Archive | Infantilizing young folk

England Getting Battier

England Getting Battier

Hi Readers — Here’s the news from across the seas. Or sea, anyway. Or ocean, really. Anyway, a reader writes: If efzbyirykz you want more UK stories – a couple below: I noticed a warning in a store here (see photo) that it is now illegal to sell crackers to people under the age of […]

Continue Reading

Outrage of the Week: Saving Children From Mrs. Santa Claus!

I don’t know if this is quite the right expression but: Oy vey! A town in North Carolina has BANNED MRS. CLAUS from its  X-mas parade. Why? To quote the local News ykrhahtfyn Observer: “…John Odom, executive director of the Greater Raleigh Merchants Association, which runs the parade, said it’s confusing for children to see […]

Continue Reading

Halloween: Too Scary for Kids?

Hi Readers — and BOO! Oh my God! Sorry! I hope your kids weren’t reading over your shoulder! I didn’t mean to scare the little dears — it could traumatize them for life! Imagine the psychiatric bills — or years in the insane asylum! That’s the way we’re supposed to think of kids now: Too […]

Continue Reading

Aieee! Worse Than Cub Scout/Utensil Story!

Oh my my my.  This yyztaredsb story hits me in the pit of my stomach and I’d love someone more tech-savvy than me to start a “HELPMATTHEW.COM” site like the one the mom started for her son Zachary, who was suspended for 45 days for bringing his Cub Scout eating utensil to school. This story […]

Continue Reading

Goodbye Halloween, Hello “Safety”

Can we think up some great trick to play on  the town supervisors in quaint and quaking Bobtown, Pennsylvania, who are  nkedfabkad OUTLAWING HALLOWEEN in order to “keep kids safe”? Perhaps they missed Chapter 7 in the book Free-Range Kids, “Eat Chocolate! Give Halloween Back to the Trick-or-Treaters.” Allow me to quote myself a little bit: Was there ever […]

Continue Reading

Mini Free-Range Outrage Involving a Kitchen Utensil

Hi ezhhfrastb Folks — This just in from a town outside of Georgia. (That’s the American Georgia, for all our international readers!) A “Webelo Scout” is a youngster on the cusp between Cub and Boy Scout. My son is Webelo scout and earned his whittling chit last year.  This year I volunteered at the district […]

Continue Reading

Maybe You CAN be Too Safe

Hi Readers! Here’s a little piece iabnetdtdk from MSNBC some of you sent in (thank you!), about kids and slides. Turns out when mom slides down with Junior on her lap to make him safer…she doesn’t. That’s what Dr. John Gaffney, a pediatric orthopedist and professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, discovered, to […]

Continue Reading

Outrage of the Week: Boy Scouts Forbidden to Carry Pen Knives!!

Readers — This one is so utterly insane I’ve been saving it all week as just the thing to shake us up all weekend. (Why we should spend all weekend shook up by the insanity of pop culture, I don’t know. But somehow, it just feels right.) Anyway, here bshhfhabkd it is, from Times Online in England: Penknives […]

Continue Reading

What’s So Strange About This Article?

To me — everything. Here eznrnekbbe it is. It’s about a 12-year-old, new to the neighborhood on his first day of school, who missed the bus home. He and his friend started walking, apparently got lost (the reference to Fred Myer is a local grocery), and pretty soon the entire town — police, Boys & Girls Club, […]

Continue Reading

Protecting Kids from “Dangers” Like Rhinestones. And Books.

Hi Readers! Remember during the summer I ran a post by businessman Rick Woldenberg about the wacky new Consumer Product Safety law? Here’s a little of what he said: Readers yknfitzhtk of Free-Range Kids may not be surprised to learn that Congress has enacted far-reaching legislation to save your children from the dangers involved in […]

Continue Reading