The Third Annual Let Grow Independence Challenge is on! Let Grow is asking for photos and/or super short videos of your kids doing something new, on their own. First Prize winner gets a $300 gift card. Two runner-ups get $100 each. Last year’s entrants rappelled down trees, made family meals, rode bikes, mowed lawns, sold […]
If you watch Stranger Things with your kids, there’s a good chance they think the strangest things of all are not the slimy monsters without faces but the kids riding their bikes without parental supervision. I wrote about the Stranger Things phenom in the New York Post last week, asking 21st century questions like: Why […]
You may recall Katy, the mom who told her 6-year-old to sit by the luggage for a little bit at Newark Airport while she ran to get them food. The girl got nervous and wandered off, only to be found by some kindly stranger who brought her to a lady in uniform, who quickly returned […]
Below a bracing little video to remind us all that helicopter parenting is like Covid — something you just breathe in these days. It’s not because YOU are particularly nervous or hovering or crazy. It’s just out there, spreading like a hyper-infectious SARs variant. And I guess you could says the “Paxlovid” is simply to […]
Got this letter recently, from a very shaken mom: My name is Katy, and I stumbled upon your website yesterday, while searching for stats on how often kids lost at airports get abducted. The thing is, a few days ago my 6-year old daughter got lost (and found) at the Newark airport at the busiest […]
We have several psychologists working on a white paper addressing this very issue right now: What age are kids DEVELOPMENTALLY ready to, say, walk to the store, or to school, or to the neighbor down the block to borrow a rake? Brain, body and consciousness-wise, kids are ready to understand rules and act responsibly by […]
Teachers! Principals! Counselors! Headmasters! If BEFORE the pandemic kids were passive, anxious and depressed, now they’re passive, anxious and depressed with a passive, anxious, depressed cherry on top.To bring kids back to life, some educators went straight to the problem: Kids had lost their excitement, curiosity and initiative? They would re-ignite it with THE LET […]
Take your kids to a drag show, expect a knock at your door. It won’t be The Village People. Government intervention is an option Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was mulling out loud last week when reporters asked whether he’d consider legally punishing parents who bring their kids to a place like Mr. Misster. That’s the Dallas […]
The fact that a question like that — “How safe is it to let young children run errands alone?” — is fodder for a news article just shows the era we are living in. An era when normal childhood activities, as well as normal parental decisions, are framed as a threat. Or at least something […]
Five kids at a working class school on Long Island gathered to chat with me a few weeks ago about the afterschool activity they’ve been doing all year, twice a week: Playing. Plain, old PLAYING. The school started offering a Let Grow Play Club, whereby an adult is supervising. But they don’t organize the games […]
