Kids fly down my street on their skateboards and bikes to the nearby community center and I smile and shake my head. “I do wish they’d be safer on their bikes,” I mutter to myself, but am glad that they can do so. I think back to my mom talking about how she’d walk around her town as a kid and take the bus to the movies in the next town over.

Sadly, I know my neighborhood is a relative rarity in American society. 

In some neighborhoods, it’s because of lack of access to safe streets without too much traffic. In some, gun violence looms as a constant threat. 

In many, it’s fear from adults that keeps kids from having independence. Fear for their own kids – sometimes well-justified. Fear that leads to judgment that leads to calling the police or child services if someone thinks you’re a “bad parent.” Fear that other adults will judge you and potentially take that drastic action. 

A lot has been written about kids’ lack of freedom, connecting it to everything from lack of exercise to depression, with few solutions offered.  But instead of wringing our hands for the “good old days” (which weren’t good for so many people), we can make things better for everyone – for all kids and families! 

Build better streets and transportation

Getting around without cars – by using biking, walking, and public transit – should be good for kids. It builds independence, connects you to your neighbors, allows for a sense of responsibility and more. But it isn’t good if you don’t have safe infrastructure and drivers with an eye towards safety. If you don’t have sidewalks and people drive too fast, kids can’t have the freedom they deserve. 

A big step is making our cities and suburbs safer to traverse without a car. Adding bike lanes and sidewalks provides safe spaces to get around while also slowing down traffic by narrowing roads. Protecting areas around schools is especially important, as it allows kids to walk or ride into school. Programs like Safe Routes to School and Bike to School Day normalize and encourage biking and walking for kids. Having official school events that use biking and walking can help too. Washington D.C.’s P.E. classes teaching every fourth grader to ride a bike are exceptional. But even things like my younger son’s first grade class walking to a field trip at the local grocery store makes a difference. 

For older kids, providing reliable, safe public transit allows everyone who can’t drive – including preteens and teenagers – to get where they need to be, freeing up time and energy for parents and kids alike. 

Create welcoming, inclusive public spaces

Kids need places they can be kids, whether those are toddlers with their parents or bored teenagers. A key part of providing kids with independence is having spaces outside their houses where they can have it. For people my generation and a bit older, it was the mall. Now that many malls are gone or you get kicked out for wandering around as we once did, we need better, more supportive spaces. Parks, public pools, community centers, and downtowns can all contribute. They need to be truly inclusive spaces, for families and kids of all races, religions, and LGBTQ+ status. I love that our town center area is a place where people of all ages, races and economic standing spend time and seem to feel (relatively) welcomed. 

Invest in our neighborhoods 

In the 1980s, my historically Black neighborhood used to be known as one of the most unsafe, high-crime places in the county. (We had our landlords at the time make outright “You’re moving there?!” comments when we bought our house in 2010.) You’d never know that today, save the bars on the window of the tiny beer/wine/grocery store down the street and the occasional thing stolen from an unlocked car. It’s far from fancy, but it’s a wonderful, diverse, safe neighborhood. 

It transformed because the city finally invested in it, providing the resources it had denied it for decades. In addition to a lot of housing reform, the city built a community center and parks that my kids still play at regularly. (Shout out to the community center staff that listen to us badly play table-tennis!)

But the city only did so because of advocates from the neighborhood pushing for years and years. One of those was my late neighbor, Wilma. She lived across the street from me and had grown up in the neighborhood. I had the amazing privilege of hearing about its history – both good and bad – from her. My takeaway was that she always believed in it, even when there were really hard times. She always believed it could be better and would fight for it. By the time I met her, she was clearly pleased at how much safer it had become, in many ways returning to how she remembered it as a child. She loved that there were new families moving in. There’s a park named for her now and whenever I attend a public meeting or similar event, I think about her legacy. 

Be good neighbors 

While most of us will never be Wilma, we can all be better neighbors to each other. In particular, this can mean providing support to other parents rather than judging or even criminalizing them. Parents should not have the police or Child Services called on them for giving children needed independence just because someone disagrees a little with their parenting (especially if they aren’t white!). People shouldn’t be tisk tisking parents for their kids being loud in an outdoor public place where kids are encouraged to play. Teenagers who may be making poor decisions (or are misunderstood) should not have their photos plastered all of social media to shame them. We should be finding ways to offer each other resources instead of punishing each other for not having them available. We should be reaching out instead of smacking hands. 

The communities we raise our kids in can actually have as much of an effect on them as our parenting style. That doesn’t mean we should lock our kids in our house and not let them out. It means that we have to build the places that all our kids can all thrive.