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…
Author: lskenazy
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…
About a week ago, you may recall, a Maine mom was charged with child endangerment for letting her 7 year old play by herself for an hour in the park visible from the family’s porch. This is a letter by a Free-Ranger to the Police Chief there, who defended the summons as well as the fact the girl was taken by cruiser to the precinct, instead of back across the street to her home. It’s everything a letter should be, and everything our country should be, too: Smart, sane, and unwilling to buy into child safety hysteria. Chief Janine RobertsWestbrook…
This excerpt from Julia Lythcott-Haims’ new book, “How to Raise An Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success,” is more than viral. It pleads with parents to step back and let kids make their own decisions — and mistakes: The data emerging confirms the harm done by asking so little of our kids when it comes to life skills, yet so much of them when it comes to academics. The data do look alarming, A survey of college counseling center directors found 95% of them believe that the number of students with significant psychological…
The front page of today’s New York Times features the case against Zach Anderson, a case you read about here three weeks ago. Zach is the 19 year old who met a young woman, 17, on “Hot or Not,” had sex with her once and now sits in jail. When he gets out next week he will spend the rest of his life on the Sex Offender Registry, and the next five years forbidden to go online. Because, it turns out, the girl lied and was actually 14. But really because our Sex Offender laws fail to distinguish between the…
Kids, age 5, at the bus stop. Strangely enough, this isn’t a “social experiment” to show how endangered they are. It shows something else. Something you don’t see much of on American TV.