Sadly, this is another manifestation of a deeply entrenched idea in our culture: that if we remove risk, adversity, failure, disappointment and pain from a child’s life, we will somehow make that child stronger in the long run. The implicit assumption is that children should be protected from hardship until they become mature enough to handle it.

There is a rather obvious problem with this proposition however: how does one become mature enough to handle hardship without actually enduring hardship?

Maturity isn’t some academic achievement. It is acquired through making decisions and experiencing the consequences. If something goes wrong, you become resilient through bouncing back from failure, not avoiding it. This is not only obvious, it’s biblical. In Romans 5:3–suffering produces endurance, endurance-character, character-hope.

Remove suffering of any kind, and you produce a fragile, anxious, dependent, insecure, fearful person. Perhaps that helps explain America’s growing “failure to launch” epidemic and a persistent sadness and hopelessness amongst high schoolers. (Something big pharma would love to fix with medications, but I won’t go down that rabbit hole.)

Lenore Skenazy knows something about this problem. After all, she didn’t earn the sobriquet “America’s Worst Mom” for nothing. After writing “Why I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone,” Skenazy became a national controversial figure almost overnight. Her decision to allow her son to navigate New York City on his own became a story on The Today Show, where she was forced to defend herself against a clinical psychologist who regarded her decision as dangerously irresponsible.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Lenore for an hour on my podcast. What became apparent was that she was not a negligent or child-abusing parent. Quite the opposite. She understood something that our culture increasingly seems to have forgotten: children need responsibility in order to become responsible. At some point, you have to trust a child enough to let him make decisions without you. And it is often the risky and frightening decisions where development occurs (for the child and the parent).

I don’t know whether I would have allowed my son to take the subway alone at nine. If I lived in New York City, maybe. As Lenore and I discussed, context and familiarity matters. The child’s capabilities matter. When my son was five, for example, I put him on a two-seater, bar-less ski chairlift by himself and watched him take multiple rides alone. He was already an avid skier, so I believed he was ready. Was I nervous? Absolutely!!! But I also thought about the alternative. What if something happened to me on the mountain? What if he became separated from me? Was it really safer to keep him completely dependent on me, or was there some wisdom in giving him the opportunity to discover that he could handle himself?

My son wasn’t afraid. In fact, he was exhilarated. At one point, he came up with an ingenious solution to the absence of a safety bar: he put his ski pole through the side of the chair and through the back, effectively creating his own bar so he wouldn’t fall off. He was five years old. He came up with that solution. I didn’t. (Of course, his little arms were still holding tightly to the back of the metal chair.) Was I a bad parent for putting him at risk? To some, yes. Lenore, of course, would understand.

My son’s experience raises a larger question: What happens when we remove common risks from childhood?

For instance, my husband recently pointed out that it seems there is little risk of getting into physical fights at school these days. At least compared to his experience in the 80’s. The statistics bear this out. In 1991, about two out of five male high school students reported having been in a physical fight during the previous year. By the late 2010s, that figure had fallen to roughly one in four.

I’m not suggesting that children need to fight. Violence is not a virtue. But conflict is unavoidable, and learning how to navigate conflict is part of growing up. A child who encounters conflict has to figure out when to stand his ground, when to walk away, when to defend himself and when to seek help. Those experiences require judgment. And judgment, like courage, is developed through experience.

Physical confrontation wasn’t foreign to me either. When I was in elementary school, I remember running away from three kids on bicycles who seemed intent on roughing me up in some way. I barely avoided the confrontation, beyond a skinned knee, after I lunged like a baseball player executing a head-first slide to home plate to make it safely to my front door. I don’t remember the experience as traumatic. I remember it because it was an encounter with reality. There were people who might hurt me. I had to recognize the danger, figure out what to do and get myself home and into safety.

Today, safety means something different. It can mean the absence not only of physical danger, but of harmful words, uncomfortable ideas, embarrassment, failure and emotional distress. The definition of what is considered dangerous to a child has expanded so dramatically, it has turned many into walking time bombs ready to explode with rage. If parents shield their children from words, imagine how much more protective they can become—and have become—when it comes to physical danger.

