at first, be scary. How in God’s name can parents possibly allow their children outside? In broad daylight? To play? Allowing children to roam free in the open green pastures of their manicured suburban subdivisions or neighborhood city sidewalks smacks of sheer lunacy. Playing in the yard of the home to which the parents moved upon having children so the children would have yard in which to play was much too dangerous. Behind every trimmed tree and spirally sculpted shrub, predators lurked, waiting for the instant a parent/neighbor/babysitter cast his or her gaze momentarily aside. Then the monster would swoop in and snatch the kids right from under the guardian’s nose.
The concept of free ranging kids may, at first, be scary. How in God’s name can parents possibly allow their children outside? In broad daylight? To play? Click To TweetChildren must be kept safe – inside. Imagination, creativity and independent thought will just have to be sacrificed for the child’s own good.
Leave me alone. I’m busy.
At DPM we (I) understand these concerns, but we (I) don’t see Helicopter Parenting as the answer. Using historical evidence of demonstrated effectiveness established over millennia of child rearing as our guide, Detached Parenting believes in the benefits of the absent parent. DPM acts as a refreshing counterbalance to the over-protective, over-parenting, over-wrought, overwhelmed and over-the-top Helicopter Parenting model. Detached Parenting, simply put, understands the parenting wheel has already been invented. No need to reinvent.
Recent scientific studies conducted by me back up these historical findings and go even further. They posit Detached Parenting is the absolute best way to parent. With my own children as blind subjects, the theory has been tested, and we now have living proof it works. By following the Detached Parenting model and allowing kids to freely explore, problem-solve, negotiate, judge, reason, establish rules and compromise without parental intervention we can produce strong, independent, imaginative, creative, self-sufficient, well-adjusted, capable, thinking people.
We’re free!
Gone (soon we/I hope) are the days of the finely-tuned playdate arranged by parents and orchestrated with parent-planned activities to ensure every moment of the fun “play” time with peers is occupied. Gone (soon we/I hope) are the hovering parents to intervene the moment children tire of the inflatable bouncy house rented precisely for the occasion or grow bored of creating decoupage trinket boxes of pressed flowers the host-mother painstakingly prepared for weeks in advance. Gone (soon we/I hope) are the hours spent by parents at little league practices/games followed by soccer practices/games followed by basketball practices/games followed by football practices/games follow by piano lessons/performances followed by dance class/recitals followed by gymnastics followed by voice lessons followed by acting classes, all to keep little Johnny and Jane busy because they don’t know what to do with themselves on their own.
The evidence is clear, my friends. We need to detach. We need to allow our children to develop a brain. We need to let them learn to play again. Because play is how kids learn.
Join me in this fight won’t you? Together we can save the children.
If you like this you’ll love my book, I STILL JUST WANT TO PEE ALONE, the third installment in The New York Times best-selling series. Available on Amazon, Kindle, iTunes and Barnes and Noble.
photo credit: Tampa Band Photos via photopin cc
photo credit (top): Seth W. via photopin cc
photo credit: Steve Crane via photopin cc
photo credit (bottom) Flickr/ND Strupler
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I’m gonna put up my feet and join the movement by not moving… or something like that. My favorite family activity is when the kids go play in the basement (or backyard).
How do you get them to go outside? My kids act like that’s a punishment. I swear, playing now, w/o some mind-numbing devise, is like punishment to them.
Mine are still teensy and they really like the sandbox. Also, my son gets a kick out of peeing on the broken garden statue chicken.
Maybe I need a broken garden chicken statue. I’ll try anything.
Lock the back door 🤗
I could be your number 1 follower. I am a card carrying detachment parent. Now to team up a spread the truth!
Word! Sorry your comment got lost. And thanks for hounding me about it b/c I have never once checked spam or even though to check it so I found all sorts of stuff in there. Now on to creating our Wine Commune from which we will not only preach but will also demonstrate Detached Parenting.
