AFTER LIVING ABROAD KIDS STRUGGLE WITH AMERICAN OVER PARENTING.

• Author: Skenazy, Lenore
• Position: LIFESTYLE

WHEN JEAN PHILLIPSON'S family returned to Fairfax, Virginia, after living in Bolivia, the main thing her 10-year-old son complained about was the bus ride home from school. "He wasn't allowed to have a pencil out," says the mom of three, "because it was considered unsafe."

Welcome back, kid, to the land of the outlandishly cautious.

I asked children and parents who'd lived both abroad and here in the States what struck them as the biggest difference. They all said it was the lack of childhood independence in America.

In Berlin, says Tully Comfort, an 11-year-old living there now, "me and my friends will meet up and go to the market and get something to eat on our own." But a year ago, when she was living in the U.S., "the parents had to always be around."

Tully and her family lived in Costa Rica and Mexico for six years before moving back to her mother's hometown of Montclair, New Jersey, when she was 7. "I enrolled her in public school and right away we came up against this lack of freedom," says Tully's mom, Julie Comfort. "They told me my daughter was not allowed to walk to school without an adult until middle school."

Back when she was her daughter's age, Julie says, "I used to walk with my friends in this same neighborhood." But since then, fear of strangers and liability issues have ossified into hard rules. Fed up, the Comforts moved to Berlin, a city Julie picked after vacationing there and seeing "a little kid, maybe 3 years old, riding his bike down the sidewalk, and his parents were way down the street, nonchalant."

Thirteen-year-old Molly Lukas lives in Germany now, too, after stints in Belgium, Austria, and metro D.C. Her dad is in the Foreign Service. Molly loved being around her extended family when she was back in the States about a year ago, but there were some annoyances. "One time I made plans with my friend to go to Chick-fil-A. My friend's mom had to drive us and she stayed there to make sure we were OK while we were eating." In Germany, on the other hand, "I bike to school every day-it's about 10 minutes away--and I can take the bus and trains alone."

"My daughter always says, 'Oh, I wish we could have more playdates like in Brazil!'" says Claudia Jorge, whose family of four recently...