Boy Scouts can’t shoot squirt guns at each other. Here’s the rulebook (see page 99). And here’s the article for Boy Scout leaders that points out: “Water guns and rubber band guns must only be used to shoot at targets, and eye protection must be worn.” Water balloons, meanwhile, have a size limit: “For water balloons, use small, biodegradable balloons, and fill them no larger than a ping pong ball.” First off, I was not even aware there ARE biodegradable balloons. And filling any balloon to only the size of a ping pong ball is like saying, “Please do not…
Author: lskenazy
Alexandria, VA: From a country gone crazy with mandemonium (pandemonium sparked by seeing a man near a child) comes this all points bulletin, below. Notice that while “At no time did the unknown man attempt to leave the area with the child,” the police nonetheless give a detailed description of the suspect…er…Samaritan…er…suspect. And they are looking for leads. What are they going to charge him with? Attempted kindness? Doesn’t he know better than to act like a decent human being? Police Investigate Incident at Lyles-Crouch Elementary School For Immediate release: May 20, 2015 The Alexandria Police Department is investigating an…
This piece about why we need to be able to make rational, caring decisions for our kids without worrying about being second-guessed by passersby or the authorities sums up the issue just perfectly. It’s from the blog Catholic All Year. It begins with the author, Kendra, discussing an article by Kim Brooks in Salon that detailed the cases of some moms arrested for letting their kids wait briefly in the car. Then she writes: …I’m still not going to make what I believe are bad parenting decisions because of bad laws and bad samaritans. I won’t be bullied. But it…
. Here’s a rather startling note I just got in my email-box: Dear Free-Range Kids: Last night/this morning our 8yr old son woke us up at 3:30AM telling us that the people from Walmart wanted to speak with us. . He walked 3 miles in the middle of the night to Walmart in order to buy some roses for his mother. My wife and I were shocked to say the least. All manner of “what if’s” ran through our minds (car accident, child molesters, police taking our children away, etc.) as every emotion covered us as well. . This…
The idea that if we are not continuously monitoring our children, we are sub-prime parents willfully endangering our kids — that is the next frontier Free-Rangers must assail. The problem is that technology is so cheap and so pervasive, it keeps creeping into daily life as a “must have.” This particular app below, still in development, is the apotheosis of things we don’t need for problems we don’t have. Its ad uses false cheer to redefine an ordinary parenting task as completely overwhelming. Then it presents a solution far better suited to hospitals than plain old homes: A way to…
The Free-Range Kids Project is catching on. The idea is simple: A school, a grade, or even just one teacher tells the students to go home and ask their parents if they can do ONE THING that they feel they’re ready to do that, for one reason or another, they haven’t done yet. Most recently, the fifth grade teachers at Edison Park Elementary in Chicago took the plunge. About 70 kids participated. Here’s how one boy filled out the survey his teacher handed out: What do you want to be able to do by yourself or with friends that you…
Why do I blame the media for making us so afraid for our kids? Because the media are to blame! Print, TV, the Internet, movies, news shows and of course viral videos — the media are all SO in love with the “Children in peril!” story that they will stoop to covering stories where kids are NOT in peril and present them as if they were. Here’s a note from a reader I recently received: Dear Free-Range Kids: I live in Western Minnesota. About a month ago a “possible attempted abduction” was all over the news. This occurred in Ada,…
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And for every over-the-top, worst-first, “If it saves one child…” law passed, there are about a million children imperiled and families discombobulated. Or so it seems from my perch. Read this note from a reader. She wrote in response to Monday’s post about the NJ Supreme Court mulling whether a parent who lets her child wait in the car even for a few minutes shall be deemed guilty of child abuse. Dear Free-Range Kids: A little perspective (from in NJ, even). Yesterday, as I was leaving to meet my kindergartener’s…
Let’s hear it for the reporter in this BBC report on the Joey Salads puppy/park/predator video. She takes him to task for pulling the “700 children are abducted a day” factoid out of his fannypack. (Or, worse, randomly off the Internet.) What I do not love is that, of course, many of my most trenchant points ended up on the cutting room floor, including the fact that this stranger-with-a-puppy-AND-a-camera-crew scenario almost never happens, and that if you really want to warn parents about a common danger they’re unaware of, make a creepy video of mom or dad driving their kidsto…
Folks, you may remember this case — I wrote about it here: A mom left her son in the car for what everyone agrees was under 10 minutes to run an errand. The toddler slept through the whole “ordeal,” but the mom was found guilty of neglect, even upon appeal, when the three appellate judges ruled that they didn’t have to list the “parade of horribles” that COULD have happened to the child. . Which is, of course, fantasy as policy again: Just because the judges could imagine a kidnapping, or carjacking, or a big bad wolf, doesn’t mean that…