Free Range Kids - Whats your opinion?

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I've been reading the site for Free Range Kids. The lady who started it thinks our society has gone very far overboard on the safety precautions we use now. From some of the examples she's given, it seems that we have. While I wouldn't ever do what she did, which is let a 9 year old ride the subway home alone, she might not let hers do some of the things I do. I don't live in NYC and my kids know nothing about the subway, but I will let them walk around town where they want to go, or rather I did when they were younger. As long as they stayed away from the river and were home before dark or let me know where they were going, it was ok.

She has a section in there on special needs too. I glanced at it but didn't see that much there. I do wish my mother had been like this lady. I would have done so much better in childhood I think.

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I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

I was raised that way and it was a truly excellent preparation for adulthood as well as being awesome. It wasn't so controversial when I was kid (end of 70's,beginning of 80's) but my parents did go farther than many other parents.

. There were plenty of kids who had as much freedom as me but their parents tended to ignore them. Those kids were the ones I often hung out with (since we could spontaneously do stuff without a chaperone) and my upbringing baffled them. I had as much freedom as they did yet I also had a lot of chores (unlike them) and my parents expected good grades unlike theirs. When I hung out with them, my parents seemed unreasonably strict with their expectations of chores and grades. When I hung out with the kids whose parents had similar chore/grades expectations, my parents seemed amazingly lax and they were jealous.

This seemingly baffling inconsistency that made little sense to my child self or peers. How could parents be simultaneously lax and strict? As an adult I finally understood that this was a deliberate tactic. Great freedom/great responsibility was their attempt to steer me towards navigating the adult world successfully. I think it was a successful strategy.

I had every intention of doing exactly the same with my daughter but found I couldn't. Autism complicated by mental retardation meant I could never give as much freedom nor have as intense chore/grade expectations as I grew up with. But I give as much freedom/expectation as mental retardation will allow-the mental retardation being probably a bigger obstacle than the autism.

edited to add: I took a look at the Free Range Kids website special needs section. There is a piece about the benefits of outdoor play. Absolutely agreed! There are a couple pieces about how typically developing kids are now treated as though they were special needs (intense parental intervention/supervision) while ironically special needs kids are raised with as much free range-ness as their specific need allows. This is because parents of special needs kids have an eye towards trying to teach independent living skills while parents of typically developing kids assume it as a default.