That’s why for the past fifteen years or so, Lenore has devoted herself to making that argument. Partnering with some well-known psychologists, Jonathan Haidt and Peter Gray, she co-founded the non-profit Let Grow, which creates educational curriculum and supports legislation to give children more free time alone. Through her non-profit and her media site Free-Range Kids, she has become one of the country’s most vocal advocates for what might simply be called commonsense parenting: giving children enough freedom to make mistakes, encounter consequences and gradually assume responsibility for their own lives.

That philosophy is behind the “Reasonable Childhood Independence” legislation that has now been adopted in 13 states. The goal is to prevent parents from being treated as criminals simply because they allow their children a reasonable degree of independence. The distinction is important. Neglect should mean placing a child in serious danger—not merely allowing a child to exist outside the parent’s immediate line of sight.

Georgia adopted the law, for example, after a mother was arrested in 2024 when her 10-year-old son walked less than a mile from their home to a local store. There was no law explicitly prohibiting the child from making that walk. But without clear legal protection for reasonable parental discretion, questions about “endangering safety” and “adequate supervision” were effectively left to the judgment of police. That is a remarkable development. We reached a point where an ordinary act of childhood independence was interpreted as parental irresponsibility.

Lenore’s organization also works directly with schools through the “Let Grow Project”, which features a homework assignment that asks children to do something independently that they have never done before: run an errand, prepare a meal, climb a tree. One teacher reported that the result was greater confidence and less anxiety among her students.

And there is a fascinating development that suggests this idea may be more than merely common sense. Clinical psychologist Camilo Ortiz conducted the first pilot project using what he calls “independence therapy” with anxious children. The idea makes intuitive sense when you understand how anxiety is treated through cognitive behavioral therapy and, particularly, exposure therapy. If a child is terrified of dogs, for example, the solution is slowly expose the child to dogs to discover catastrophe does not occur. Independence therapy takes a similar principle and applies it to ordinary life. The child takes a step toward independence—and discovers, through experience, that he can handle it.

As someone who has been critical of the psychological and psychiatric medical complex, I find this particularly encouraging because children are considerably more resilient than we have allowed them to demonstrate. This is the paradox at the heart of the modern obsession with safety and control: attempts to protect children from adversity leaves them less prepared for the very adversity society is trying to protect them from.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Lenore.

To learn more about Lenore and her work, visit her non-profit: https://letgrow.org/

Read her blog and book: Free-Range Kids

Watch her Ted Talk

Follow her on X @FreeRangeKids

Interview coverage:

3:17 - Parents have become much more hands-on and spend way too much time with their kids.

4:54 - How Lenore became an advocate after being a newspaper reporter writing about culture.

5:35 - Lenore talks about how her son wanted to take the subway alone.

9:00 - Studies showing broader cultural expectation that kids need to be continuously supervised.

15:34 - The result is a massive retreat from the real world.

16:30 - Context and familiarity matters when allowing kids to take risks.

21:55 - How to get from fear to trust. The only way you get to trust is by allowing kids to take risks.

22:30 - The Let Grow activities for schools and communities.

24:02 - Results of the Let Grow homework assignments.

27:09 - The Reasonable Childhood Independence law.

39:40 - How much of the independence problem is the design of the suburbs?

50:00 - Is the problem phones or lack of independence?

1:09:30 - Where is risk-taking taking place?

1:11:00 - Goals for Let Grow and Free-range Kids.

In that role, he helps make sense of the spiritual impact of artificial intelligence—now considered one of the Papacy’s defining moral challenges as highlighted by Pope Leo XIV’s massive 43,000-word encyclical on protecting human dignity in the age of AI. What is striking about the current moment, however, is not that theologians are fixated on AI, but that technologists are obsessed with theology. The architects of the digital age see technical hurdles not as algorithmic crises but metaphysical ones, revealing that the deeper they push into computation, the more they stumble back toward the divine.

