Restoring Childhood

'Offers a road map for making it easier for parents to trust their kids more, worry about them less, and let them be kids. If you have kids, work with kids, or just care about kids, please read this remarkable book!' WILLIAM R. STIXRUD, clinical neuropsychologist and co-author of The Self-Driven Child

'For anyone anxious to understand the real causes of the struggles of recent generations, read this book.' NED JOHNSON, co-author of The Self-Driven Child

'This book will forever change how you see your kids and how they see themselves.' JENNIFER BREHENY WALLACE, author of Mattering

'Peter Gray gently but firmly asks us to look at how our love, fear and obsession with perfection may be getting in the way of what our kids desperately need.' Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of How to Raise an Adult

'Peter Gray is one of the world's experts on the evolution of childhood play . . . He forces us to rethink our convictions on how schools should be designed to accommodate the ways that children learn.' STEVEN PINKER
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What if the answer to the youth mental health crisis isn't less screen time-but instead, more independence?

We have spent the last few decades laser-focused on improving safety for children. We have supervised them more, and made their lives more achievement-oriented, with the good intentions of helping them find success in the increasingly competitive adult world. But what if all that protection is part of the reason kids are now struggling?

In Restoring Childhood, author, researcher, and psychology professor Peter Gray argues that children need something that seems to be missing from modern childhood: the freedom to play, explore, solve problems and take age-appropriate risks without adults constantly directing them. When we assume children are fragile, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Overprotection leads to increased rates of anxiety and depression in children, but, as Restoring Childhood shows, independence builds children's confidence, resilience, and emotional strength.

Restoring Childhood is a radical examination of how certain societal trends - from round-the-clock news coverage, to increasing reliance on cars, to growing wealth inequality - conspired to create a fundamentally anti-child environment. And if we continue to tighten the leash on our kids, no amount of screen-time restriction will reverse the alarming mental health crisis we see our kids enduring today.

We must restore childhood to children. We must, individually and collectively, prioritise adult-free play, and the time and space for it - in our schools, in our neighbourhoods and as parents.