Free Range parenting - the pros and cons

Just because we chose the alternative free-range parenting style doesn’t mean we weren’t fully involved in our kids’ lives. We just gave them room to make mistakes, in effort to teach them important life lessons.

We started teaching the kids how to care for themselves at a very young age. Laundry By age 8, kitchen duty by age 10, having small jobs with family at a young age, 12.

We pushed for complete honesty and trusted them; in return, we hid nothing and censored nothing.

Our job as parents is to turn our kids into responsible self-reliant adults. You can’t do that if you shelter them from everything and fix every problem for them. It’s vitally important to learn the value of your failure and aim to do better. Humility is an important lesson.

I’m happy to say our approach worked well.

At age 40 both kids moved out of the house and completely take care of themselves. They never need money or get into bad situations. They both have completed college degrees with little to no large debt and successful careers.

We trusted them to report their grades and issues at school and they did. Sure, there were times of misbehavior, and we usually took something of significance away as punishment. This seemed to be the most effective and learning way to serves consequences of bad decisions. We did the best we could to provide them with the necessary skills to adult successfully.

We continually invested hours of schoolwork, projects, funny YouTube videos, school functions, extracurricular activities but we didn’t push to control every aspect of their lives. We gave them opportunities to come to us with anything or trusted them to complete their projects themselves but they’re to be included like an adult.

We taught them everything important we could think of. Like anatomy, rockets, how to do laundry, how to file taxes, and most importantly, we taught them to accept responsibility for mistakes as well as success. We taught them to be and treat everyone equal.

We never hid anything; I stress the importance of this policy because I continually see parents that run out to smoke a cigarette and stay in a state of fear their kid will discover them. It just seems so wrong. Children are smart and they know what’s up. So, we hid nothing. In return they trusted use equal, and we let them watch anything on tv except X-rated material. We wanted them prepared for the world and to be brave. To do that you have go know the world. That produced respectful and most importantly honest young adults.

. I always promised if they were truthful, they wouldn’t be punished; but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t get mad. That policy seemed to serve us well. They felt ok to confide in us when mistakes were made. And boy were their mistakes.

Today our children are young adults and do not expect anything, to be done for them. They know the best way to get what they want is to do it yourself.

We doted on them in ways of awkward humor and games, sometimes information was a little TMI. We strived to continually educated them with books and home science projects. We basically treated them as mini versions of ourselves, and it really did teach then to work hard and know the value of a dollar.

The biggest downside of this parenting style is the kids grow and leave to start their own lives and don’t always have time for parents. It’s bittersweet; your proud but you miss the hell out of them. I am so proud to have completed my purpose in life by contributing my progenies to humanity.

They became busy worker bees navigating the world and in search to shape a family or lifestyle all their own.

In my humble opinion, our job in life is done. I’ve duplicated my cells and knowledge to the next generation, and they are independent, successful contributing members of society which will continue the cycle of life by doing the same.

What more could we do or ask for, some grandkids would be nice, but you don’t always get everything you want.