Ha ha ha! My son detached himself and moved as far away as he could get. That old umbilical cord stretched as far as it would go!!! (PS I voted!)
TY! I’m voting this afternoon for everyone I know b/c that’s when I did it yesterday & it won’t let you vote again for a full 24 hours. Annoying.
I know! I found that out, too.
THANK YOU.
Sign me up! You know how magazines always brag how a celebrity is a hands on parent? Whats so great about that? You know who’s the real smart one, the hands off parent. The ones who still have a life and some level of sanity. I strive to be that one day too.
Well, traditional magazines are all BS anyway. Plus the celebrity parent is “hand on” for about the length of the interview & then the 10,000 nannies take over. Please.
I love Free Range parenting! How are kids supposed to figure things out for themselves if their parents are constantly hovering over them, jumping in every time there’s the littlest issue? Funny post!
Thank you. I agree completely, and I worry about the generation of brain-dead kids we are bringing up.
I’m a card carrying detachment parent, I wrote a wonderful comment to this but I lost it so you get this… Love your work..
Thank you so much. Very kind.
Woot! I wish I’d thought of that term. The AP movement seriously about killed me. I love this!
Stay away from the parenting “experts.” Far far away. They are all men who have never raised children. What the hell do they know?
I know this is super old but hear hear about the men who came up with AP but don’t do any of the child rearing. Absolutely true.
hahahaha, I love this. My kids want to go outside all the time, but since they still can’t put their shoes on by themselves that’s too much effort me.
Well said. Provide a safe environment and take a couple steps back… Teaching independence is so important.
I’m with you! I mean, probably most moms do some attachment aspects or another, but I love the free range children concept and am always having to rein in my inner helicopter. I wasn’t raised that way, so I don’t know why it’s my default mode. But at least I recognize that it’s silly and don’t let myself do it.
Well, it’s drilled into us – be scared, danger lurks everywhere, no place is safe – so naturally we get paranoid. I just never really bought into the whole “Watch out your child is going to be stolen myth.” Lenore Skenazy does a great job of debunking those myths and presenting real statistics. The funny thing is I feel like the dangers we should focus on we aren’t (water & drowning which I think may be the highest cause of children’s deaths) and the things we shouldn’t (random strangers stealing your kids which is very unlikely) we are. Of course, no one wants anything bad to happen to their kids, but it’s important to note that being overprotective has negative consequences too.
I am often looked at as a bad parent because I don’t hover around my boy and baby proof every little thing in my house to protect/shelter him. I just don’t get it, why is that labeled as bad parenting? What’s good parenting?
They got it wrong. That is GOOD parenting.
Oh, so happy to find this post over at HonestMom. I, too, am a Free Range Parenting fan (in fact, just last week the POLICE came by to ask if that was MY son…riding his bike alone on the bike path 40 yards from the front porch where I was sitting with my coffee). Without Lenore, I would just feel neglectful…it is a joy to find like minded moms out there. We have to LET these kids learn and develop their innate ability to protect themselves. They can’t learn it if we do it for them!
Yes, I know it is such a relief to find other non-crazy parents. The sad part is if everyone (or most) people allowed their kids some freedom, nobody would have to ride their bike alone or walk to school alone b/c all the kids would be doing it, thus diminishing the “danger” factor.
I have to say, I think you have confused Attachment Parenting with Helicopter Parenting crossed with Over-Achieving Mom Syndrome. Either that or I have gravely misdiagnosed myself. I mostly considered myself an AP but am currently regretting some aspects (nursing the 21-mo-old is getting, well, old) but in all seriousness, I hadn’t really wanted to give motherhood a third go-round in the first place. At any rate, I am quite probably one of the laziest parents I know, so regardless of parenting style, I probably wouldn’t be “following” any of them correctly anyway. My kids like their electronics, but they do actually read real books and go outside to play quite a bit, so we have some balance that way.
