The title of this Time piece, “Parenting is Now Officially Impossible,” made me sit up. It’s so true! Anything we do as parents can and may be used against us. It’s like living in a totalitarian state — we are not free to raise our kids as we see fit because we are being watched and judged. We make choices based on fear of busybodies and the authorities they can summon by punching three digits into their phone. This surveillance society has become so normalized that yesterday I was listening to a June 9 episode of Marc Maron’s WTFpodcast a…
Author: lskenazy
How do parents get the idea that if they aren’t playing with their kids, they’re not doing their job? . It’s such a new and culture-specific idea that when I interviewed David Lancy, author of The Anthropology of Childhood, he said that other cultures actually guffaw at the idea of parents sitting on the floor and playing with their kids. To them it’s as bizarre as sitting on the floor and lapping water from the doggie bowl. . Not that it’s wrong to play with your kids, obviously. It just shouldn’t be the only option kids have. And yet, here’s…
A mom who let her 8-month-old twins wait in the car with the windows down, within her view, for 10 minutes, finds herself released on a $25,000 bond and electronic home monitoring. As Patch reports: ALSIP, Ill. — An Alsip woman was arrested after she left her infant twins alone in a car while she went to register her older child for school, prosecutors said. Sarah Laveille, 28, appeared before Cook County Judge Peter Felice on two misdemeanor counts of child endangerment. The prosecutor said that around 8:50 a.m. Monday, Alsip police were called to Prairie Junior High School, 11910…
This is a fascinating Facebook rant by a woman I don’t know but am now hoping will be my FB friend, Sara Mabin. It was posted on June 3, so IGNORE the gorilla references. I think she is so right that society seems bent on glorifying the good old, “Lean on Me” days, even while crucifying any modern parents who don’t monitor their kids’ lives and choices. However, what I have not heard is today’s parents insisting that their OWN parents knew where they were at all times, which is the jumping off point for her piece: This is the…
Think of our proud founding fathers, the Minutemen who ran in from the fields to wage a revolution. These were ordinary people entrusted to win the freedom of an entire country, accustomed as they were to toiling, being tested, and rising to the occasion. Here’s how we breed that out of our kids: Dear Free-Range Kids: My son is doing a play or something tomorrow. Teacher asked for props, including a shovel. My son has this kids’ gardening shovel. I knew he’d never be allowed on the bus with it. So today, since he had a dentist appt, I just…
From my mailbox, two neatly twinned items. First, a Facebook rant sent in by a mom disgusted by it: Dear “Nana” – It was selfish to leave your Grandchildren strapped in their car seats in the sun today as you bought your Subway. I was in Subway with you and continued to 7 11, on my way to my car your precious grandchildren yelled for me and I stopped, they pointed where “Nana” was, still in Subway. Nana appeared at the Subway door and I asked her why the children were left in the hot car? Her answer was: The…
We live in the information age, which means living in the excess information age. And as most of us have come to realize, almost anything can be deemed “bad” for kids by someone somewhere. My favorite example comes from the Julie Gunlock book, “From Cupcakes to Chemicals,” where she writes about listening to the news one night and hearing how dangerous it was for kids to drink from the garden hose. As if this is their sole source of liquid for 18 years. Now here’s a new screed on the topic from fed-up mom Sara Kallies in the Huffington Post,…
UPDATE: The parents of the boy who wormed his way into the gorilla exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo will not be prosecuted. That is fantastic news for anyone who has ever lost track of a beloved child for a few seconds, minutes or hours — in other words, every parent on earth. (Including the Prime Minister of England, who accidentally left his kid at a pub.) As the prosecutor put it: “If anyone does not believe a 3-year-old can scamper off very quickly, they’ve never had kids,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said at a news conference Monday. “Because they…
. Have a great weekend!
A study in England has found that one in five young children is reported to child protective services. One. In. Five. This 45-second audio clip from the BBC’s Today Programme is described thusly: One in five children born between 2009 and 2010 were referred to social services before the age of five because of fears of neglect or abuse, according to researchers from the University of Lancashire. Professor Andy Bilson told Today presenter Justin Webb that the 150,000 referrals of concern was “creating a huge haystack in which we are trying to find the needle of the children who are…