Free country? Not if you think your kids are old enough to walk to school AND learn a lesson. A Tennessee mom, Lisa Marie Palmer, learned this the hard way, after she made her kids walk to school when they missed the bus. Wait a minute — she made her kids WALK? Outside? To school? How could they possibly do THAT, I’d like to know. It’s unheard of! Of course this is a crime! As the local Times Free press reports: It “appeared as if she was driving ahead of the children and allowing them to walk and catch up…
Author: lskenazy
Here’s a charming little nugget sent to us by a reader named Kathleen, who writes: Dear Free-Range Kids: I thought you would enjoy this artifact of saner times. I draw your attention to the 4th column, last paragraph before the lists begin. It’s part of an article in a July, 1865 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that talks about the police, and devotes a paragraph to describing how kindly police officers treated lost children and their efforts to return them to their parents. The article is titled The Police of Brooklyn. And here is that very paragraph! (And yes,…
Here’s my piece from last week’s New York Post about how we get so used to over-the-top security measures that we think we can’t reverse them. But maybe we can. Maybe we must. Our Unfounded Obsession with Safety Is Costing Us our Freedom by Lenore Skenazy As you inch your way through security at the airport, you’ll be relieved of your penknife and terrifying tube of Pepsodent. Your unopened can of Coke will, of course, be thrown in the trash, along with any snow globes, and off go your shoes. When at last you’re reshod and passing the duty-free shop,…
For a while, our cousins across the pond had a hard time distinguishing between the truly risky and and the truly ridiculous. Recall that in Britain last year, a school told a blind girl to stop using her cane, because it posed a tripping hazard to the other kids. This is also the country where many schools have banned tag, snowballs, and, in one case, frilly socks — a tripping hazard yet again. (Maybe Monty Python wasn’t exaggerating with those silly walks.) And then there was that headmistress who blacked out the eyes of kids in the yearbook, so no…
At first I read these official Girl Scout Safety Tips as saying girls age 6-12 must be supervised by an adult when selling door to door. Then I read them again, particularly Tip #4: Safety Tips: All girls who participate in the Girl Scout Cookie Program use 10 Basic Safety Guidelines 4. Partner with Adults Adults must accompany Girl Scout Daisies, Brownies, and Juniors when they are taking orders, selling, or delivering product. Girls grades 6—12 must be supervised by an adult when selling door-to-door and must never sell alone. Adults should be present at a cookie booth in any…
Here’s a heartening story from Texas: Five-year-old Allison Anderwald was sitting on the edge of the pool when her mom suffered a seizure in the middle of the pool. Allison immediately — …dove into the water, and started pulling her mom to the shallow end. It took several tries, but Allison didn’t give up. Once she got her mom to the shallow end, she turned her over, pulled her head above water, then went inside for help. Allison’s sisters and aunt, Tedra Hunt, came rushing out to get her mom out of the pool. Hunt describes the event. “She was…
In this interesting and fact-packed Quartz article, “WhyAre Our Kids So Miserable?”, reporter Jenny Anderson looks at a bunch of factors working against kid happiness. The biggest is the off-base belief that our kids are only learning when they are doing academic work: According to Daphna Bassok, an assistant professor of education and public policy at the University of Virginia, in 1998, 30% of teachers believed that children should learn to read while in kindergarten. In 2010, that figure was at 80%. Anderson goes on to quote my favorite philosopher of childhood, Peter Gray, author of “Free To Learn,” who…
New York seems so incredibly intent on telling parents how to raise their kids that the State Senate just voted for a bill it already voted for in 2012 and 2013, prohibiting kids under age 8 from waiting in the car. The bill has yet to become law because, apparently, the Assembly keeps voting it down or simply letting it die. This will sound strange but: Let’s hear it for the New York State Assembly! Meantime, according to an article posted today by the Associated Press: New York state would make it illegal to leave a child younger than 8…
In London today, my son and I wandered around and ended up at St Martin in the Fields Church. (Yes, yes, I have let strangers know I am on holiday and now my home will be burgled. Enjoy my rhinestones.) St Martins is outrageously beautiful and it does indeed serve lovely gourmet food in the crypt. We walked around down there for a few minutes, looking at the flat gravestones that make up much of the floor. The fact that it’s not depressing or weird to each lunch there proved one thing — long-ago deaths seem kind of cool,…
I was giving my Free-Range Kids talk at a suburban New York school the other night and one of the audience members kept smiling as I whipped through all the reasons we’re so afraid for our kids. This lady was clearly on my side — speakers are always gauging the audience, by the way — and then I found out who she was. Chandra Turner. Executive Editor of Parents Magazine. Well, that made me gulp. Some of the props I bring on my talks are, well, let’s just say periodicals for people with children. Maybe I poke fun at some…