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…
Author: lskenazy
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…
Congratulations, Rhode Island! Looks like you are about to become the proud parents of every child in the state, pushing aside those stupid “real” parents, because you know so much more about how to raise their kids than they do! According to this AP article by Matt O’Brien: State lawmakers are debating a bill that would punish parents for leaving a child younger than 7 alone in a car. They’ve also proposed legislation to ban kids under 10 from being home alone and older kids from being home alone at night. Legislation could even extend to private preschools, where…
Susan Solomon is an architectural historian who studies the science of play, the architecture of playgrounds (among other things), and what it takes to get kids doing their thing outside. The first step, of course, is just that: Getting them out the door. In this post on her Science of Play blog, she offers a way to make that happen. It may be easier than we thought! …American kids, when they have unstructured free time, seem to favor playing inside. Conventional wisdom cites computers, video games, and TV programs as some of the primary culprits that seduce kids into staying…
Imagine a world where a brief encounter between young people and strangers does not automatically warrant police involvement — or a news report. Now imagine you were in central Massachusetts yesterday where this “behavior” took place, in broad daylight. Would you call the cops? The TV stations? Would you beg “anyone with credible information about the incident” to call, as if there’d been a mugging, or murder? The 2016 answer is yes, as this story from WCVB attests. I’m reprinting it in its entirety in case you might otherwise assume I’m leaving out some salient details, like, “All the young…
. How does change happen? How do we give kids — and ourselves — the freedom we all deserve? Freedom to be part of the world? Sometimes all it takes is simply standing our ground and demanding our rights. Here’s what one mom did. – L Dear Free-Range Kids: I LOVE what you are doing and wanted to share an experience with you. I recently transferred my 8-year-old, 3rd grade son to a new, small charter school in San Diego. After school, my son goes to the Boys and Girls Club. When I transferred him, I thought it would be…
This week’s New Yorker contains possibly the most devastating article I’ve ever read: Sarah Stillman’s, “The List,” subtitled, “When juveniles are found guilty of sexual misconduct, the sex-offender registry can be a life sentence.” Stillman calmly details just how shocking and sadistic our sex offender laws are, from arresting tweens who played doctor, to treatment that’s a mish-mash of pop psychology and medieval torture. For instance: One treatment involves measuring an offender’s response to pornography with a “penile plethysmograph” — a.k.a. the “peter meter.” (See below.) Do we really want our government measuring the circumference of people’s penises? Stillman also…
Plush Toy is Secret Signal to Sex Traffickers, Says WFLA TV By buying a plush toy with a heart on it, Tampa mom Nicole O’Kelly unwittingly alerted predators that her little girl “is ready to be traded for sex.” Or so reports (if that’s the word) the station WFLA. Using a garbled mishmash of horror and hysteria, correspondent Melanie Michael told viewers that the toy, a pink stuffed truck recently purchased at a Monster Jam event, “held a sick secret; a disgusting calling card for creeps. The heart on the toy was a symbol for pedophiles.” Um…what? The heart within…