Take your kids to the park…and leave them there

This Saturday, take your kids to the park … and leave them there.

That’s what one group of parents is encouraging moms and dads to do, in an effort to promote a parenting style commonly called “free-range parenting.”

“I hate that term, it makes it sound like cattle or chickens or something,” Sciuchetti told KIRO Radio’s Jason Rantz. “Really what I think it is &#8212 giving kids the freedom to explore, make their own mistakes, to learn and to have the self-confidence in order to succeed in life.”

Sciuchetti raises his 11-year-old son Antonio with a hands-off approach, allowing him to wander and play on his own without a guardian hovering over his every move.

“I call it parenting,” Sciuchetti said. “It’s the way most of our parents, most of our grandparents raised all of us.”

“Antonio and my daughter are both very intelligent and are able to make decisions on their own,” Sciuchetti said. “If I was there hovering over them all the time, then they don’t get self-confidence, and they don’t learn from their mistakes and learn how the world really works.”

Sciuchetti doesn’t let his children wander off totally free. Antonio keeps a cell phone handy if a problem should arise.

“If I see somebody that I don’t particularly want to pass by, I could dial 9-1-1 or my parents or whatever I need to do to get out of that situation,” Antonio said.

Free range parents have come under heavy criticism for allowing their kids to grow up fully exposed to risks. It initially made headlines in 2008, after columnist Lenore Skenazy allowed her 9-year-old son to ride the New York subway, alone. Her website, FreeRangeKids.com promotes an annual event, Take Your Child to the Park and Leave Them There Day.

But parents like Sciuchetti believe that criticism is not warranted.

“If you look at the stats, the world is a safer place now than it was when our parents or our grandparents raised us,” Sciuchetti said. “There’s a risk in everything you do, you take the car to the store and you could get into a car accident. You could fall down and hit your head while riding a bike. Whether I’m there or not, all those risks are still there. It’s a risk-reward type system. I think the reward of self-confidence and decision-making outweighs the risk that is a lot less now than it was when I was growing up.”

Saturday’s free-range park day is a way for free-range parents to get their free-range kids together for a play date, while they wander off.

It’s a style of growing up that Sciuchetti’s son appreciates.

“It allows me to be independent in my own way,” Antonio said. “About when I was nine was when I first started being able to go to the park by myself or walk my dog by myself … my parents have always been trying to get me to go into the store to pick up ice cream by myself, or do something independently so I can grow up to have these skills.”