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 […]
Archive | Worst-First Thinking
What’s Wrong with This Ad?
August 31, 2009
Take your blood pressure medicine before watching this so-called public ieyshtzsyb service announcement . The spot shows two women in a coffee shop, one of them with her kid. The three chat for about 15 seconds, the mom buys a coffee and then off the mom and child go, leaving the other woman — for no apparent reason — with a […]
Dear Abby: AGAIN With the Abductors?
August 26, 2009
Dear Readers: You may recall that last week, Dear Abby passed along the advice that children take a walkie talkie every time they enter a public restroom so they can call mom when they get molested. Since this is a common fear, I asked a child abuse specialist if this is also a common occurence. Of the […]
Outrage of the Weekend: Man Arrested for Duck Impersonation
August 23, 2009
Hi hnyzttffka Readers! This just in, from Free-Ranger Deb Turner, who asks: “If you were shopping with your nine year old, and a man approached you and your child and did a Donald Duck imitation for the child, would you call 9-1-1? This happened in my local area.” ‘Duck’ didn’t ruffle any legal feathers  The […]
No More Sleepovers?!
August 5, 2009
The latest victim of parental terror? Sleepovers. According to this AP sfkaekhhft story by Kelli Kennedy, parents are afraid of everything from junk food to “inappropriate” movies, to Internet surfing, to the possibility of their children being drugged and raped. The modern parental thinking method applies: Since a drugging/fondling incident DID happen once, and since it was […]
Kids, this is an “adult.” Watch out!
July 18, 2009
Great (slightly wordy) article on iktnssyfzs Psychology Today blog about how, with all our exhortations about “stranger danger”  we are teaching our children “that the world is a dark and nasty place were everybody wants to murder and rape them…” The assumption of disgusting intentions has gone so far that the blogger, Helene Guldberg, author of […]
Crazed School Bans Parents from Sports Day
July 15, 2009
What happens when the fear of the incredibly rare crime of child kidnapping becomes so all-consuming that it overshadows any other considerations? Including common sense? Or even Googling? You get something like this: A school in England that holds a multi-school sports day every June – the highlight of the year, where kids compete and […]
Are We Too Obsessed with Our Kids?
June 30, 2009
The public bought the idea that they were essentially a danger to their own kids and had better pay money for advice, that they’d better try really hard to do a good job, and they’d still inevitably fail. (Even though, as Lepore points out, kids are actually safer now than ever. In 1850, more than […]
Free-Range Kids Outrage of the Week: “Wear Goggles When Putting Up Posters”
June 19, 2009
Four teachers in ten said that some field trips had been “toned down or cancelled” because they just weren’t safe enough.
Fear Not! (Or At Least — Fear Less!)
June 12, 2008
So, nhatdfebki after dithering for a mere five years or so (and blogging about it, below), I finally got my boys — 10 and 12 — a skateboard. I didn’t dither out of laziness. Well, not just laziness. I really avoided it out of fear. The idea of a kid upside down in the air, […]