In seeking to understand the implications of AI, modern Silicon Valley technologists are actively pursuing guidance from religious leaders and guardians of the ancient past, engaging in dialogues with institutions like the Vatican to learn what religion has to say about intelligence and a good life, especially if AI succeeds to cure diseases and alleviate all suffering. What then?

The irony is that as we reach some sort of triumphant technological milestone we find ourselves precisely at the beginning asking the same old questions. Teleology, anthropology, and ultimate meaning become far more compelling to explore than mere computational knowledge.

Speaking with Jordan was a delight, especially given his many analogies and illustrations to help viewers/listeners understand the complex topic of intelligence, humanity, and God. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

You can learn more about Jordan here: https://www.hillsdale.edu/faculty/jordan-wales/

You can learn more about his work here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jordan_Wales2

Interview coverage

1:03 - The Vatican’s interest in AI and the anthropological and moral questions explored.

4:34 – What guidance are Silicon Valley technologists seeking from religious leaders?

10:07 - If we no longer have limitations, what more will man do? What is man’s purpose?

11:42 - Many disciplines (philosophy, epistemology, anthropology) lay claim to the question: what is intelligence? Why theology is the main pursuit as it is the widest frame of reference.

17:32 – Theology at its best commits us to the widest horizon. As Dante wrote in The Divine Comedy, theology is the highest form of human knowledge.

19:23 – Studying theology is not just an academic pursuit. To know God is to have a relationship with God. Intellectual probing is the earnest pursuit of one’s friends.

22:00 – Why relational is the right way to view intelligence vs computational/outcome oriented. Augustine of Hippo’s Intelligentsia and why understanding is begotten in love.

26:00 – Computation is the manipulation of uninterpreted symbols. How the appreciative engagement of reality can emerge through calculus.

30:00 - Intelligentsia must quest further through knowledge to wisdom. Intelligentsia is loving engagement with reality as it is.

33:47 – The nature of the moral framework when it comes to mundane objects, such as pens. A pen is not just a pen but an unconscious talisman.

38:40 - Augustine would say our world is shaped by a hierarchy of love. Humility is not a low opinion of oneself but an accurate one, according to Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most influential Christians of the Middle Ages.

39:53 - A value-neutral state (a separation of church and state) is fiction. Classical liberalism has an agnostic approach to flourishing. But even in that there is an implicit value system. If we give up all claims of moral values, we don’t have a place to start to making laws.

46:55 – Clashing value systems: optimization (a cynical value system) vs an intuitive sense of what feels right.

52:51 - The challenge of clashing value systems and morality encoded into AI. And what we can learn from 12th century poetry. Robots in the Roman de Troie (Romance of Troy), a 12th-century medieval French poem as well as in Thomas of Britain’s version of Tristan and Ysolt.

1:11:00 - Does Anthropic want to keep control of AI to control our value system?

1:27 - Gnosticism in the 21st century, suffering, Irenaeus and why God gave us a gym, not a spa.

1:32 - Where does consciousness come from?

1:42 - Can AI produce breakthrough technologies and think in heterodox ways?

Two years ago, RFK Jr expressed interest (go to 38:08 where he mentions SanPa) in expanding such residential models in the United States, yet such proposals have generated significant political and institutional resistance. Some commentators describe large-scale “wellness farm” concepts as incompatible with legal and constitutional norms, invoking historical parallels to earlier institutional systems associated with coercion or “eugenic” ideology: a system of improving society through selective breeding.

The historical backdrop to these critiques is not trivial. Early 20th-century state institutions—such as Gracewood in Georgia—often began with good-intended missions of education and vocational training for individuals labeled “feeble-minded” - a broad categorization for those who had learning disorders, psychiatric disorders or behavioral problems. Over time, many of these institutions expanded too quickly, became overcrowded and increasingly custodial in function. In other words, they were institutions that separated and controlled the mentally unfit, they weren’t places with a purpose to heal. In many cases, however, the scientific belief at the time was that many behaviors were hereditary and unchangeable. Therefore the solution wasn’t to change people, but to segregate them, manage them and in some cases, sterilize them.

This criticism applied directly at SanPa as well. In a 2020 Netflix documentary titled: SanPa - Sins of the Savior, Vincenzo Muccioli, the founder of SanPa was exposed for among other things, forced confinement and mandated labor of the residents.

