.Obviously, this young man would appreciate your help:.Dear Free-Range Kids: PLEASE READ AND RESPOND!.I’m a 14-year-old American male, and, until early November, had a father who led a Free-Range parenting style. He enjoyed this site a lot and talked about the things he had learned here. However, on November 11, I got into trouble with the police regarding an inappropriate statement I had made about my school online. Rather than allowing this to be another experience in my ascent to maturity, and acknowledging the fact that I had learned my lesson about Internet responsibility, my father took this as an…
Author: lskenazy
Dots on a sex offender map terrify many parents. “Look! There’s one of them in the neighborhood!” Here is a letter from the wife of one of “them.” I would not be afraid for my family to live near him. Dear Free Range Kids: I’m married to a registered sex offender. I’ve told our story before, but I don’t mind telling it again, because I think too often we get bogged down in a false dichotomy about sex offenses: there are innocent people who don’t deserve to be sex offenders at all because they did nothing wrong (people who urinated…
Thank God for Snopes. Without it, I’d be left rolling my eyes so far up, you’d look at me and run because, like, where are my pupils? But thanks to Snopes, the will-not-die Facebook post below is at least getting the fact-finding it deserves. For instance, that cute girl we must presume was kidnapped and never seen again? According to Snopes: Facebook commenters correctly identified the photograph’s origin on a page about children’s hairstyles. What’s more: The scenario presented is one that is exceedingly unlikely. Among other implausibilities, this warning makes it sound as though the bad guys are stymied…
Considering fear has been the great motivator behind the marketplace push to get us to GPS our kids, put them into supervised activities, drive them everywhere, and spend every last dollar on them, lest they get hurt or fall behind in some way, it is no surprise that the pet-industrial complex has taken note. Hence, this press release I got. I guess I should have sent it yesterday because now it may be TOO LATE: Valentine’s Day is also PET THEFT AWARENESS DAY: [LS: I hope you celebrated!] Here’s how to protect your pet, and your heart, from theft Imagine…
David Finkelhor, head of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, has written a very solid, smart article about the recent murder of Nicole Lovell, the 13-year-old Virginia girl allegedly killed by two older teens she met online. While The New York Times and other media immediately published articles screeching about new apps creating a world where no child is safe, Finkelhor calmly cited studies conducted by his center that prove the opposite: “Youth homicides and abductions committed by a stranger met online are rare,” the studies showed. How rare? They “can be counted on one hand.” Rare. And actually, when it…
Years ago I went to a friend’s African-American church. The preacher told a story about the time he was running to catch the bus on Manhattan’s Central Park West — a beautiful avenue boasting our iconic park on one side, and million dollar condos on the other. As he sprinted up the street, a cop sprinted up behind him shouting. “Halt! What are you doing here?” These were the days before Ferguson, and I was unaware of how common this was. But the churchgoers weren’t. They nodded along. They smiled ruefully. They’d all been there: Presumed guilty just for being…
Recall that last week I got a note from a dad who had just dropped his wife off at college when he realized: She still had the apartment keys! So he turned the car around, went back to the school and let his kids, 2 and 4, wait in the car while he ran in. It was 47 degrees out. The kids were safe and warm and buckled in. He got the house keys and came back 10 minutes later to find two college employees standing next to his car, glaring. They told him they were reporting him to the…
. This comes to us from Wendy Cicchetti Thurmond, a mom of three, a former news anchor, and now small business owner in Westwood, MA. An Open Letter to the Lady Who Shut My 8-Year-Old Daughter Out: . I am a disappointed, bewildered, angry mother who’s daughter has been shut out of a youth sport. I never thought enrolling my 8 year old daughter on February 1st for spring lacrosse, would be considered late, but it is was. I sent an e-mail asking for my daughter to be added to the waitlist. Here’s what I got: . “I…
Heck, I was about to write about kids, free play, parents, common sense, or the shocking lack thereof. But then along came this video. I burst out laughing even as my eyes welled up with tears. Had to share. And, yes, now I want pesto. (I also want to learn to use my fork and knife better.) Divertiti! .
The latest sexting scandal comes to us from Peters (ha ha!) Middle School outside of Pittsburgh, where police are examining kids’ cell phones for nude photos. Why. Like really: Why? It sounds like a giant swath of middle school kids and teens have naked pictures of themselves and others on their phones. Investigating these as if they are crime scenes doesn’t seem to make any more sense than reading kids’ diaries as if they are signed confessions. Can we instead decide that while naked selfies are a bad idea, the police should have nothing to do with investigating or prosecuting…