A friend of mine recently told me how much her family loves their new neighborhood, particularly its kid-friendly nature. The park is close, she explained, and no one thinks anything of their children walking down the block alone to play with neighborhood children.

This scenario is much appreciated, particularly after what they experienced in their former neighborhood. In an effort to give their oldest son increasing responsibility as he entered double digits, they allowed him to walk the dog down the block. This mild responsibility was disrupted, however, when an older woman pulled up in her car and demanded to know where he lived and why he was walking without an adult.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of parents trying to allow their children to mature naturally, only to have overly cautious, hovering, adult strangers swoop in with accusations that such training is child abuse and a sign of neglectful parents.

Indeed, the age at which children earn their wings is increasingly advancing, a fact which former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) speaks to in a recent Wall Street Journal article. “At 11, 1 in 4 kids aren’t allowed outside without adult supervision,” Sasse says. “More than half of 14-year-olds don’t have permission to leave their streets.”

Ironically, these same kids are allowed to freely roam the Wild West of the internet because it can be done within the safe confines of their home, Sasse says.

Which is more dangerous, though? Playing outside, digging holes in the dirt, or playing inside on a screen that leads one down holes of potentially dirty thought? It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.

Sasse continues:

Adolescence should be an exciting coming-of-age period, a gradual transition to adulthood. If we don’t give teenagers more responsibility, we’re failing to prepare them for the world they’ll soon lead.

Nearly two-thirds of 17-year-olds can’t leave their neighborhoods without adult supervision. Is it reasonable to expect them to vote at 18? To fight a war? To incur college debt? Is it prudent to expect them to be ready to navigate a turbulent workforce being ripped apart by artificial intelligence? Obviously not.

Famed author J. R. R. Tolkien would agree. “Children are meant to grow up, and not to become Peter Pans,” he wrote. “Not to lose innocence and wonder, but to proceed on the appointed journey: that journey upon which it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive, though we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive.”

Every set of parents must wrestle with this issue based on the maturity of a child, their physical surroundings, and their goals for helping a child grow into a responsible adult. But as my friend’s experience shows, parents need support from their surrounding community in order to do so. So how can we as adults in general foster the maturation of our nation’s children?

For starters, we need to stop being the hovering adults, quick to butt in and play policeman, questioning children where their parents are, where they live, why they’re out walking alone, etc.

Instead, we should learn to be the friendly neighbor, the trustworthy adult, ready to make friends with both children and their parents. In so doing, we become the type of person who makes it safer for children to roam neighborhoods and learn about freedom, because there’s another trustworthy adult nearby to aid them in times of need, rather than getting them or their parents in trouble.

But we shouldn’t stop at getting to know the families with children in our communities on our own. We should extend that community to others by hosting neighborhood get-togethers or fostering other connections, so that today’s families have an all-around friendly neighborhood where their children can roam, learn, and grow on their own.

When we do these things, we’ll not only be doing parents and children a favor, but we’ll also be doing our country a favor, getting those young kids ready to responsibly lead, fight, create, and vote one day in the very near future.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image credit: Gudmund Thai, CC BY 3.0 – cropped