For a lot of parents, it?s difficult to strike the right balance between safety and independence. While many studies show that risky play and navigating failure are integral to kids’ development, it?s still hard for us to get past the idea that something bad will happen the second we let our kids out of our sight. City Scouts, a new summer day camp in Toronto, is offering parents a safety net of sorts?a program that helps kids learn how to be self-sufficient in the city.
City Scouts, which isn?t affliated with Scouts Canada, is a week-long urban adventure camp where campers ages 10-13 can explore Toronto’s downtown while learning how to navigate the TTC (which is Toronto’s public transit system), order food and find their way to places like Toronto Island, the Toronto Reference Library and Kensington Market. It was founded by 20-year-old Riley Millican, who got the idea for the camp when he noticed that many of his friends had no clue how to use public transit by themselves. ?They had so much trouble getting around the city when we started to go to movies theatres and such. They wouldn?t know what to do,? said Millican. ?I would get frustrated because I?d be telling them to just take the streetcar down to meet me and they?d ask all these questions because they were lost.?  
Unlike some of his friends, Millican and his sister were encouraged by their father to memorize the local subway stops and learn their way through the system as kids. He said one of t...