Victoria biked all over the place, too — after telling her parents where she was heading. (No cell phones back then.) There was a hill everyone loved to ride down and a 7-Eleven where she’d go with her friends for lunch, which consisted of … a Slurpee. Yes, your elected representatives made some slightly suboptimal choices as kids. That’s part of growing up. It was a magical time.

It was also foundational. Jake works in commercial construction when he’s not legislating. He credits the give-and-take of those unsupervised ballgames with building the client skills he uses to this day. (And maybe the tree houses launched his career in construction.)

Victoria went on to become an associate professor and program director in occupational therapy at Indiana University. Working with young kids, she has seen the slow decline in developmental milestones as the run-around childhood got replaced by a sedentary, screen-based one.

That’s another reason we are so keen to pass this bill. Autonomy isn’t something “nice” to have. It is crucial. We all know about the youth mental health crisis. Let’s make it at least as easy for kids to go outside as it is for them to go online.

Some people may think the reason a supervised, structured childhood has become so normal is because the crime rate is so high. But the murder rate today is lower than it was in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s.

The Reasonable Childhood Independence bill allows parents to decide for themselves when their kids are ready to do some things on their own.

“As parents, you have a good understanding of where your children are on their level of responsibility,” says Rep. Ryan Lauer, Vice Chair of the House Family and Children Committee, who is also co-sponsoring this bill.

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And yet we’ve all heard the stories of decent parents being investigated simply because they didn’t hover — like that mom in Georgia, Brittany Patterson, arrested in 2024 because her 10-year-old walked to town without telling her. Or that mom in South Carolina, Debra Harrell, a few years back. She let her daughter, 9, play at a popular sprinkler park while she worked her shift at McDonald’s. For this, Harrell was thrown in jail and had her daughter taken from her for 17 days.

As parents, we shudder at the thought of overreach like that. We also shudder at the thought of child abuse. By narrowing the definition of neglect, our law gives hardworking Department of Child Services personnel more time to focus on the kids who are truly in danger.

Hoosier parents deserve the freedom to take their eyes off their kids when they know their kids are ready. Hoosier kids deserve to enjoy that freedom. And if they use it to make a tree house or drink a Slurpee for lunch, well, that’s not against the law.

Rep. Jake Teshka represents Indiana’s 7th District (St. Joseph, Marshall and LaPorte counties). Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn represents Indiana’s 32nd District (Marion and Hamilton counties).