How Much Responsibility Can You Give an 9 year-old?

As a parent of young children, how often do you find yourself worrying about them? You might be surprised at how that standard has changed over the years.

For example, in 1909 two brothers from Oklahoma decided that they were going to ride a horse to Santa Fe and back. What might surprise you is that Louis and Temple Abernathy were just 9 and 5 years old!

Not only did they make it the whole way, they did it without adult supervision. And that was just the beginning. The next year, they went even further – a cross-country horseback ride to New York City. They again traveled by themselves and when they arrived, met President Teddy Roosevelt.

They were greeted as celebrities, riding their horses in a ticker-tape parade just behind the car carrying Roosevelt. Later, while still in New York, the boys purchased a small Brush Motor Car that they drove, again by themselves, back to Oklahoma, shipping their horses home by train.^[3][4][5]

People were so inspired by their story, a movie – Abernathy Kids to the Rescue – was filmed later that year.

Their parents

How in the world could this happen? It probably helped that their father, Jack Abernathy, was a cowboy and a U.S. Marshal. Abernathy had himself begun working as a cowboy at age 11, and as he grew up, earned a reputation for catching wolves bare-handed. So he had raised his boys to live outside and learn to take care of themselves.

You may ask, “where was their mother?” And as you might expect, her influence was largely missing – she died giving birth to her fifth child.

More risk

The story goes on – the boys upped the ante in 1911. Having succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, they still didn’t know what their limits were or how much risk they could handle. They were challenged to ride horseback from New York to San Francisco in 60 days or less. Not surprisingly, they accepted the challenge and agreed to not to eat or sleep indoors at any point of the journey. The prize if they made it in 60 days? $10,000.^[6]

The journey was hard and they barely rested, arriving in San Francisco two days late (62 days total). So they lost a prize, but set a record. The good news? The boys now better understood their limits.

A final chapter of their story – in 1913, the boys purchased an Indian motorcycle and, with their stepbrother, Anton, journeyed by motorcycle from Oklahoma to New York City. It was their last documented adventure.*

Thinking differently about raising kids

I share this story to help those of us in the modern world think differently about what our children are capable of. Of course none of us are going to launch our kids as Jack Abernathy did when they are eight years-old. This is an extreme example and children need much more nurture and parenting.

But how many of us are at the other end of the spectrum, over-protecting our kids, failing to give them the sense of agency they need? How many of us occasionally wonder if they are adequately prepared to begin navigating the world for themselves when they leave home at 18?

Agency comes when a person is given the opportunity to make choices and face consequences. Children who are not given the chance to solve problems and face failure become anxious when asked to make decisions for themselves. Too many children lack agency because their parents simply don’t trust them and maybe don’t understand the natural process of imparting agency and letting go that psychologists call individuation.

Yes, our world is complicated. Yes there are wolves out there and children need to be appropriately protected. They are probably never going to catch wolves bare-handed. But do we know what is possible? Have we trusted our children with pain? Have they had the chance to fail (and succeed) enough that they have agency?

The moral of the Abernathy boys’ story is that our kids may be capable of much more than we realize.

* Here’s a book about their adventures: Bud and Me by Temple’s wife.