From Belgium comes this encouraging note: Dear Free-Range Kids: Have you seen this [Joey Salads’ puppy/park/predator] video circulating on the internet which warns parents about child abduction? It’s going viral right now. Good news, the Belgian public organization (called Child Focus) that helps families whose child has been lost of kidnapped, has taken a stance against this video. Child focus says that the situation of a kidnapper approaching a child with a young puppy in a peaceful manner, while its parents are sitting nearby is completely unrealistic. Kidnappings mostly take place when a child is all alone, and the kidnapping…
Author: lskenazy
Yesterday, the Etan Patz trial came to a a close. Etan was the 6-year-old boy who disappeared on his way to school in New York City in 1979. The jury was hung, and so the case remains unsolved 36 years later. But as the New York Times writes: The district attorney has not decided whether to retry Mr. Hernandez, but no verdict, nor lack of one, could change the impact the 6-year-old boy’s disappearance had on parenting. His abduction in 1979 transformed the experience of childhood for many boys and girls his age and set the mold for the sort…
What a week. By believing that predators with puppies are grabbing kids in broad daylight, right and left, and by videotaping that made-for-TV scenario, Joey Salads helped reinforce one of the fastest growing beliefs of the day: That any man who interacts with children is doing it for his own perverted purposes. That belief leads to situations like this: In an Australian Target store on Wednesday, a man stopped to take a selfie with a cardboard Star Wars cut-out. He thought it would be fun to show his kids. Another woman saw him with his camera in the toy department…
“Leave Your Kids…” is the slightly derogatory nickname for what is, officially, “Take Our Children to the Park…and Let Them Walk Home by Themselves Day,” which, for the record, used to be, “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day.” No matter what you call it, the actual holiday is THIS SATURDAY. WHAT IS IT? A day for kids to experience what most of us loved when WE were kids: the chance to spend free time with other kids, just goofing around, with no adults telling them what to play, how to play it, and when to eat…
There’s nothing funny about a tree falling on two kids — both survived — in Massachusetts. But there is something absurd to the point of parody about the way Good Morning America played it yesterday. First of all, being based in New York City, the show plopped its reporter down in Central Park where, he told viewers, there are trees “very similar” the tree in Massachusetts. Isn’t that arboreal profiling? Then the reporter showed the admittedly dramatic footage of the tree falling and gravely intoned: “It’s the heart-stopping video that might make any parent think twice before sending their children…
The Joey Salads child abduction video purporting to help parents become more aware of stranger danger prompted me to write that this kind of scenario is far rarer than he suggests, and parents are already terrified enough. Then I got this troubling and very honest note: I agree with your views in theory, but when I was 9 years old, I was tricked by a stranger to go with him and then assaulted and left for dead. (And yes, I had been warned not to go with strangers by my school and my family.) Skipping the details, as you…
I hope you are planning to take your kids to your local park and leave them there on Saturday, May 9. Me, I will be spending “Take Our Children to the Park … and Let Them Walk Home by Themselves Day” morning at the Central Park playground at 85th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Joining me will be one of the wisest men I know, that huge champion of kids playing unsupervised: Peter Gray! Gray is a professor at Boston College and author of the basic psychology textbook used at colleges all over America, including Harvard. No slouch. He…
This pseudo-helpful video, posted Saturday, is viral in every sense of the word. It already has nearly a million views, which means that people are sharing it like crazy, convinced that its creator, Joey Salads, is doing something other than creating terror, angst and hate with his Stranger Danger “social experiment.” But he’s not. As you’ll see, Mr. Salads asks parents if they’ve taught their kids not to talk to strangers — a lesson I don’t endorse, since most strangers are good and you want kids to feel confident asking strangers for help, if they need it. “You can TALK…
As we gear up for Take Our Children to the Park…And Let Them Walk Home by Themselves Day, which is set for 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 9, I’m wondering if we could crowd-source a photo documentary. What I’m looking for is photos of playgrounds across the United States (and wherever else you readers are) on a non-rainy weekend day. Are our playgrounds brimming with kids or not? Let’s find out! If you could take a photo of your local playground and email it to me at lenore@freerangekids.com, that would be great. Even better: Can you add this info? Name…
Somehow, seeing a naked 4 year old running around in front of his house (that is, the kid in front of the kid’s own house) conjured up worst-first thoughts in a neighbor, even though, if the neighbor paused a second, he’d have a hard time articulating exactly what “crime” he thought he was witnessing. The story out of British Columbia, as reported by the CBC, is this: Ian McIlwaine of Squamish, B.C., said his family is “shaken and very upset” after RCMP, responding to a complaint by neighbours, visited the family’s home because his four-year-old son was playing in the…