These are our rights, as parents, as kids, as humans. Please visit Let Grow’s Laws & Advocacy page for the latest on “Reasonable Childhood Independence” bills being introduced. Here is the original, short and sweet, Free-Range Kids and Parent Bill of Rights: Our children have the right to some unsupervised time, and we have the right to give it to them without getting arrested. And here is the longer version. Below it is the version that passed in the Arkansas Senate, but was voted down by the House Judiciary Committee there. Still — kudos to Arkansas for being the first…
Author: lskenazy
You’re only young once, but our culture seems determined to make sure that childhood lasts into middle age, if not senility. To wit: There’s a new app, Class120, that pings parents when their kids don’t show up for their college classes. NBC reports: Class120 works with the help of GPS or WiFi. The campus is mapped out and the student enters his or her class calendar information. If the student doesn’t show up at the location where the class is being held, a near-real-time message is sent to the parent, something along the lines of “Hi Joseph Montgomery, Class120 was…
When you really believe the world is full of predators snatching kids right and left, it can drive you crazy. And apparently, it did. CNN is reporting that: A 6-year-old boy in Missouri endured an emotional four-hour staged kidnapping because his family thought he was being too nice to people he didn’t know, police said Thursday. The four people involved in the alleged plot — the boy’s mother, grandmother, aunt and a co-worker of the aunt — have been charged with kidnapping and other felonies, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said. “Family members told investigators their primary intent was to…
Canada’s National Post reports that the Toronto Leaside Girls Hockey Association has instructed its coaches: No touching the players…even on their helmets. (U)nder no circumstances should there be contact with the players, in any way” … said the directive from John Reynolds, head of the house league. “Putting hands on shoulders, slapping butts, tapping them on the helmet, NOTHING, this can make some of the girls uncomfortable and you won’t know which ones, so no contact, period.” What’s crazy about this rule is not just that it’s…crazy. It is also part of the same mindset that brought us “trigger warnings.”…
Love this video that I snagged from The Atlantic (thanks to old pal Peter Rabinowitz!). As I like to point out at talks I give: In my day, there was “arrival” at school, and “dismissal.” Now it’s “drop off” and “pick up” — as if the kids have become FedEx packages. – L
One reason we believe in giving kids back their freedom to roam is that not every lifelong interest is spurred by an extracurricular class or educational video. Many ideas, even careers, begin in the woods, the weedy lot, the streets of downtown — or sometimes in buckets, as this lovely essay in Science Magazine illustrates: My Metamorphosis, by Elizabeth Marchio I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, in a lower-middle-class suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of Columbus. Our home didn’t have air conditioning or cable television, so there was little reason to ever be inside. At 10 years old,…
A DC couple who left their toddlers wait in the car while they went to a wine tasting for an hour (and I’m not sure the wine tasting detail is relevant) have had their kids taken away from them, according to The Washington Post. While I don’t think any of us believe it’s a good idea to have two very young kids stuck alone in a car for that long, on a 35 degree day, strapped into their seats, parents Christopher (Christophe) Daniel Lucas and Jennie Teresa Chang did keep a cell phone line open, in a rather misguided attempt…
Yo, Nationwide. That ad you just ran on the Super Bowl? What is it proposing? Parents of dead children just weren’t careful enough? Way to twist the knife! One of my favorite comments to this site ever was this: “Most of the time, when something bad happens to a kid, it isn’t because of bad parents, it’s because of bad luck.” Nationwide seems to suggest that any parent who lets a kid ride a trike to the corner is asking for tragedy. Maybe it should call itself Damnationwide. Because if anything happens to your child it’s your own damned fault.…
Free-Range just keeps looking more and more normal, healthy and smart, thanks to stories like this, from East Texas: KYTX CBS19.tv – News, Weather,
Nightline sums up the whole Free-Range Kids idea pretty darn nicely, I’d say, as do the Meitivs. Let me know what you think of the shrink! I feel like she’s almost from the bygone era of 2014, before America woke up from its media-induced nightmare. World News Videos | ABC World News