It’s not what you think. As North Carolina’s PeeDeePost writes: PINEHURST — Two police officers with the Village of Pinehurst in Moore County stopped by a hill on which local children were sledding — and asked if they could get in on the fun. The roads were covered with ice on Tuesday, conditions that kept the cars in Pinehurst away. The neighborhood kids went out to play…Sometimes the best part of being out on patrol is the chance to make a good impression on those that you protect…Even when it means being a big kid right along with them! Well…
Author: lskenazy
Let me know what you think of this 4-minute piece that just aired on NPR’s Morning Edition about that newfangled idea called “Free-Range Parenting.” (No, I was not interviewed for it.) The story points out that we are hearing more and more about parents arrested for letting their kids play outside or wait a short time in the car — stories you often hear here first — and then goes on to interview a variety of guests, including the head of the Child Welfare League of America. She defends the practice of checking up on all cases of neglect, even…
Loved this 3-minute commercial and you may, too. Not that I quite understand what it’s for, but it’s a good reminder that Free-Range Kids is the norm in a whole lot of the world:
What do our kids lose out on when we “protect” them from the world? Here’s a comment on the post from a few days ago, “How Did Your Adventures as a Kid Influence the Person You Are Now?” I would love to hear your stories of childhood’s enduring influence, too. – L Dear Free-Range Kids: So much of who I am can be traced back to my free range childhood. For all intents and purposes my grandmother raised me from 6.5 to 14. While I did live with my mother, my grandmother was in charge. My grandmother gave me…
Welcome, New Yorker readers and anyone else just hearing about Free-Range Kids! The lovely write up about me in this week’s “Talk of the Town” pretty much sums up what I’m like — a worrier mom who nonetheless believes kids don’t need a security detail every time they leave the house. There are so many of us who share this outlook and have been trying to give our kids the freedom to bike around the neighborhood, play at the park, or actually walk home from it, like the Meitivs in Maryland, without this being a big (or criminal!) deal. But…
Everyone needs a new hairstyle once in a while, and Free-Range Kids was getting to that point, metaphorically. (Its founder is getting to that point non-metaphorically.) So welcome to the new format of the site. You’ll find new features that I hope you’ll like, including a bigger tab bar, where it is now simple to find the crime stats that show that times ARE different today — they’re safer than when most of us were growing up — and the Free-Range Bill of Rights. It is also simpler now to see several recent stories at a glance. I envied that…
By now we’ve all heard about the Missouri family that had their 6 year old kidnapped, bound and taken into the basement, where his pants were removed and he was told he’d be sold into sex slavery. So here’s the kicker, as reported in stltoday.com: Jerry zakrftrnda Dunn, executive director at Children’s Advocacy Services of Greater St. Louis, would not comment directly on the case. But he said that if parents truly are concerned about “stranger danger” issues, they should increase the amount of supervision so the child is not in a situation where he or she can engage a…
Jim Epstein at Reason produced this video, which shows how quickly a family filled with fear can flip: http://youtu.be/hKIMIOQfgy4 The whole exercise — really very simple — is based on the fact that, left unchecked, fear just grows. But if you do let your kids do something on their own that they’re ready for, you will be overjoyed when you see how competent and confident they really are! Try it! Or try it with a friend — you can send your kids out together while you two have a cup of coffee. It is that easy and transformative. And here’s…
Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post published this wonderful piece by Angela Hanscom, founder of TimberNook, a nature-based development program designed to foster creativity and independent play outdoors in New England. Here’s an excerpt. And since most schools do NOT have a forest at hand, feel free to suggest ways to incorporate these ideas in an urban or suburban setting: How schools ruined recess — and four things needed to fix it, by Angela Hanscom …I’m in the beautiful country of New Zealand. Rolling green hills surround us at every turn. Here in the small patch of woods, the children…
On my show (3 episodes air tonight starting at 5:30/4:30 Central Time on Discovery Life), I give the children of very anxious parents a task to do that they seem ready for — even if their parents aren’t. They walk to school, make dinner, ride a bike. And usually, when the parents see their kids suddenly competent and confident, the fear disappears, replaced by a surge of joy. So: How would that work if a whole SCHOOL embraced the idea? Here’s my interview with Nancy McDermott, in SpikedOnline, the British version of Slate, or Reason. Read the whole piece here:…