What did 2022 do to parents who were just trying their best? It scared, scarred and disheartened them — and once it a while it really cheered them up! Herewith, The 10 Worst Free-Range Stories of 2022 — and one REALLY great one! STRANGER DANGER, PART 1 The Lower Merion school district outside of Philadelphia […]
This remarkable report on the KQED website unpacks the problem that’s hard to ignore: Today’s young people suffering from depression, anxiety, immaturity — and what might be called the life-blahs. Actually, that’s a pretty depressing term. Let’s NOT call it the life-blahs. But it does make sense to look at what cultural forces could be […]
What happens when a little kid picks up a honking HUGE stick at preschool on the playground? The adults in charge have to think quick! This one did: Dana Frantz Bentley, a Lesley University professor of early childhood education: If you’d like to see more free play — and trust — at your own child’s […]
Welcome to the bottom of the barrel! That’s where we find ourselves in this particular FoxNews’ segment (see below), as the anchor casts about for some reason — even a completely amorphous, garbled reason — to foment what Prof. Harold Hill called “MASS-TERIA!” And yet — he is foiled! As you’ll see, Hadley Heath Manning […]
Seven-year-old Athena Strand of Paradise, Texas, was abducted near her home and murdered last week. It is horrible to even write those wrenching words. Below is a post I put up after a different tragedy and travesty: the murder of Leiby Kletzky, here in New York City, in 2011. Sadly as well as defiantly, it […]
What a thrill to watch CBS Mornings today and hear Amazon Books’ Sarah Gelman recommending…Free-Range Kids! Here’s the clip (with an ad before it — so it goes). Legitimacy at last! And speaking of last…mine is the last book Gelman recommends, about four minutes into the segment. BUT the other four books sound great, too! […]
Here you go! This is a Let Grow Play Club at a Title I (high poverty) elemetary school in South Carolina. Note how the kids are having…what’s that thing called again? FUN. No adults shouting, “Be careful!” No adults asking, “Are you okay?” No adults suggesting things like, “Next time, try to make it a […]
What works when it comes to making folks think twice about constantly hovering, helping, supervising and scheduling their kids? The message they mostly hear is that constant intervention is good, and anything less is lazy or dangerous. So below, please find my very basic attempt at a little culture-nudging video. Can you please let me […]
Samantha Boardman is a psychiatrist, professor, mom, author of Everyday Vitality AND an executive board member at Let Grow. We brought her in because of posts like this, snatched from her blog, Positive Prescription (which I highly recommend!): According to a recent paper published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, many parents assume incorrectly that teaching their […]
A dad whose 6-year-old wanted Nutella for her pancakes on a recent Saturday morning made a deal: I’ll drive you to the grocery if you go in by yourself and buy the stuff. This is about a straightforward an activity as can be and I posted the dad’s brief write-up of it over at Let […]
