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Big Media Weekend for Free-Range Kids!

Welcome readers of the New York Times, New York Post and National Post – Free-Range Kids is happy to see you! Here are the articles you may have seen in your papers: The New York Times: Why ryzihfkars Can’t She Walk to School?. The New York Post: Childhood Stalled (about moms dragging big boys into the […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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Maybe Semi-Organized Recess Isn’t So Bad

Hi Readers — It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind (and a man’s, too), and this atakhbazyy article from The Boston Globe has me re-thinking my knee-jerk reaction against any attempt to organize and regulate recess. The article points out that in many schools, kids have almost forgotten HOW to play. Sending in a […]

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New Law to “Protect” Kids from Germs Would Kill Band Program

Hi Readers — Get ready to start gnashing. A bill in Massachusetts would require all schools there to “professionally” sterlize their band isntruments, according to this knnftiydny article in the Wicked Local Sumerville (great name!). And guess what? Only one company in Massachusetts does this. The owner of that company, a dentist, insists that without this […]

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Reporter Seeks Parents Who (Gasp!) Let Their Kids WALK to School

…and have even taken some heat for it. Alternatively, she’s also looking — though it may be hard to find them here — for parents who drive their kids the mere block or two. Or pick them up from the bus stop just down the street. Or…you know. Helicopter them to and from school. Also: […]

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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 […]

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Controversy of the Day: Pool or Pond?

Hi Readers — Today’s New York Times has a really great piece about a town in New Jersey whose sand-bottomed, spring-water filled swimming hole has been the joy of local kids since 1929. Until, of course, today. Now half the residents want to fill the pond in and replace it with a standard concrete pool, making it easier to […]

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A Prosecutor Debates the “Kids Waiting in the Car” Arrest

Hi annbisbein Readers — A few posts down we were discussing a questionable arrest for “child endangerment.” In this case, the parents had left their  9- and 6-year-olds waiting in the car while they ran into Walmart for what turned out to be half an hour. Vis a vis child safety: The windows were cracked, the […]

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