let go to let kids grow
Tell us about yourself.
I grew up in suburban Chicago. Like everyone I’ve spoken to over the age of thirty-five, I played outside as a child—jumping rope and drawing with chalk. We knocked on our neighbours’ doors to find out if our friends were home so they could come out to play. We rode our bikes to the library and walked to school from about the age of five. And I realise that this is totally foreign to kids today. I’ve spent the past fifteen years wondering how childhood changed so dramatically—taking away the freedom of kids and mums simultaneously, replacing it with something very expensive in terms of time and money that’s more boring and less fulfilling for both generations. Yet, we think it’s better because we’ve been sold the idea that it’s safer.
What was happening in your life before you launched Let Grow?
About fifteen years ago, my son was nine and started asking my husband and me to take him someplace he had never been before and let him find his way home by subway. We eventually said yes, and one Sunday, we took him to Bloomingdale’s in New York—which is a big department store—and sure enough, he took the subway home. I worked as a freelance writer, so I wrote an article. Then, about five years ago, I was approached to start Let Grow.
