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,…
Author: lskenazy
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…
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…
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…