Lenore Skenazy

Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a non-profit promoting childhood independence and resilience, and founder of the Free-Range Kids movement. She is also a speaker, blogger, syndicated columnist, author, and reality show host. A mother who lives in the Queens borough of New York City, her controversial decision to let her then-9-year-old son take the New York City Subway home alone became a national story and prompted massive media attention. She was dubbed "America's Worst Mom." 

In response, Skenazy founded the book and blog "Free-Range Kids," with the aim of "fighting the belief that our children are in constant danger from creeps, kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers and/or the perils of a non-organic grape." Let Grow, co-founded in 2018 with Daniel Shuchman, Dr. Peter Gray, and Prof. Jonathan Haidt continues the quest to make it "easy, normal, and legal" to give kids back some old-fashioned independence of thought and deed. 

Skenazy is Jewish with roots in Çanakkale, Turkey. Skenazy is a 1981 graduate of Yale University. She got her master's degree from Columbia in 1983. Skenazy spent fourteen years as a columnist for the New York Daily News but was fired in December 2006. She moved to The New York Sun and wrote there until it shut down in 2008. Skenazy also wrote and reported for NPR, as well as CNBC, and was featured in the Bravo series Tabloid Wars.

Skenazy's column in The New York Sun, "Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone," described her making the controversial decision to let her son take the New York City Subway home alone, which was completed without incident. The piece resulted in a flood of reactions ranging from accusations of child abuse to fond memories of first-time subway trips and childhood freedom. 

The story was covered on The Today Show, Fox News, NPR, and MSNBC two days after the column appeared, later becoming worldwide news and being featured on Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, The View, Nightline, Good Morning America, CBS News, NBC Nightly News, Anderson Cooper, Dr. Phil, Nancy Grace, The BBC, the CBC, and ABC in Australia. In 2015, she was profiled in The New Yorker and The New York Times. The popularity of Skenazy's blog led to the creation of the book, Free-Range Kids, published in 2009 by John Wiley & Sons.

On the blog, Skenazy proposed May 22, 2010, as the first "Take Our Children to the Park & Leave Them There Day"—a day for children to learn how to play by themselves without constant supervision. It has been celebrated every year since. Skenazy also became the host of the reality television show World's Worst Mom on Discovery Life. The 13-episode series features Skenazy visiting extremely anxious parents, including the mother of a 10-year-old who still spoon-fed him, the mother of an 8-year-old who bought him a skateboard but only let him "ride" it on the grass, and the mother of a 13-year-old who still took him into the ladies' room.

With humor, kindness, and some firmness, Skenazy separated the parents from their children and had the children do some tasks on their own, such as running an errand, or learning, at age 10, how to ride a bicycle. In the end, 12 of the 13 couples relaxed so much that they became "Free-Range Parents" themselves. Now Skenazy lectures around the world, including speeches at Microsoft, DreamWorks, Audi, The Yale Child Study Center, Boston Children's Hospital, Wellesley, the Sydney Opera House, and schools and conferences.