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…
Author: lskenazy
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…
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…