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【A1】 in, so the woods behind his house serve the same 【A2】. He spends hours out there swinging on a swing, 【A3】 across the valley to a friend's house, and 【A4】 garden knives to cut a path. He lays 【A5】 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 【A6】 with doing things alone. But she disn’t just 【A7】 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 【A8】 his own. Randall explains. Randall knows this isn't the 【A9】 for today's parenting style. Gone are the days 【A10】 kids ride their bikes alone until the streetlights come on.

Randall has met people who think she's a 【A11】 parent. Once, an off-duty police fficer started yelling at her when she left Matthew alone in the car 【A12】 a few inutes while she ran into a shop

Randall knows that parents in several states have been arrested for 【A13】 their kids walk to the park alone, or even 【A14】 them to walk to school. And so she was a bit 【A15】 about what this man might do.

Anyway, they talked it out, and the man walked 【A16】 Randall felt confident about 【A17】 her parenting, partly 【A18】 she had connected with a group 【A19】 Free Range Kids. This group 【A20】 childhood independence, and gives families the information they need to push back against a culture of overprotection.

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