Here’s a social experiment that is the yin to the Joey Salad’s video yang that “taught” us to beware of strangers. As Canada’s National Post reports, Vancouver police sergeant Mark Horsley borrowed an electric wheelchair and went undercover to the “drug-infested Downtown East Side” in order to catch the criminals preying on the most vulnerable: …The objective: pretend to be disabled and brain-injured from a motorcycle accident that never really happened. Play the “easy mark.” Bait criminals by flashing cash and valuables, such as cellphones and cameras. When they pounce, collar them. Make them pay. “My boss tied a pork…
Author: lskenazy
A reader writes: I want to be a Free-Range parent. I really really do. I do try. Just last week I told myself to stay calm before saying anything to a parent who had allowed my son to swim in her pool before I arrived at a birthday party. There were 12 kids in the pool, 10 adults watching and there I was in full panic. But, I did calm down and did not freak out. I was soon advised that my son was the strongest swimmer of the bunch. . On a recent…
This story, from KHOU in Houston, is getting tons of attention and I think that will prevent the mom from losing her hard-fought new job! What’s great is that the whole country seems to have woken up to the idea that “unsupervised for a short time” does NOT equal, “In such terrible danger that only an awful parent would ever let this happen.” (See the Federal legislation from Thursday!) HOUSTON — A mother charged with abandoning her children at a Houston mall said she had just moved to Houston with her young son and daughter. Laura Browder said she had…
Sen. Mike Lee (R, Utah) proposed the first ever Free-Range Kids and Parents federal legislation, which was passed by the U.S. Senate yesterday. That’s right: a Free-Range Kids clause made its way into the Every Child Achieves Act, a re-authorization of major federal law that governs funding and regulation of elementary education in the United States. The Free-Range portion would permit kids to walk or ride their bikes to school at an age their parents deem appropriate, without threat of civil or criminal action. This gives autonomy back to the parents when it comes to how much freedom we want…
A bunch of men and a little girl? This vignette came as a comment from Havva as we were discussing an idea that sounds almost creepy in our predator-obsessed world: the adults that kids are attracted to. I was forever questioning workmen and contractors in my neighborhood. One of the quick ways for mom to get me out the door was to mention there was work in progress near by. When I was 4 my parents added onto the house and I was all over the contractors. I got out my little shovel and dug the foundation…
What a thought-provoking video: The ad shows several grandparents reminiscing about their childhood fun outside — tobogganing, planting, fishing — and then several parents recalling that they’d build forts, or just head out to find friends to play with. Finally, their kids talk about their love of videogames and texting. The ad then shows those same kids after what can only be called an intervention. We see them running outside (toward a waiting parent), carefully riding a bike on the sidewalk, or being taught by mom how to plant a flower. (That kid did not look psyched to me.) It’s…
Mariana Brussoni is an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia in public health and pediatrics, and lead author of a major report on the health benefits of “risky” play. The study determined what Free-Rangers feel in their (once in a while broken) bones: Too much supervision and safe-to-the-point-of-stultifying play spaces prevent kids from getting the kind of exercise and life skills they need. Her study appears at the same time as Canada’s ParticipACTION report, which states: “Access to active play in nature and outdoor — with its risk — is essential for healthy child development. We recommend increasing…
If you have a child who is very sick, you will move heaven and earth to get that kid care. Unfortunately, there’s a possibility that this assiduousness will trigger suspicions of abuse. In a horrifying yet supremely well documented oped in today’s New York Times, the mom of a girl who suffered from inexplicable headaches, nausea, falls and pain, explains how others in her situation end up with their kids taken away by child protection system all too ready to see “medical child abuse” where none exists: Compounding the problems with the overly broad definition of medical child abuse is…
This essay, What Losing My Kids Taught Me About Free-Range Parenting, appeared in The Tennessean. It’s by Maggie Conran, author of the blog nomommybrain (motto: Just Say No to Mommy Brain!). The piece packs an emotional wallop because we’ve all had that WHERE ARE MY KIDS? experience. In this case, Conran’s family was at the local woods, the kids asked if they could take a shortcut, and after some misgivings, she let them. We pick up here: “Pleeeeeeese, can we do it, Mama? Please?!?” “But…” “We’ll be safe! And stick together! We can do it. I know we can!”…
At last America is realizing how Taliban-esque our sex offender laws can be. First came the story of Elkhart, Indiana’s Zach Anderson, which hit the front page of the New York Times on Sunday (you read it here first): Zach, 19, had sex with a girl who told him she was 17 but turned out to be 14, which a judge decided makes Zach a sex offender for life. Watching a TV segment about his case, another family in Elkhart couldn’t believe their eyes. Their son was living the exact same story. As Fox28 reports, Darian Yoder, also a 19…