Free-Range Children: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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Particularly in animation it can happen over time as an inversion of [[Not Allowed to Grow Up]], with the characters remaining the canonical age they were conceived at, being drawn as they always were, but being given more adolescent storylines as the writers run out of child-appropriate ideas to put them through and take the next logical step.
Compare [[Adults Are Useless]], which shows up in this Trope for some works and compare with [[Toy Ship]], which is when kids have relationships that wouldn't happen until they were several years older. Sometimes overlaps with [[Parental Abandonment]] and [[Wise Beyond Their Years]], and frequently with low-age instances of the [[Competence Zone]]. May involve [[Kid Hero
In modern years this is beginning to return, thanks to widely-available [[Cell Phone]]s which permit children to be in touch even when they're off by themselves.
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* ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'': The Chosen are 8 to 12-year-old kids who run around Tokyo with no supervision (their Digimon aside), unquestioned, as would be the case with many high-schoolers.
** This was likely part of the reason the ten year olds in ''[[Digimon Tamers|Tamers]]'' got an age up in the dub.
** Not to mention that ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' and ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'' were arguably [[
* In ''[[Neo Ranga]]'', the girls range from about 10 to 18 and live alone without adults of any kind.
* [[Sonic X|Cream the Rabbit]] is allowed by her mother to accompany her friends on quests to save the universe, despite being only 6. She has Cheese with her, but still...
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* [[Harriet the Spy]]: In the movie, the children are only 11, yet they wander aimlessly around town with little to no concern from their parents. The book may have been written in the 60's, but since the movie was clearly set in the 90's, it was a bit jarring to see.
* A big problem for the recent ''[[Bridge to Terabithia]]'' film, which is set after 2000. Nowadays, the well-off Burke parents would '''never''' have allowed Leslie (their only child and only ten) to go even near the rope or in the woods by herself (or even with Jess), ''precisely'' out of fear that something might happen.
* The four junior high protagonists in ''[[Camp Nowhere]]'' are pretty free-range to begin with. That said, the concept is brought into full play once they set up their own phony summer camp and bring along several of their friends. The trope is also explored in
== Literature ==
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* As does Betty Smith's ''[[A Tree Grows in Brooklyn]]'', which is based on her own childhood in that borough.
* ''[[The Hardy Boys]]'' and ''[[Nancy Drew]].'' Now Frank and Joe are 16 and 18, but in the earlier editions they were 13 and 15.
* ''[[The Boxcar Children]]'' series is essentially built on this trope. The children's independence is not only allowed, but encouraged, by their grandfather (who [[Raised by Grandparents|raises them]]). Henry and Jessie, the two oldest, are only 14 and 12, but they usually seem more like high schoolers and act basically as parent figures to Violet and Benny, the two
* [[Mark Twain]]'s ''[[Tom Sawyer|The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]'' and ''[[Huckleberry Finn|The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]''. Huck gets a pass because he's an orphan (more or less), but in general the kids are allowed to go wherever they please, and the parents only get worried if the kid doesn't come home for a few ''days''. A little girl's birthday party includes an afternoon of exploring the local caves, though it's well known that you could get lost and never find your way out.
* Any of the Douglas stories by [[Ray Bradbury]].
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