This is the second of my two-part “series” (does two essays = a series?) highlighting the bi-partisan nature of the Free-Range Kids movement. I spoke with Jennifer Newsom and Abby Cox who are married to governors of two very different states: California and Utah. Where they overlap is in the desire to give kids a wonderful, real-world childhood. My Newsom interview ran last week. This is my interview with Utah First Lady Abby Cox. Cox is a champion for educators, foster kids, special ed, and the Special Olympics. She is also the wife of Gov. Spencer Cox. Born and raised…
Author: lskenazy
PART 1 Have you noticed that childhood independence is almost shockingly NON PARTISAN? It’s not a right or left-wing thing to want your kids to be able to walk to the store, play outside, or spend some unsupervised time at home – without being investigated for neglect. That is one reason Let Grow, the nonprofit that grew out of Free-Range Kids, has been able to help pass “Reasonable Childhood Independence” laws in 12 states so far, usually with bi-partisan co-sponsors and often unanimously. (I am president of Let Grow.) The law is WILDLY bi-partisan because it simply guarantees parents that …
Every year, the New York Toy Fair takes over the huge Javits Convention Center and shows us the future: i.e., thousands and thousands of toys. I’ve been going off and on for decades and here’s what I saw this year: STEM? MEH. NOW IT’S ALL ABOUT “MESH” A few years ago it was hard to tell the Toy Fair from MIT. The aisles were filled with Science Technology and Math – “STEM” — toys teaching everything from AP bio to quantum physics. Any toy that wasn’t particularly scientific nonetheless claimed it was: Toy cars taught Newtonian laws of motion. Toy…
The situation was this: A 6-year-old rode off on his bike and stayed out for two hours, without his parents knowing where he was. That would have had me, yep, me, very worried. But when a mom asked Slate for advice on how to deal with this situation – and with her husband saying this was no big deal, he used to ride his bike at that age — an advice-giver went ballistic. “Even 10 minutes gone without explicit permission and knowledge of where exactly you could find him would have been too much! As soon as he was out of your sight,…
OMG is this a distressing — and well-documented — piece by Charles Marohn at Strong Towns on one reason kids are walking and biking to school less and less: Time and again, communities choose to build schools on the cheapest available land, typically at the edge of town, far removed from where families actually live. This choice reduces upfront costs, but it pushes ongoing burdens onto everyone else: parents navigating daily traffic jams, school staff with extended commutes, and taxpayers at every level who end up funding the infrastructure needed to make these sites marginally functional. The piece is reprinted and…
UPDATE: Mallerie Shirley’s “Neglect” charge has just been reversed! We are awaiting details, but this is fantastic news. We are hopeful that our “Reasonable Childhood Independence” law was instrumental, because this is what had happened: A mom, a kid, a beautiful day Atlanta mom Mallerie Shirley loves seeing her son get himself around their kid-friendly neighborhood. So on Election Day last year, with the schools closed, of course she let him ride his scooter to the playground. But as he scooted along the bike trail just outside his house, a lady approached and started asking him questions, including where were…
Free-Range Parents may recall 2025 as a year that brought them arrests, investigations, and solid proof that helicopters are still swarming over childhood. Was it all that bad? Here are the – THE 10 WORST FREE-RANGE KIDS PARENTING STORIES OF 2025: Survey Finds Most Kids Leading Insanely Boring Life A Harris Poll of kids 8-12 discovered that most aren’t allowed to be out in public without an adult. Most have “rarely” or “never” walked around their own neighborhood without supervision. And 71% have not used a sharp knife. Gee, I wonder why they’re online all the time? Maybe because…
PERCEPTION: “I CAN’T LET MY KIDS PLAY OUTSIDE — CRIME IS SOARING!” REALITY: 2025 had “THE LARGEST ONE-YEAR DROP IN MURDER EVER RECORDED.” So says the Substack Jeff-Alytics, the amazing resource run by crime analyst Jeff Asher. (I was going to say “crime enthusiast” but…no.) Of course, 2025 is not quite over yet. But Jeff’s got most of this year’s numbers in, and he is finding that: The drop in crime in 2025 continues a trend that began in 2023, accelerated in 2024, and likely became historic in 2025. A roughly 20 percent drop in murder in 2025, as is suggested by the…
North Carolina dad Sameule Jenkins is due back in court this month on charges stemming from the downstream impact of his arrest after the tragic death of his son. Jenkins and his wife, Jessica Ivey Jenkins, let their 10- and 7-year-old sons walk a few blocks to and from the grocery store in Gastonia, North Carolina, last spring. Jenkins stayed on his phone with his 10-year-old the whole way to ensure they were safe. The last words he heard were, “Legend, no!” His 7-year-old son Legend ran into the road and was hit by a car. He died that night.…
How did we get to the point where having an old-fashioned see-saw on the playground is something almost no park district would consider? Or that students crossing the street to visit the firehouse must get a signed waiver? Or that a school bus can’t let a 7-year-old off at the bus stop unless there’s an adult waiting there to walk them home half a block? Philip Howard says it all began in the ‘60s. Not with the hippies – with the experts. Goodbye, Common Sense. “The idea we had back then was that we could prescribe the correctness of public…