What happens when you get a bunch of kids together and set them free to have fun? Death! Examining death, that is – a dead rodent. That’s what I heard from Beshalie Donaldson. She came to my attention when she commented on a Facebook post by another mom, Sara P, who’d started a Let Grow Play Club at her park. Here’s Sara’s Club: Beshalie commented: Wonderful! I started one in our local park after school on Fridays. This week the highlight was when the kids found a dead mole! So nice to see them playing freely in the woods, the…
Author: lskenazy
A mom and dad who let their kids, 7 and 10, walk to the grocery in a city outside of Charlotte, NC, are grieving today because the 7-year-old ran into the street and was killed by a car. If you had to decide on a punishment for the parents, would you: A – Arrest them for manslaughter, set bail at $1.5 million, and forbid them from attending their son’s funeral? B – Decide they’ve been punished enough? The authorities in Gastonia, NC, chose option A. Jessica Ivey and Samuele Jenkins are facing felony charges of involuntary manslaughter and child neglect,…
The worry that our kids will die the second they step outside feels innate, but it has been cultivated by a society peddling fear. One prime example? The new ad for the Life360 tracking app. (Video at bottom of post. Screengrab above.) It features a mom singing a Disney-sweet song to her daughter who looks to be high school age: You are my whole wide world My heart, my joy, my baby girl You’ll never know how much I love you! When you’re gone I just think of you… Dying. The girl reacts the way you probably just did: “WHAT???”…
Here’s a little note from Helen, a “helicopter mom” who’s changing. As can you! And if you do, please drop us a line: Hi there! Just read your book Free Range Kids. I was led to it by reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. And I was led to Haidt by watching Adolescence and also from getting involved in a local Smartphone Free Childhood group. So, I’ve been educating myself. And I realized I was a helicopter parent and it’s time to let go. Since reading your book I have: – sent my 6 and 8 year old kids to the post box (3 mins walk away) to…
Are daily photos from overnight camp a big issue? Probably not the biggest. But they are part of a culture where parents have increasingly come to expect the ability to watch their kids at all times, even from afar — or at least have been trained to expect this by organizations eager to provide surveillance-as-a-service. Standing tall against this tide is Georgia Del Favero, Executive Director of Camp Birchwood in Laporte, Minnesota. At this overnight camp for girls 6 to 17, Georgia’s bucking the trend of uploading daily photos for parents. Instead, she sends out photos once a week. This…
Would you leave your sleeping child in a hotel room with a baby monitor and go eat at a nearby restaurant? That’s the question posed by Stephanie Murray in this wide-ranging Slate piece. Murray was inspired by two things: 1 — The viral mob attacking parenting influencers Matt and Abby Howard for leaving their babies in their cruise ship cabin with FaceTime on, while they ate in the dining room. 2 – The fact that Murray and her husband do the same thing on vacations: Take the baby monitor with them and head out to a nearby dinner. Why is…
You may recall the tragedy that happened just about 10 years ago when a toddler got away from his mom at the Cincinnati Zoo and somehow fell into the gorilla enclosure. Fearing the gorilla could harm the child and knowing that tranquilizers do not take effect immediately, the zoo made the difficult decision to kill the gorilla. And then a good segment of the American population made the simple decision to troll the mom. A meme went around featuring a photo of the gorilla, Harambe, with the words, “I was killed because a b*tch wasn’t watching her child.” There was…
By now you have probably see this great video, below. Not yet? Well, you’re in for a heartwarming couple of minutes: Utah mom Stephanie Read read The Anxious Generation, got to the chapters I helped out with (the ones for parents and schools), and took them to heart. As she told Instagram: “At the end they have this challenge, like, let your kid do something without a parent…so it can build confidence for them.” That’s literally The Let Grow Experience, where the assignment for kids is: “Do something new, on your own, WITH your parents’ permission but WITHOUT your parents! (Here’s the…
The human condition is not one of calm seas and sated hearts. That’s why so many religions work so hard to get us there. The latest is the “Know Everything Your Child is doing/saying/hearing/reading/eating/trying/licking and Peace Will Be Yours.” Um…right. So here’s the wise note from a mom who remains anonymous – and a little nervous. This, she notes, is just what it means to be a parent. It’s a condition that cannot be changed, even with today’s tracking devices that promise to give us parental “peace of mind.” As if! Dear Let Grow: As the mother of two teenagers,…
TIDES TURNING AT LAST? Just a few months after Georgia mom Brittany Patterson was arrested for not knowing that her son, then 10, had walked to the store on his own, her state has passed a Reasonable Childhood Independence law. It now goes to the governor for signing. The bill clarifies that “neglect” is only when you put your child in serious, obvious danger – not anytime you take your eyes off them. This protects against the modern-day helicopter parenting norms that have made passersby – and, sometimes, government workers — insist that children of almost any age need constant adult supervision. When…