This is how it’s SUPPOSED to work: Dear Free-Range Kids: I feel very fortunate that we live in Northern Alberta, Canada, where the kids play outside all day, all year! Last summer, we had the biggest scare of our lives. It was the last day of school and I was resting in my bedroom while my husband worked outside and my cousin supervised the three kids. My son, who had just turned three, wandered up to see me on the second floor, but then left. I assumed he had rejoined the party downstairs, while my cousin assumed…
Author: lskenazy
Recently we were talking about the trend on campus to require “trigger warnings” — warnings on material assigned for class that could potentially traumatize a student by triggering a flashback on some misery endured. We also discussed “microaggressions” — the idea also newly popular at college that students’ casual remarks could be construed as aggressive, so it is up to everyone to make sure they offend no one with whatever they happen to say. The amazingly honest letter below explains the problem with this assumption of fragility. The Free-Range Kids angle is simple: From dumbed -down playgrounds where kids can’t…
A note I got: Dear Free-Range Kids: I need help and an answer to what I should do. I’m 14 and I feel like I’m living in hell everyday of my life… My mum and my dad never let me out to play with my friends because they think that they are a bad influence on me. The only times i’m allowed to go outside are to walk to my cousin’s house a couple of blocks away, and that’s only every 2 weeks! I am allowed to walk to a shop which is nearby if I want to get anything…
If to a hammer, everything looks like a nail, to a pediatric surgeon, everything looks like a fall hazard. That’s how we end up with studies like the ones discussed below, which strike fear in the hearts of parents. There’s something sickening about the way we assess everything in terms of risk all the time, without placing that risk — often tiny — in context, or looking at the risks associated with AVOIDING that risk. It’s like obsessive compulsive disorder — we feel compelled to picture disaster all the time. It gets to be a drag. Which is why I…
An honest letter about a real problem: Kids given lots of freedom but, it seems, no behavior boundaries. Or boundary boundaries, for that matter: Hello Lenore. I’m a firm Free-Range mom, though to be honest I don’t give my children the freedom I’d like to, though not for fear of the boogey man, but for fear of the law coming down hard on us. My five kids, my husband and I recently moved to an apartment complex (admittedly not my favorite living situation). The community here is rather poor and most are immigrants and it’s my belief that their culture…
What a huge victory for common sense, decent parents and a country otherwise gripped by “worst-first thinking” — thinking up the worst case scenario and proceeding as if it’s likely to happen. The New Jersey Supreme Court just ruled that a mom found guilty of child endangerment for letting her sleeping daughter wait in the car for 5-10 minutes in a suburban mall parking lot on a cool day deserved another hearing. You’ll recall the case from when I wrote about it in January of 2014, and then again about a year ago, when the mom lost her appeal: The…
There are two ways to approach a risk: Try to spend your whole life avoiding it, or learn how to deal with it. In Germany, when it comes to kids, the authorities seem to be voting for Option B. Here’s a letter from a mom over there: Dear Free-Range Kids: Finally took a photo of a poster I wanted to send you: The picture shows parents wheeling their kids to school in a wheelbarrow on a bed of feathers. The local traffic authorities realized there was an increase in traffic accidents involving kids caused by their inexperience in being near…
“They threw their child against the wall!” That’s what the anonymous caller told Kentucky’s Child Protective Services about Corey Chaney, 25, and April Rogers, 23, the sixth time she called. How horrifying! But not the way you think. While the parents had been reported five times in about as many months for crimes that included dangling their baby over a balcony, they were cleared each time. What was going on? A reign of terror using the state as torturers. It’s surprisingly easy to do. A rogue social worker who lived downstairs from Chaney and Rogers in Elizabethtown, KY, knew exactly…
. This is the article everyone’s talking about: The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, on the cover of this month’s Atlantic. It discusses the idea taking root on college campuses that students cannot be exposed to any ideas, words or phrases that discomfort them in any way, even if that wasn’t anyone’s intent. That’s why schools are embracing “trigger warnings” — warnings placed at the top of readings that might mention a topic that “triggers” a student’s flashback on some unpleasant episode in their lives. One Harvard Law Student went so far as to…
. In response to the other day’s post about a mom who let her child wait in the car while she ran an errand — and the guy who video-shamed her, and his Facebook friends who piled on — I got the note below. This is obviously not about a child. But what worries me is the way society seems intent on finding danger to kids OR pets everywhere it looks, and piling on, viciously. This is a mob mentality. The combustible mix of rage and sanctimony gives people license to be cruel. Hence the new term I’m trying out:…