Lenore Skenazy let her nine-year old son ride the subway alone. He had no phone and he was just fine. Lenore Skenazy reports that,” My son got home, ecstatic with independence. Half the people I 've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It 's not. It 's debilitating — for us and for them. Meantime, my son wants his next trip to be from Queens.’ Today there is no increase in child abduction but actually a decrease. And because of this, there is no reason not to give children throughout California more freedom than they currently are given. The term ‘helicopter parents’ applies to far more