In order for a boy to grow into a confident man, he needs the love of his mother.

I attended an elementary school in North Hollywood, California. Less than a mile away, my mother was the director of an early childhood center. Every once in a while, she’d surprise me by taking me out of school to go to lunch. I hated school and dug the chance to leave the tiny campus for any reason, but that’s not why the gesture mattered. Those lunches were just her and I, no distractions. We had a chance to connect. She demonstrated her love for me with her time.

This, of course, was but one of the countless ways my mom indicated how much she cared for me. I’ve known, every single moment of my life to this day, that she would stop her world for me should the need arise. Along with food and shelter, this is all I needed to feel equipped to navigate the world. From Harrison Barnes:

Most species are not as dependent upon their parents for survival as a human is when it is born. A turtle crawls out of an egg and never knows its parents. A frog is born as a tadpole and expected to survive on its own. Even most mammals spend only a few months with their mothers and then are completely alone.

Humans, however, are much different than other animals. Instead of spending a few months or years dependent upon our parents, we spend one to two decades (or longer). When we are born, our survival is 100% dependent upon someone putting our needs ahead of their own-–for an extended period of time.

My mom always met my needs, and I was always assured that she would. This enabled me to take risks and be a boy who was comfortable testing boundaries. One of my personal needs was learning how manage life without her, and she gave me that gift, too.

In third grade, at eight years old, I rode a school bus and came home to an empty house while my folks worked. My older brother went to school far from our childhood home, so I was first to unlock the front door most afternoons. I never quite knew what was inside until I tuned that key and peeked in, but I quickly learned that I was safe. My mom trusting me to manage those days taught me how to trust myself. For many years, I was given the freedom to walk in my cleats to the park by myself for my youth baseball games and stay there virtually all day without supervision. Those are some of my greatest memories. From lifehacker.com:

As such, overprotective parenting has become a lifestyle for many families. When I tell my neighbors that I’d like to let my six year old go to the playground without me soon, they’re shocked. If I remind them that I walked all over my neighborhood without an adult when I was just a year or two older than her, they reply that “the world is different today.”

But protecting your kids too much can be as detrimental as not protecting them enough. It might seem safer for your kids to spend all their time in supervised, structured activities, constantly observed by qualified, caring adults. But researchers are discovering that kids need more than supervised exercise: they need freedom. They need to organize their own activities and not just follow adult direction. They need to solve their own problems, negotiate the social world of other kids, and regulate their own actions without adult interference.

In other words, they need for us to stop protecting them from everything. They need for us to let them get out in the world, despite the danger.

The world is different in every era. The assertion that it was safer back then is utter bullshit. I was 9 in 1984. From Wikipedia:

Richard Ramirez (February 29, 1960 – June 7, 2013), was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar. His highly publicized home invasion crime spree terrorized the residents of the greater Los Angeles area, and later the residents of the San Francisco area, from June 1984 until August 1985.

I’m not saying it was unsafe then. I’m saying that exceptionally isolated incidents of disaster do not indicate a dangerous environment. Our media oversaturates the airwaves with stories of danger lurking around every corner, but the truth is, our kids are pretty safe. From the Washington Post:

The first thing to note is that the overall child mortality rate in the United States has literally never been lower. In 1935, for instance, there were nearly 450 deaths for every 100,000 children aged 1 to 4. Today, there are fewer than 30 deaths for every 100,000 kids in that age group — more than a tenfold decrease…

But parents typically aren’t thinking about disease or general morality when they fret over unattended kids — we’re worried about all the terrible things that could theoretically happen to a child out on his own. Chief among them is the threat of abduction, or of the child simply disappearing without a trace.

The FBI has several decades of data on missing persons now, and those numbers show that the number of missing person reports involving minors has been at record low levels in recent years. Overall, the number of these reports have fallen by 40 percent since 1997. This is more impressive when you consider that the overall U.S. population has risen by 30 percent over that same time period, meaning that the actual rate of missing person reports for children has fallen faster than 40 percent.

I never fear things outside of my control. I’m not scared of sharks or getting struck by lightning or flying or serial killers. I genuinely believe that the world is safe. I understand the concept that the odds are greatly in favor of the worst case scenario never happening and therefore, I don’t stress those sorts of occurrences.

I owe this gift to my mother. Her willingness to let me venture out into the world and explore with a great degree of freedom instilled a confidence in me that I’m especially grateful for today. As much as possible, I’ve pushed my young men out into today’s relatively safe environment to have similar experiences. I see their self esteem growing daily as a result.

On Mother’s Day, as I fly across the country without fear, I’m grateful for the way I was raised by my mom.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you.

-Gabriel