Given the negative publicity of SanPa as well as the sordid history of long-term institutions, it’s not surprising such programs have yet to be adopted.

Yet I am confounded that today’s approaches—“Housing First” and “Harm Reduction”—are deemed acceptable. These approaches emphasize stabilization and risk reduction without requiring immediate abstinence or structured moral transformation as a precondition for assistance. In other words, free housing and medication supplies with no conditions. Despite the limited evidence of success, these approaches have been formalized in federal public health strategy in recent years, especially under President Biden’s drug prevention strategy, and are now embedded in national overdose prevention frameworks.

I wrote extensively about my thoughts on these approaches in my piece: San Patrignano confronts suffering honestly. In that piece, I also wrote about why we need more institutions like SanPa here in the United States.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Monica Barzanti, head of international relations at SanPa. She talks about how the center started, its successes and its challenges.

You can learn more about Monica Barzanti on her profile page and San Patrignano here: https://www.sanpatrignano.org/en/

Interview coverage:

2:47 - From resident at San Patrignano to head of international relations.

3:59 - The philosophical difference between San Patrignano’s approach of long-term, drug-free recovery vs the view that drug disorders and mental health issues are brain diseases. “The brain disease model of addiction explains a situation when the substance use disorder is already well-advanced.”

6:44 – It takes time and space to find a new purpose in life and to dismiss the personality of addict that was assumed.

8:39 - In 80’s and 90’s, there was a proliferation of antidepressants: 1% on antidepressants decades ago vs 15% today. But in Italy, Prozac fever didn’t spread the way it did in the United States.

11:01 - In order to make a diagnosis, you have to have a person without drugs for a period of time in order to better understand their condition. Substance use disorder is a problem of education.

12:52 - How long does a person abstain from drug usage to get a good diagnosis?

15:00 - The origins and philosophy behind San Patrigano. Tenets of the program are similar to the Christian tenets of redemption, transformation through sacrifice, dignity and responsibility.

17:39 – The stigma taken away and the stigma added. Culture equates compassion with not blaming a person or making them feel guilty for their actions because it stigmatizes them. Yet this causes the person to take on another stigma of being a dangerous and an unpredictable person without medications.

22:13 - Why working is a pillar of the program.

24:18 – The lie that is telling someone that substance disorder is a chronic disease. Telling someone the truth about their loss of self-esteem isn’t judging them. But telling them they have to take buprenorphine for the rest of their life is defeating.

26:37 – The stigma created when a person is labeled a dangerous person who can’t recover on their own, or someone who cannot be trusted but needs medications to be stable, is a worse stigma than a person struggling with self-esteem or life in general.

28:44 - How San Patrignano started by founder Vincenzo Muccioli, who used his property to start the program.

30:57 - San Patrignano is a social enterprise with 65% of its budget sourced through its production of goods (crafts, wine, baked goods) and services (hair styling). The rest comes from donations.

33:00 - Residents also learn how to spend their spare time engaging in sports, music and art.

36:00 - The process of internship or apprenticeship, and the peer support infrastructure.

38:20 – The social enterprise explained in more detail, such as bread sold to Burger King and other neighborhood restaurants.

42:00 - The required time to stay at SanPa because it is a therapeutic necessity and the time needed to learn a trade. According to neurobiologists, the brain takes at least five years to get back to its natural functioning.

44:00 – Responding to the Netflix documentary - Sins of our Fathers – accusations of abuse, including chaining of residents or coercive discipline and ethical concerns around unpaid labor. Importantly, residents attend SanPa on a voluntary basis.

48:00 – Around 600 enter the program every year. Difficult to gauge how many apply because there are hundreds of inquiries, and many who drop out early due to the commitment required.

51:00 – RFK Jr wants to develop healing farms across the United States, pointing to SanPa as a model. But there are similar models in the United States. Those include Trosa in North Carolina as well as The Other Side Academy in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Delancey Street Foundation.

