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…
Author: lskenazy
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…
Weirdly, this is almost the exact plot of the Tim Allen/Last Man Statnding episode I discuss in the post below this one! Dear Free-Range Kids: I hope this isn’t completely off topic but I have a story from yesterday. So we started letting my 8 year old walk home this year from school. He LOVES it. However, we have rules and the first rule is don’t cross the street. There is no need, we live just under a mile from the school and it is a straight shot on the same side of the street and…
“The line of cars for pick-up was three stupid blocks!” announces “Boyd,” the adorable moppet on “Last Man Standing,” as he gets home from school. Turns out he is quoting his grandpa, played by Tim Allen, who allowed him to walk instead of being driven. The boy’s dad, Ryan, is horrified. “It’s way too dangerous!” And so begins an episode titled, “Free-Range Parents.” Yes, we’ve hit the big time. So the dad and grandpa argue about the dad’s hovering. The dad — who looks to be about 38 — says, “Don’t even joke. There are child abductions all the time.…
This piece in The Nation by Michelle Goldberg proves how easy it is for parents to get labeled abusive, or even have their kids taken away, thanks to overzealous, under-trained, excessively suspicious and persnickety child protective service workers. She begins with a story you’ve read here: HAS CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES GONE TOO FAR? by Michelle Goldberg On July 29, 2013, a Latina mother in Illinois named Natasha Felix sent her three sons, ages 11, 9, and 5, out to play with a visiting cousin, a young girl, in a fenced park right next to her apartment building. The oldest boy…
What an honest — and funny! and sad! and exhilarating endorsement of Free-Range Kids by veteran journalist Philip Lerman. His piece appears on the CNN Website: A HELICOPTER DAD EMBRACES FREE-RANGE PARENTING by Philip Lerman Two separate events occurred on our family’s beach getaway this summer. One, my 13-year-old son rode a Jet Ski at 60 miles per hour. Two, I did not have a heart attack. Taken separately, neither of these events would be of particular significance. The fact that they occurred simultaneously, however, is a minor miracle. It’s not that I am one of those neurotic fathers who…
After hearing from so many parents worried that if they let their kids play outside or walk to school they could run afoul of the authorities, I wrote the statement below. Please fiddle with it to your satisfaction, then bring it to your mayor, or next town meeting, or post it on Facebook — or shout it from the rooftops. (If you do that, please take a video.) I believe that the first town that goes Free-Range will reap a ton of publicity, and property values will soar. (Buy now!) Eventually families will routinely seek out Free-Range cities or towns…
A new law in Rhode Island will make sex offenders living beyond 300 feet of a school move to a place at least 1000 feet from a school. They have 30 days to uproot their lives. Guess who thinks this will make children safer? Only the R.I. Brotherhood of Correction Officers, which sponsored the bill. No one else. Not even law enforcers. As this amazing article by Amanda Milkovits in the Providence Journal reports (boldface mine): Remarkably, law enforcers, civil-rights advocates, supporters of victims of sexual assault and experts who study sex-offender management say the expanded ban could actually decrease…