Walking through the woods alone can be a frightening prospect for a kid, but not for 7-year-old Matthew of Portland, Oregon. He doesn’t have a backyard to  56   in, so the woods behind his house serve the same   57   . He spends hours out there swinging on a swing,   58  across the valley to a friend’s house, and  59  garden knives to cut a path. He lays   60   sticks to form a bridge across the small stream. And he does all of this alone.

Matthew’s mom, Laura Randall, wants her son to gain skills and confidence that only  61  with doing things alone. But she didn’t just  62  her 7-year-old outside the door with garden tools one day. They worked up to it gradually with what Randall calls “experiments in independence.”   

“Just those moments, increasingly longer moments, where he can choose to be  63  his own.” Randall explains. Randall knows this isn’t the   64   for today’s parenting style. Gone are the days  65   kids ride their bikes alone until the streetlights come on.   

Randall has met people who think she’s a  66  parent. Once, an off-duty police officer started yelling at her when she left Matthew alone in the car  67   a few minutes while she ran into a shop.

Randall knows that parents in several states have been arrested for   68  their kids walk to the park alone, or even   69   them to walk to school. And so she was a bit  70   about what this man might do. Anyway, they talked it out, and the man walked   71  . Randall felt confident about   72   her parenting, partly  73  she had connected with a group  74   Free Range Kids. This group  75   childhood independence, and gives families the information they need to push back against a culture of overprotection.