Get off that phone and go play outside, a McClellan bill suggests
Once upon a time, kids walked to school, played in the neighborhood park and made a few bucks babysitting, but there have been enough calls to social workers complaining that these amount to child neglect to start Rep. Jennifer McClellan, D-4th, thinking some clarity might help.
She’s joined two Republican members of Congress in sponsoring a bill to help everyone understand that it is OK for kids not to be always under a parent's eye when they are mature enough to have a bit of independence.
“We’re trying to help parents find a balance,” McClellan said.
Back in 2023, she and state Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax, joined state Sen. Jill Vogel, R-Fauquier — “the three moms on the (Senate Judiciary) committee” — to convince what became a unanimous General Assembly that a similar law just made sense.
“Moms know,” she said.
“When I was growing up, there weren’t as many after school programs, so in middle school, I’d come home on the bus, make myself a snack and do my homework …
“We’d play outside until the lights came on,” she said. “It was a different generation.”
Like many parents, she worries about the consequences when kids and teens spend less time playing outside and more time online.
“Independent play does more for developing brains than any app,” she said.
The bill adopts language similar to the Virginia law: that is not neglect when adults aren’t supervising kids when they’re doing age-appropriate activities.
The bill also would direct the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to study how states can best empower parents to encourage kids to safely go outside and play.
It pushes state child protection services agencies to train child welfare staff on when it’s OK for a child to be independent and when complaints of neglect for a child on his or her own aren't really valid.
“American families are being investigated and criminalized under overzealous civil and criminal child neglect laws for letting their children develop resilience and independence,” the bill says.
“State child protective services agencies are burdened by frivolous reports that undermine reasonable childhood independence, parental rights, and family integrity, and subject children and their caregivers to the trauma of unnecessary and invasive government investigations," the bill said.
In a Virginia case the legislation cites, Child Protective Services investigated a couple numerous times for allowing their three children to play unsupervised outside. The agency told these parents the children need to always be supervised, even in their own bedrooms.
The bill's findings also note that South Carolina state Sen. Wes Climer was accused of neglect by allowing a 5-year-old child to be outside in his own yard.
In Pennsylvania, a single mother of two ended up on her state’s child abuse registry after asking her 13-year-old brother to babysit her 1-year-old child, the findings say.
The bill’s findings noted that children spend 50 percent less time in unstructured outdoor actives than children in the 1970s — just 4 to 7 minutes a day on average.
More than three quarters of kids between 6 and 17 spend the recommended 60 minutes in physical activity, while childhood obesity has tripled since the 1970s, the findings note.
“I’m not afraid of my kid getting kidnapped. I’m afraid of someone seeing my kid outside and calling Child Protective Services! I hear that far too often from decent, loving parents,” said Lenore Skenazy, president and co-founder of Let Grow, a nonprofit that advocates for more independence for children when appropriate.
“They’ve heard stories of parents investigated for letting their kids walk to the store or go to the park. So they second-guess themselves even when they know their kids are ready to do some things on their own, including playing outside! Excess overprotection has been disastrous for kids’ mental health," she said.
McClellan teamed up with Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, and Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina, to bring this issue before Congress.