Chicago mom shocks neighbors by making seven-year-old daughter walk to school alone as she ditches ‘American parenting’ for ‘benign neglect’

A Chicago mother who spent a decade in Switzerland and learned their relaxed parenting style shocked her American neighbors by letting her young daughter walk to school alone.

Chantal Panozzo moved back to the US from Switzerland when her daughter was three years old.

While abroad, she said she picked up the Swiss approach to parenting, which prioritizes the child’s self-sufficiency and independence.

So when she moved back to Chicago to care for a sick parent, she left her daughter to walk to school alone.

She said, “The biggest shock to the community was when I decided that my seven-year-old daughter was responsible enough to walk five blocks to school alone.”

Panozzo said parents in Switzerland take a “benign neglect” approach to raising children, giving them space to “learn to take care of themselves.”

She said she brought the approach back to the U.S. and that it has given her daughter “freedoms that many of her spoiled American peers” don’t have.

But Panozzo said she has been criticized by the community for her hands-off approach.

A neighbor who saw her daughter going to school alone reportedly even told her that “we would love to drive her tomorrow morning.”

Despite the criticism, Panozzo said she and her husband “can’t bring ourselves to join” the “seemingly endless” school car line.

She said: ‘The cars are filled with dedicated parents who want the best for their children, and that seems to include air pollution and the congestion of the streets.

“But beyond the car line’s environmental impact, there feels like something even more damaging: America’s parenting culture.

Panozzo said parents in Switzerland take a “benign neglect” approach to raising children, giving them space to “learn to take care of themselves”

‘Unlike the Swiss version, which promotes independence from the moment a child can walk, the American parenting culture seems to say to the child: I am responsible for you going to school – you have no choice.

‘When it’s cold, I’ll keep you warm. If it rains, I’ll keep you dry. If it’s snowing, wear your sneakers and I’ll take you. If you’re late for school, it’s not your fault, it’s mine.”

Panozzo compared the American approach to Switzerland, where “children as young as five walk or cycle to school alone.”

She added: “They wear rubber trousers and boots when it rains. If there is ice on the street, they fall and get up again.

“Parents don’t take their kids to school or hang around on the playground constantly telling their child to share, to be sorry, to be kind.”