Heather Wilson is a wife, mother, grandmother, author and co-founder/co-CEO of GiveSendGo, the world’s largest Christian crowdfunding site. Heather and two siblings Jacob Wells and Emmalie Arvidson launched the platform in 2015 with $20,000 from their mother.

Prior to being the CEO of GiveSendGo, Heather was a stay-at-home mom with four children. In the early days of her startup, she also took in five foster children and welcomed her fifth child. This is what makes her startup journey even more impressive. Most people say having a child is a startup in and of itself. Taking on one child, let alone five more on top of the existing four, during the early days of her startup is unthinkable. Recall when famed venture capitalist Michael Moritz said he preferred investing in young and single entrepreneurs because “they have great passion. They don’t have distractions like families and children and other things that get in the way.”

Fortunately, GiveSendGo never had to raise venture capital and the Bible does say God only gives us what we can handle.

Eventually, Heather adopted one of her foster children. She now is the mother of six and grandmother to three. As the second oldest of 11 siblings, Heather clearly embraces big families.

Today, GiveSendGo is known for being a non-partisan platform that accepts the most controversial and high-profile campaigns from ICE agent Jonathan Ross to the suspect accused of murdering healthcare CEO Brian Thompson to the Canadian truckers, known as the Freedom Convoy. “We believe in freedom of expression,” said Heather. “If we’re going to be principled, everyone (regardless of politics or circumstance) deserves a defense.” That principled stance has embroiled the company in political fights.

The trucker strike started circa 2022 after the Canadian government mandated vaccines, leading the truckers to create a fundraising campaign on GiveSendGo. Given the traffic surge to the site, GiveSendGo bought cyber security insurance, a fortuitous call since the site was hacked soon after.

Making matters worse, the government threatened to criminalize the recipients of the campaign if GiveSendGo did not shut down the fundraiser, which raised about $12 million for the truckers. The government even froze several million dollars before the truckers received any of it, which ultimately led GiveSendGo to return all the money back to the donors.

The platform was then named a defendant in a $300 million class action lawsuit for aiding the truckers in their obstruction of streets and honking of horns. This led Heather and her siblings to a critical juncture: spend money they didn’t have on legal defense fees and hope God would provide or walk away and hope for the best. After much prayer and fasting, her brother Jacob said he was reminded of the song “For the battle belongs to the Lord” and David’s strength facing Goliath. They decided that this battle did belong to the Lord and accepted the challenge. “If God’s going to let us fight this, he’ll provide,” said Heather.

On the same day they were given a legal fee quote of $250,000, they received a check for $260,000 from the insurance company, for the hacking of the site.

It was one of many miracles GiveSendGo has been part of.

Watch the interview to hear all about them, including a story of forgiveness and healing for the infamous hacker Aubrey Cottle, the one who hacked GiveSendGo and a GOP website. Heather and I also talk about the power of prayers, the struggle with identity and advice to young adults.

You can learn more about Heather here: https://heatherlynwilson.com

Follow her on X - https://x.com/HeathGiveSendGo ; Or GiveSendGo on X - https://x.com/GiveSendGo

Here’s also a list of her books.

I am not a Banana - learn more

Are you that dude’s girlfriend - learn more

You can’t hide the fruit: learn more

Interview coverage:

2:42 - The Freedom Convoy and getting hacked

5:30 – The Canadian government’s crackdown on the campaign that raised $10 to $12 million for Canadian truckers.

6:40 - The $300 million lawsuit from the citizens of Ottawa.

9:13 - The battle belongs to the Lord.

17:00 - Reading the Bible - straight through or a few chapters at a time.

20:10 - The high-profile campaigns and the rationale for allowing them.

23:00 - You’re going to hate us until you need us.

25:00 - Has GiveSendGo changed people’s hearts?

26:45 - Abortion and transgender mutilations for minors not allowed.

29:12 - Hope team to call and pray for every campaign.

32:10 - How the Hope team can help people with their mental health.

32:00 - The power of prayer and the story of the demon-possessed boy in Mark 9.

35:20 - Outrageous generosity and Aubrey Cottle.

42:00 – Romans 8:28 - The blessing behind the hack.