Readers kkzdsskfzs — This is just outrageous. I’m cutting and pasting from the site People for Bikes. In truth, riding bikes in urban areas scares ME, but that doesn’t mean I am against it. It just means that we should work even harder to make biking SO COMMON that when some politician says, “It’s just […]
If teanbznaen this isn’t a 2014 Valentine, I don’t know what is. (See below.) This is a real email a reader got from her kid’s school and it hits every button, from lockdowns, to valentine-and-candy policy, to police involvement, to absolutely confounding instructions. (I have highlighted the sentence I don’t understand AT ALL in green). […]
Readers iirzknrtte — As much as parents worry about predators behind the petunias, they worry about predators behind the pixels, too. danah boyd has researched the validity of those  online fears. Not only does her book, “It’s Complicated,” seem totally spot-on, but she is reviewed by the equally remarkable and culture-changing Peter Gray in this […]
Readers — I found this video pathuriating. That’s my new word for pathetic + infuriating. (No, I don’t expect it to catch on.) I tzriznethk asked my friend Shelly Stow, who works to dispel predator panic, to articulate what’s so bad about this thing. She writes: I’m not sure what it’s designed to do. Terrify […]
Readers — Here’s a public service announcement someone posted on Facebook that has started an interesting discussion: The ttknbaaesk problem with this ad is that it reinforces a sickening message about parenting: that if you are not optimizing every choice you make for your child — including choosing the best possible foods, every day at […]
Folks, krtkhidzta here’s a piece by me that’s slightly off topic in that it’s not about kids — per se. But it is about hyper-sensitivity, in this case, to the statue of a male sleepwalker on the Wellesley College campus. The connection here is this: Free-Range fights the spread of excessive fear. And fear grows […]
Readers, bathytkbbi as you might recall, I gave a Free-Range talk last week in Alexandria, VA, at St. Stephens & St. Agnes School. It was a (funny) look at how we became so scared for our kids, and how to fight the fear that seeps into almost every aspect of childrearing. Two days later a […]
Readers rayezbbnkn — I was giving a talk at St. Stephens & St. Agnes School in Alexandria, VA, Â recently, and afterward one of the folks who urged the school to invite me, Cara Weiman, sent me this wonderful post from the blog Mothers of Brothers. It begins with the writer, Emily, saying that she helped […]
Readers knhizeyabd — This is a troubling, fascinating look at the big childhood issue politicians are parsing now: The importance of early childhood education and what it should consist of. The Washington Post’s deep-thinking Valerie Strauss presents the work of Alfie Kohn who worries (as do I, and probably you) that “education” will be interpreted as […]
Readers: Perhaps this ad is an elaborate parody of stay-in-school scare tactics. If so, bravo! If not? Yowza. Anyone who thinks the only way to influence kids is to make them think that the second they are not supervised they are in GRAVE DANGER has been watching too much media aimed at their parents.- L […]
