Oct. 17 and 18 I’ll be speaking at the amazing Battle of Ideas in London. The weekend’s wide-ranging topics include “Is Happiness Good for You?” “Can Big Data Save the World?” and “The Lighter Side of the Dark Net.” (Which I can’t wait to hear!) My session is, “Free-Range Parenting: Reckless or Responsible?” I was invited to speak by Ellie Lee, director of the Centre of Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent in Cantebury and co-author of “Parenting Culture Studies” (Palgrave, 2014). She calls herself a “parenting non-expert,” a term I love so much, I plan to borrow…
Author: lskenazy
. Our culture SAYS we want to raise independent, problem-solving, self-reliant young people. We even have groups like the Scouts and Guides to foster just that spirit. And then for one reason or another — insurance, fear, knee-jerk no-saying — we do this: Dear Free-Range Kids: I really enjoyed the movie this morning about the Japanese child. But right now I’m seething with frustration because I went to pick up my 9-year-old daughter from her Girl Guide meeting 1.5 blocks away last night after receiving an email saying that no girl was allowed to walk home alone. I went in…
Usually I don”t have the patience to watch an 8-minute video, but this one fascinated me: . The two families — one Japanese, one Australian — are obviously hand-picked and hence not a random sample. But Japan DOES trust its kids out and about at an early age, and clearly this is not beyond what the kids can handle. Meanwhile, western countries, including my own, come up with all sorts of reasons that kids are simply not safe anytime they are unsupervised. What’s worse, this paranoid outlook is becoming the law of the land, as we just saw in the…
An 8 year old cannot stay home alone, even for two hours after school, British Columbia’s Supreme Court just ruled. A mom had been doing just that, without any problems, until a social worker was alerted to the situation. (Possibly by the husband from whom the mom is separated.) According to the Vancouver Sun: A social worker visited the home and told the mother a child under the age of 10 could not be left alone. She asked the mother — identified only as B.R. in court documents — to agree to a “safety plan.” When the mother refused, the…
A bunch of you sent me this CNN piece about the hidden dangers (every TV producer’s favorite kind!) of hand sanitizer. While the video is about teens deliberately drinking the stuff, the written story is about Purell-pickled nippers, and that’s what I’d like to discuss today. It starts with a story that’s almost too strange to be scary: ATLANTA — Nhaijah Russell’s parents had no idea what was wrong with their daughter when she was rushed to an emergency room from school. The 6-year-old was slurring her words and was unable to walk. Doctors soon learned that Russell had swallowed…
. From a parent whose kids go to public school in an affluent area in Alabama: Dear Free-Range Kids: Today I had to surrender my license for the privilege of going into my kid’s school to help on a band project on this day. Because we all know that a bad guy with a gun will always stop at the front desk and hand over his ID before shooting up the school. We seem to have adopted a national fear of everything, driven by the media, the government, and the security/fear industrial complex. Here’s what our school system now has…
Safety hysteria is everywhere, but nowhere more obvious than in “must read” warnings to parents, like the ones discussed below. A mom named Alisha emailed to say, “As a former paramedic I’m all for safety, but I am frustrated on a daily basis with other people’s perception of what is dangerous.” Me too. That’s why I love her letter. By the way, the clothing hampers that the article talks about are made of fabric and wire. Dear Free-Range Kids: So in this month’s Parents magazine there is an article titled “10 Hidden Hazards In Your House.” In big red bold…
This fantastic editorial says what we have been saying: Enough with the post-incarceration demonizing of all those convicted of sex crimes, as if merely being within 2500 feet of “one of them” means our kids are likely to be kidnapped and raped. As they stand now, the laws regarding where a “sex offender” can live are as cruel as they are worthless. Banning folks who’ve served their time from living anywhere near a park or school assumes that they are driven to pounce on random victims. But we know that the vast majority of crimes against kids, including rape, are…
. Here’s one of the occasional letters I get from divorced parents who see their child’s safety differently: Dear Free-Range Kids: I hope you can help me or provide me with some recommendations. I have a court date on October 6th in which it will be discussed whether I can let my 9-year-old daughter (4th grade) ride her bike to and from school alone. . I am a divorced father. I share 50/50 custody with my ex wife. When my daughter is at my house, I allow her to ride her bike to school alone (distance= 0.9miles, time: 4-6 mins…
. A note asked me to take a look at this story, about a boy, 10, who walked out of his school and no one noticed he was gone. . Which is, admittedly, egregious….but not necessarily dangerous. We’re talking a 10 year old, not a toddler. And as the note correctly remarked: Of course, I know you share my frustration with the tone of this article. It belabors the idea of all the horrible things that could have happened to this 10 year old. . And to be fair, the mother has every right to be angry with the school,…