Hats off to Texas: Over the weekend, it became the third U.S. state, after Utah and Oklahoma, to make reasonable childhood independence the law of the land. Now parents who live there cannot be investigated for neglect simply for giving their kids some old-fashioned freedom.

When it goes into effect in September, more than one-tenth of all Americans will live under laws passed with the help of Let Grow, the nonprofit that grew out of Free-Range Kids that insists our kids are smarter and safer than our cowering culture gives them credit for.

House Bill 567 enjoyed bipartisan support, sailing through the Texas Senate unopposed and winning the House with a vote of 143 to 5.

The statute enshrining childhood independence is part of a bigger children's services bill ensuring Texans that the state will not intervene and remove kids from their homes unless the danger is so great and so likely that it outweighs the trauma of entering the foster care system.

"Removing a child from his or her family causes immense harm to the child and should only be done when absolutely necessary," said Rep. James Frank, a Republican who was one of the bill's co-authors.

This new law "changes our definition of neglect," Rep. Gene Wu, a Democrat, told the assembly. From now on, kids will be removed only when "they're actually in danger, and not just the possibility of danger."

This way, the bill not only protects parents who want to let their kids play outside but "also enables parents struggling to make ends meet to make child care arrangements that make life easier rather than harder," says Diane Redleaf, Let Grow's legal consultant. In other words, it prevents poverty from being mistaken for neglect.

The law would have been most welcome in 2015 when Houston mom Laura Browder was arrested for having her kids wait 30 feet away from her in a food court when she had a job interview there and didn't have time to line up child care. The arrest came after she had accepted the new job.

The bill also helps folks who philosophically choose not to helicopter-parent — most famously personified by the Meitivs of Maryland, investigated not once but twice for allowing their kids, 10 and 6, to walk home on their own from a local park. They did so not because of laziness or neglect, but because they wanted their kids to experience independence.

Hounding parents for not hovering over their kids in normal situations like walking and playing in the neighborhood would have seemed bizarre in any other era. Now perhaps it will seem bizarre anew, as kids regain the right to some unsupervised time and parents regain the right to give it to them without getting arrested.

Andrew Brown, distinguished senior fellow for child and family policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which worked with Let Grow on this bill, says it will come as a major relief to families. "You had the most right-wing members of the legislature signed on with most left-wing members," said Brown, "because it's a commonsense reform."

As commonsense as not harassing parents who — by choice OR necessity — take their eyes off their kids once in a while.

Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a contributing writer at Reason.com and author of "Has the World Gone Skenazy?" To learn more about Lenore Skenazy ([email protected]) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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