A 13-year-old got home alone at 1 a.m., and it changed him
After years of walking and riding the subway alone, Max Haidt solved a missed transfer himself, and the nerves made the success stick.
TED · Are Smartphones Ruining Childhood? | Jonathan Haidt | TEDIt was around 1 in the morning in Manhattan, and 13-year-old Max was stuck.
The subway train he needed to get home to Greenwich Village, a neighborhood in lower Manhattan, was not running. He had come from Queens, where he had watched a late night match at the US Open, the major tennis tournament held there. He had ridden back with a large, happy crowd, transferred from Queens into Manhattan, and then hit a dead end.
What he did next is why his father, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, still tells the story. Max went upstairs and hailed a yellow cab for the first time without a parent.
The ride home was the payoff from years of small risks. Because Haidt and his wife knew Lenore Skenazy, the author of the book "Free Range Kids," they had let Max start walking to school in Greenwich Village a year or two before other children did. The area was safe from crime, Haidt said, though Max had to cross some busy streets.
The first time he walked to school, his parents were terrified. They watched his progress as a blue dot on a phone. They watched the next day, and maybe a third. Then they stopped.
That is how anxiety fades, Haidt said. A child faces something scary, nothing bad happens, and the fear drops. Max learned the subway system and became, in his father's words, an amazing navigator. He loved going to Queens alone during the day to watch tennis. Haidt had brought him to the tournament at ages 12 and 13, and then Max asked to attend an evening match. His parents were nervous about the very late return but decided to trust him.
Haidt had once shown Max how to hail a cab, but Max had never done it without his father. That night he did it on his own. He was nervous, and that was the point. Because he was nervous and succeeded anyway, the experience changed him.
Haidt's lesson was directed at parents as much as kids. He said adults have to get past their own fears and treat children as competent, adding, "it's hard at first, but by the third try, it actually gets easy."
Questions people ask
Is it actually safe to let a 13-year-old ride the New York subway late at night?
The subway is generally considered low risk, though late-night trains have fewer staff and fellow passengers. Safety experts generally advise staying in well-lit cars with other people, keeping valuables out of sight, and having a backup plan like cab fare. Parents often practice the route with a child first, as Haidt did with hailing a cab.
Why would being nervous make the experience more confidence-building?
Haidt described it in the same way: a child is exposed to something scary, nothing bad happens, and the fear drops. Psychologists call this exposure, and success after nervousness teaches that you can cope, while easy wins teach less. That is why clinicians treat anxiety with gradual, repeated exposure rather than avoidance.
How can parents start giving more independence if they are anxious?
Start with short, familiar trips, like walking a few blocks or buying something at a local store, and expand as the child succeeds. Agree on a route, a check-in method, and what to do if plans change. Programs like Let Grow encourage one new independent activity a month so both parents and kids build comfort gradually.