Well, I am really talking about helicopter parenting & over-achieving mom syndrome, but I called it Detached Parenting b/c it sounded funny, and I think parents need to detach from their kids a little more. It was a play on Attachment Parenting but I wasn’t really commenting on Attachment Parenting.
Love it. I am anxiously awaiting (1) The end of winter so they can go OUTSIDE and (2) my children to get old enough that sitting on my lap is no longer their preferred activity. I aspire to Detached Parenting!
I know. I got my kids a multi-million dollar (kidding, sort of) playset so they could go outside, but guess what? Being up my butt is still their preferred activity. Maybe I should call it Kick Your Kid to the Curb Parenting.
I’m with you! Kids need to be bored sometimes. And they need to know how to get out of sticky situations on their own. And they need to have a sense of independence, so they can grow confident in their own abilities. Etc, etc, etc. I am glad when parents give their kids boundaries, then let the kids free within them. Nice post!
This is a great article. Not too long ago I heard myself say, “No, I don’t feel like worrying about you being around the corner” when my son asked to go to his friends house. I was busy doing something where I couldn’t turn on my bionic ears. I haven’t said no again. 😉 TALU
Yes, it is nerve-wracking, and I still worry, but, is my kid really not safe to go around the corner literally? His friend lives around the corner on the next street and we don’t live in the hood. I used to do it & lived to tell about it. Rationally, I know nothing is going to happen, but as parents we will always worry. (Frankly I think it’s probably more dangerous to let a teenager get a driver’s license, but that seems fine by everybody.)
I battle with this all the time. I am the classic paranoid mom. I set boundaries though and let the kids explore and be independent within them. However I don’t think I could ever stomach letting my kids walk around other neighborhoods or down city streets on their own. It scares the poop out of me. lol
I’m talking about walking around their own neighborhood. Of course it depends on where you live (we live in a pretty small town & all the houses are pretty close together & usually there are people out walking dogs, ect. & there aren’t any busy roads my kids would cross w/in the neighborhood), but I think the paranoia has been beaten into us rather than a real, rational danger. Of course, letting our kids out of our sight is always a scary proposition, but I aso think there is a real downside to not letting kids develop independence and reasoning skills and imagination (not saying you don’t. I’m just saying those things are usually curtailed when kids are restricted.)
In the words of Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sallly,
“YES! YES! YES!”
Love everything you said and I am On. Board.
Thanks for linking this up with the TALU!
This is so funny. And I don’t hover around my son at all. Sometimes we do stuff together, and sometimes he does his own thing. He knows he can find me on the couch if he needs me 😉
PS linking from TALU btw
WORD.
Oh, I completely agree!! I’m so right ahead of you when it comes to reclining on the couch while my boys go off to the pool…or somewhere!!
My parents used the DPM approach (before it was called that :)) — we spent our days exploring and our evenings playing night games. Now, every once in awhile we could have used some supervision — like the time I swiped my dad’s revolver and took it up to the foothills to practice target shooting. Or the time we climbed the mountain and my friend fell off a small cliff and broke some bones. But we all survived!
Exactly. Everyone survived. No harm no foul.
Exactly (except for the gun part).
During my younger years I was allowed to play outside of our house, normally between the hours of 3-5pm and this playtime serves as my reward for having been able to go for a nap before that. I remember playing with almost every kid in our street, we’d usually play in groups and it was so much fun.
I really long for those days. It’s something this generation will never know.
I <3 you! That is all. 🙂
Thank you so much. Right back at ya!
Where can I find more info on DPM.. do you recommend any sites? I believe I do a version of DPM, and now I’m glad to know there is a name for it.
Well, I made that up but welcome to the club. You know Lenore Skenazy? She wrote Free Range kids. THere’s a few more of us out there.
Our shared views on paying less attention to our children proves that we could actually be long lost twins. Enjoyed this very much!!!!
Yes, I thought so too! We must unite in this fight!
Aww, thank you so much!