Here are the admission rules for Toronto’s LEGOLAND: Please note: Children 17 and under must be accompanied by an adult supervisor 18 years of age or older. Adults (18+) will not be admitted without a child, with the exception of Adult Only Nights. So when you are 17 and 364 days old, you need an adult with you, because you are still a baby. But the day you turn 18, you need a kid with you, because otherwise you are a pervert. Nice.
Author: lskenazy
If you had a sneaking suspicion that our sex offender laws have gone overboard, here’s the naked proof: A British man found not guilty of rape must nonetheless give the authorities 24 hour notice before he engages in sex. I’ll type that again: The guy must let the cops know when, where, and with whom he is going to engage in intimate relations. This notification rule goes into effect in August and The Mirror reports that the police are going to ask that it become permanent. Now the man, who is single, is threatening to go on a hunger strike.…
Great piece in The Calgary Sun by Michael Platt about the problem with anonymous complaints, like the one that forced a local family to take down its beloved tree swing a week or so ago (boldface mine): The mind boggles to think of the kind of pucker-lipped sourpuss who’d call the city to squeal on two kids having a little fun outside, using the city’s largely-anonymous 311 application to avoid actually confronting the neighbour in person. The anonymous caller system was, of course, birthed with the best of intentions: To keep citizens safe. Instead, it has turned into the easiest…
If you’re wondering why our country seems so bizarrely fearful, here’s the answer: We absolutely cannot understand that risk is inherent in everything, even things that are outrageously safe, like eating cookie dough. Recently, thanks to an off-batch of General Mills flour that sickened 42 people nationwide (none of whom died), the Food & Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control have warned us, yet again, not to eat raw cookie dough. They did not just say, “Get rid of that General Mills flour.” They said, basically: Don’t eat raw dough, because dough contains raw flour, flour comes from…
My husband has been loving “The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir,” by William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, The French Connection and more. The excerpt below is an incredibly stark reminder of how we used to trust — even expect — young people to be part of the real world. (It’s also a stark reminder of how Chicago worked, but that’s another story.) Trusting our kids to rise to the occasion is the opposite of “learned helplessness.” It’s learned competence, something we deprive our children of when we, out of love and fear, do everything with or for them (boldface mine):…
Worst-first thinking is sometimes hard to distinguish from “sensible precautions.” I guess it makes sense to make sure that kids are not born with dangerous drugs in their systems, but it also seems to assume that all moms-to-be are drug addicts unless proven otherwise. And does this test extend to other substances, too, like nicotine or marijuana? Who decides when a mom is “good enough” to raise her child? (And who is “good enough” to replace her?) Big questions. Anyway, here’s what happened to one mama named Maggie Downs: It’s the birth of my first child, and I’m seven, maybe…
. From Camp Insurance-in-the-Woods comes this tale: . Dear Free-Range Kids: I’m not sure if you’ve written anything recently on sleepaway summer camp becoming less and less Free-Range, but I wanted to share the experiences of my 12-year-old daughter, who just returned from a one-week camp run in a partnership with the YMCA. . There were certainly aspects that taught independence and managing without parents, but there was a bit too much hand-holding for kids not used to helicopter parenting. At the performance for families on the last day, where I was given a wristband with my child’s name…
This week, Ikea made a sweeping recall of its 29,000,000 dressers sold in America and Canada: After the deaths of three toddlers, Ikea has agreed to immediately stop selling dressers that too easily tip over, and to offer full refunds to millions of customers who bought them. The recall applies to 29 million dressers, some sold more than a decade ago, including the company’s popular, low-cost Malm line. By Monday, Ikea’s website no longer carried the Malm models blamed in the deaths, which fail industry stability tests. Details of the agreement, which a federal agency source briefed on the matter…
Here’s how worst-first thinking and insurance issues (the two are linked, of course) corrode community, example #763: Dear Free-Range Kids: I previously had helped a couple of times in our church’s nursery. Due to gaps across caregivers on the latest occasion, I was approached by a kiddo who needed to use the potty, and so I helped her. I later was redressed by church nursery staff and had a terse confrontation with the church director of children’s ministries. No men were to ever change diapers, etc, etc. The staffer cited the risks of men being child sexual predators. Of course,…
Paula Fass’ new book The End of American Childhood is a history of childhood and parenting from the nation’s founding to the present. Fass, a University of California-Berkeley history professor, reveals how our values of independence, self-definition and success have affected our attitudes toward child rearing. The excerpt below comes from a chapter on the rise of parenting expert in the early 20th century. It discusses how new scientific expertise (some wise, some wrong) changed American parenting. Before that, very few laws or regulations restricted family life. This largely laissez-faire perspective gave way to much more self-conscious forms…