Archive | Infantilizing young folk

Should they all be back inside? Or in a car? Or maybe in a bubble?

Globe and Mail Tells Government to Back Off and Let Parents Free-Range!

Canada’s rezisssabr national paper, The Globe and Mail, just came out with a big, blazing, bad-ass defense of everything we are fighting for. It specifically said: Free-Range Parenting may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but practising it should not demand state intervention. If that’s not legitimacy, what is? The piece was prompted by the case […]

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Are kids learning to ride bikes (or taking off their training wheels) later?

UPDATE! Are Kids Learning to Ride Bikes Later?

rfznfybizh A confession: I learned to ride a bike when I was 9, probably the oldest of all my friends. Maybe I started a trend? Dear Free-Range Kids: I was recently visiting the Long Island town I moved away from several years ago, and was visiting some old friends. I have a 7-year-old daughter, and […]

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mike tang and son

Mike Tang, Dad Who Made Son Walk Home in Dark, Loses His Appeal

Mike Tang, the California chemist who got 56 dzikhdhfbt days’ “hard labor” for making his 8-year-old son walk home at about 8 p.m. in the dark, just lost his appeal. Tang had left his son outside a local grocery store as punishment for cutting corners on his homework. He told the boy he had to walk […]

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Caution: Disgruntlement ahead.

Should You Give Your Subway Seat to a Kid?

This wonderful azkftbshtn essay  by Stephanie Fairyington states it baldly: Why have we decided that adults should give their seats to children, rather than vice versa? On the blog CityLab, she writes of a recent New York City subway trip with her friend: [We] were on a Brooklyn-bound D train when a family boarded with […]

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A busy stretch of McCallum Road.

High School Students Not Allowed to Cross this Road

A reader writes that her high school student son is not allowed to cross the street you see here: Dear btshyykffy Free-Range Kids: So, my son is going to Summer School. I got a note from the school district transportation department just now with information about Summer School busing and you have to see this. […]

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How dare you make any decision about our children, ever???

A Peek Into a Free-Range Dad / Helicopter Mom’s Divorce

This fbshkrykhb cascade of emails between a Free-Range dad and his more helicopter ex-wife is difficult to read. But over the years, many readers have written to me about the same kind of issue, so perhaps there’s some comfort in realizing this is not uncommon. I have changed the names.   . Dear Free-Range Kids:  I […]

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Can we have a supervised playdate?

Free-Range Parenting was NORMAL as Recently as E.T.

Remember, folks, what SEEMS like just a normal amount of supervision now — that is, constant — was not syhabrfdzn normal until very recently, as this clip from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, reminds us. Elliott, a “boy of 9 or 10,” stays home from school alone for a day. And his sister Gertie, 5, stays home […]

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