WORLD’S WORST MUM ‘We’ve got to let children take risks... or they will never learn’
SHE was branded the world’s worst mum after leaving her nine-year-old son to find his way back home alone on the New York subway.
But 10 years on, Lenore Skenazy says British parents are now turning to her controversial parenting methods.
The mum reckons the more independence we give our children, the less likely they are to suffer anxiety and depression in adulthood.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily
Star Sunday, the author said: “I get a lot of people writing to me from Britain sharing their stories.
“It’s so hard because we have been trained to only think of our children in terms of what could hurt them.
“If you buy them a toy they could choke on it, if you give them a cookie they could get diabetes, if you let them drink from a plastic cup they could get cancer.
“It really is ‘Project Fear’. I recently had a lady who’d left her child in the car while she delivered a package. She was gone for 20 seconds and that lady was accused of putting her child in danger.
“What if your child had choked? What if they were kidnapped? It was 20 seconds. The fear that we feel is superimposed from every which way to the point that we have literally lost our minds.
“If 20 seconds in a car is too much to handle you really are having a crazy moment.”
Lenore, whose sons are now 20 and 22, also believes that for us Brits the case of Madeleine McCann hasn’t helped.
She added: “I talk about Madeleine in my lectures and I always start off by asking the same question: ‘Can you tell me anything that has happened in Portugal over the last 500 years apart from Madeleine McCann?’
“And I always get the same blank reaction because there’s only one story that matters.
“But a child being kidnapped is the rarest of the rare. It obviously affected so many people. If a child died falling down the stairs would we take stairs out of our houses?
“Or, if they died in a car crash would we stop driving them around in our cars?
“There’s always going to be a horrible story like Madeleine McCann and we think it teaches us something. Sadly it doesn’t.”
On the rise of anxiety and depression in young people, New York-based Lenore said: “When you don’t let kids have experience and freedom to solve their own problems we’re leaving them defenceless against anxiety and depression.
“First, anxiety is a bad thing. “It stops you from enjoying life and trying new things. And if you can, nip it in the bud by letting kids see that they can do things on their own.
“They don’t always need you there or some adult to help them every step of the way. The odds are better that they’ll have a happy and successful adulthood.
“Eliminating the source of fear doesn’t make you better. I recently read schools were going to stop making children get up in front of the class to give their reports.
“But kids need to face their fears and by going up and giving that speech it’s what’s going to make them less crippled. If somethin is making your child anxiou don’t take the source out of the lives.
“The reason we are in a crisis a the moment with anxiety an depression among young people because we’ve taken away th building blocks they need to fac life.
“They’re feeling overwhelme with the world because the