I’ve been wanting to stick a stake through this latest HUM (Halloween Urban Myth) for a week now, but darned if Janelle at RenegadeMothering didn’t go and do a fantastic job of same, which some of you sent me. (Thanks!) Her post, “Dear Internet, Nobody’s Going to Put Ecstasy in Your Kids’ Candy” begins: Okay, Internet. We have to talk. Again. You must knock it right the fuck off with your timely and earnest warnings to “moms and dads” to BE ON THE LOOKOUT for Ecstasy pills that “look like candy” and may be put into their kids’ trick-or-treat bags.…
Author: lskenazy
A Philadelphia area man with autism is being held on $100,000 bail for talking to some children. The man, Daniel Lee, 26, of Wayne, PA, spoke to a group of three siblings, 8, 9 and 10 on Wednesday, asking them about their school and telling them he was on his way to a cabin in the woods. It’s unclear if he told the kids he wanted them to join him or not. (News accounts differ: See this and this.) He walked off then found and talked to the kids again 20 minutes later near Wayne Elementary School, whereupon the children’s…
I got a very sweet note from a guy named Daniel asking if he could write a piece for us about metal detecting. “As you can probably tell from my email address, I do help run metaldetector.com, and the piece does include a link back to my site. But not to a product page or anything like that. I just like sharing relevant content that helps get others interested in my hobby,” he wrote. So I said I’d take a look. Having spent my whole childhood looking for 4-leaf clovers, and dedicated my book to the teacher who took her…
Halloween is the ultimate Free-Range holiday — the one day of the year kids are encouraged to go out in the world, on their own, and make things happen. They: *Dress up like adults (or at least not like the kids they are) *Take to the streets *Interact with strangers. Repeatedly! *Work and get paid (okay, it’s not “real” work, but they run around ringing doorbells and get paid in candy.) In other words, this is a totally subversive day, proving to kids that however much they are supervised the rest of the year, they obviously don’t need it. They…
At Free-Range Kids, we fight daily against the idea that there is one “right” way to parent. We also fight the criminalization of normal, rational parenting choices, like the decision to let a kid wait in the car for a couple minutes, or play outside unsupervised. Let us remember that formula feeding, too, is a choice that parents should be able to make without being shamed or, worse, punished. So here’s a wonderful piece from the New York Times by University of Toronto Prof. Courtney Jung, making just those points. In “Overselling Breast-Feeding” Jung writes as a mom who breastfed…
Nineteen year old Zach Anderson’s case made headlines across America after he was sentenced to 25 years as a sex offender for sleeping with a girl who said she was 17, but turned out to be 14. He was also given 90 days in jail, and forbidden to use a cell phone, or computer, or live anywhere near where children congregate. This included his family’s home, as it is near one of those big-time child magnets: a dock. But thanks to dogged protesting on the part of his parents, and the reporting of the Elkhart Truth’s Tim Vandenack, who brought…
A new app lets folks walking home alert their friends and family until someone among them agrees to “virtually” walk the app-activator home. Somehow this is supposed to make the walker feel safer, because if they drop their phone, or start running from a bee, or veer off course because they smell french fries, OR they are stabbed in the neck with an ice pick, the friend at home will know that something’s wrong. (Unless the stabber takes the phone and continues walking directly to the now-dead person’s home. Then nothing will register as wrong at all.) How many friends…
From my mailbox, a piece I love. I Was Groped As A Teen And I’m Trying To Be Upset By Anonymous He was odd by my WASP-y Virginia suburb standards: a scrawny middle aged man with a thick Italian accent, long jet-black dyed hair, flowery shirts with three buttons undone in front, revealing gold chains and a cross with a small Jesus on it. He was my barber. He had an odd way of getting right up into my ears while cutting my hair. He would snip slowly, pausing to inspect my sideburns. The pauses would go on forever it…
Great letter in Wicked Local Cambridge (as in outside of Boston) begins: Dear Neighbor, Yesterday was a beautiful day, I think you will agree. I decided to take a short walk from my house on Hamilton Street to Dana Park, which I have been coming to almost daily since 1989, the year my son was born. As I often do, I brought my camera, sat on a bench for about 10 minutes, did one lap around the park and headed home. I had barely gotten across the street when three police cars pulled up: I was told to stop, and…
My buddy Michelle Icard, author of Middle School Makeover, read the recent blog post here about the app that lets you watch your kid’s every move on a smartphone, and sent me this article of hers that just ran in the Washington Post. She’s talking about a social media panel she was on: When we hover over our kids’ social interactions, on high alert to catch each mistake and steer them back on course, we squelch their internal barometer for embarrassment and guilt. Had my mom listened to all my conversations and called my behavior out into the light, I…