The saddest news. You know what it is. Hearing that 8-year-old Maddy Middleton of Santa Cruz, CA, was found dead today, and the suspect is a 15 year old neighbor. I will remind us all that this is the least common of crimes. That there are no more murders today than there were in our own youth. That when danger is random and exceedingly rare there is no way to organize one’s life to prevent it. (Remember, after the attacks of 9/11, many Americans cancelled their flights to avoid terrorism — and there was an uptick in auto deaths. The…
Author: lskenazy
Here’s how we look to other, less fear-wracked countries. Boldface, mine. (And for contrast, see my piece in yesterday’s New York Post about not expecting kids to walk to school): Dear Free-Range Kids: I am from Germany and what I read on your webpage is really shocking for me. How did American parents get so paranoid and CPS professionals support that! I am a social worker and a mother of a 4 year old girl and a 6 year old boy. I work for the city of Regensburg at the youth department. Our CPS would NEVER even think about investigating…
Hey folks — Researchers at the University of California-Irvine are studying how people perceive risk. They need people to take their survey and have asked the Free-Range community to join in. I just took it myself. It’s basically brief descriptions of situations when a child is left alone. You rate how safe they are. The whole thing takes five minutes. Here’s the link: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2155453/FRK-1 Thanks! The researchers promise to send us the results! – L .
. This letter I got yesterday reminds me of one of the most thorough, fascinating, damning study I’ve ever read about where the “No touch” policy comes from (and why it is unnecessary, and how it actually makes us all MORE afraid for our kids): So those sex crazed pedophiles have invaded the Girl Scouts now apparently. My daughter went to horse camp this summer and even though the girls are as young as 5 and out in the heat and sun of Tucson the female leaders are unable to help the girls put sunscreen on or help them with…
Here’s a a piece in Canada’s Globe & Mail by teacher Dionne LaPointe-Bakota, about her 3-year-old Malcolm’s “wildness.” Malcolm growls and chases and brandishes sticks. Onlookers who see him always say something like, “My, you have your hands full!” She wonders if they really mean she should make her boy act more like a stereotypical girl: Malcolm and I met some friends in the park after their son’s music/art/dance class (I can’t remember which). Malcolm scouted out a stick as soon as we arrived and began to swing it around. I asked him to be careful and left it at…
In an essay in today’s Washington Post, “Raising free-spirited black children in a world set on punishing them,” Stacia Brown sounds frustrated with the Free-Range Kids movement. She dearly wishes African-American kids could go outside and Free-Range without having to worry about actual discrimination and danger. (Me too!) And she is particularly angered that often low income African-American families who can’t or don’t supervise their kids every single second are not given the benefit of the doubt by Child Protective Services: Skenazy’s site is filled with stories of parents whose families have run afoul of Child Protective Services by allowing…
. Here’s a chunk of my piece that just ran on Politico. After explaining that I’m the mom who let her 9 year old ride the subway alone, yada yada, and that our society overestimates danger and underestimates kids (also yada yada), I went on to say that keeping our kids constantly supervised is — …catastrophic. Free play turns out to be one of the most important things a kid can do to develop into the kind of adult who’s resilient, entrepreneurial—and a pleasure to be around. You see, when kids play on their own, they first of all have…
Let’s help this lady! What CAN and CAN’T strangers do when they see a kid anymore? Dear Free-Range Kids: I am a flummoxed grandmother, age 67, from a rural community in the Midwest. What I see with kids today shocks and startles me. I don’t know when to say hi to a child for fear of getting a lecture from a parent about their child not knowing me (I’m a stranger), to even looking at a child when I walk in the park. When I travel by air and a child is being unruly by my side,…
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…
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…