{"id":190727,"date":"2026-04-09T10:33:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T10:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/190727\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T10:33:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T10:33:30","slug":"helicopter-vs-free-range-parenting-what-are-the-benefits-of-unsupervised-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/190727\/","title":{"rendered":"Helicopter vs. free-range parenting: What are the benefits of unsupervised play?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">Mounting evidence suggests a sheltered childhood may do more harm than good. Unsupervised play, once a normal part of American childhood, has largely been superseded by screens, structured activities and safety culture.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Now, a growing body of research suggests unstructured &#8220;free time&#8221; for kids engenders long-term benefits that far outweigh the risks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Here &amp; Now&#8217;s Indira Lakshmanan speaks with freelance journalist and parent<a href=\"https:\/\/www.simonlewsen.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Simon Lewsen<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">This segment aired on April 8, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mounting evidence suggests a sheltered childhood may do more harm than good. Unsupervised play, once a normal part&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-190727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}