What is most pernicious about our judgmental society is illustrated below. Just because you — or I — might not choose to transport our child to school the same way as this mom, that does not make her a menace. And disagreements should remain disagreements, not an excuse to sic the authorities on a parent who is raising her kids a little (or even a lot) differently from they way we’re raising ours. When did parenting differences become an opportunity to turn state’s evidence against a loving mom? Dear Free-Range Kids: I almost got reported to Child and Family Services…
Author: lskenazy
Enjoy. Quibble not. All hail Remy, and producer/editor Sean Malone- L.
A 9-year-old girl starts coughing so hard in school that she can barely breathe. You’re the school officials. Do you: 1 – Take bets on how long till she turns blue 2 – Call your lawyer, just in case she dies 3 – Let her use her inhaler At Columbia Elementary in West Jordan, UT, officials chose “none of the above.” They certainly didn’t let the girl use her inhaler, for one simple reason: her name wasn’t on it. So of course they had to grab it away. I mean, just because SHE brought it in and SHE needed it…
Pretty much weekly I hear from some company that wants to solve a problem that does not exist: How to keep tabs on your children every second of every day, in order to keep them “safe.” Here’s the latest, from a company called FamilySignal: Why does this strike me as a corrosive idea? Because products like these are teaching our kids that they are never safe unless they are supervised — in person or electronically — by their parents. And they are teaching parents that letting their kids have any unsupervised time is something good parents don’t do. . Meantime,…
This mini-rant comes to us frorm Tara Lazar, a mom of two and children’s book author. Her website is taralazar.com. Dear Free-Range Kids: I tweeted this Parenting Magazine online article to you a few days ago but wanted to follow up because it has me so upset: “5 Safety Tips to Protect Your Kids from Abduction.” . The author is from a child-tracking GPS company, so of course it’s in his best interest to bend the truth. The article begins: . “According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, roughly 800,000 children are reported missing each year, more…
. My friend, colleague and hero Peter Gray, a psychology professor and author of “Free to Learn” (one of my favorite books!), makes the compelling case we often make here: Kids need a chance to play, explore, have fun, mess up, get mad, recover, and simply live some part of their childhood UNSUPERVISED for them to develop the emotional resilience they will need. You can’t become an adult if you get zero practice being one, thanks to constant oversight and intervention by “real” adults. I kept trying to figure out which parts of Gray’s essay, which appears on Psychology Today,…
UPDATE: TAG HAS BEEN REINSTATED! HERE’S A NOTE FROM THE SCHOOL DISTRICT ON ITS WEBSITE! District responds to concerns about tag September 25, 2015 – The ‘hands-off’ policy intended for unstructured play and recess however well intended, has led to confusion, false reporting and is clearly not supported by many staff and many parents. Although the plan was focused on keeping students safe, it lacked stakeholder participation and support. The expectations for student behavior both in and out of our classrooms can be found in the published Students Rights and Responsibilities. Playground rules and expectations can also be found in…
See the story below this one, about a dad whose kids were seized because he let them stay home alone part of the nights he worked as a bouncer. His kids are 8 and almost 12. Canada’s Ministry of Children and Families gives the age of 12 as a guideline for when kids should first be allowed a crumb of unsupervised time. And now, here is a story from Europe: If you listen to the end — the whole thing is just a bit over one minute — you’ll hear what age the BBC reporter Matthew Price THOUGHT the young…
Just two days after the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that a social worker was allowed to insist an 8 year old boy not be left alone two hours after school, despite his mom’s belief that he was fine, a dad had his daughters, 8 an 11, seized from his home on the same premise. Martin Solotki told the Province newspaper that: …last Thursday he got texted at work at 9:30 p.m. by his ex-wife, who said she’d taken his daughters on behalf of a social worker. He says he ran home and called the RCMP a number of times…
This extremely helpful post comes from Rachel Howe, a writing teacher and mom in South Philly, where she started the South Philly Parents Resource Center. What she’s describing sounds like a sort of “consciousness raising” or support group, without the heavy title. Dear Free-Range Kids: I’ve got three children to chase after (and I do mean chase), on top of the usual adult responsibilities of mopping floors and making car payments. I really love spending time with the kids — finding hermit crabs on the beach, snuggling at bed time, etc., etc. My problem is that I rarely get to…