Why am I the last to see this video? I guess that because my kids aren’t babies, I’m not on the sites where it must be running. Anyway, I love this and would like to know who wrote it. Meantime: Have fun. What a great message!
Author: lskenazy
Update on Danielle and Alexander Meitiv in suburban Maryland who are being investigated for negligence because they let their kids, 10 and 6, walk home from the park unsupervised. (I don’t write “walk home alone” because they weren’t — the had each other!) The parents had their hearing with Child Protective Services yesterday. Writes Donna St. George in the Washington Post: The neglect investigation that started after a Silver Spring couple allowed their children to walk home a mile from a park could continue for another couple of weeks, despite the parents’ hopes that authorities would drop the case at…
The idea of arresting parents who let their kids play outside unsupervised just took another hit. Yoo-hoo, CPS! According to The Globe and Mail: A new Canadian study suggests there could be added health benefits for kids who play outdoors on their own or with their friends. Researchers analyzed data from a survey of more than 1,000 parents of Grade 5 and 6 students at 16 public schools across Toronto. Kids had to wear an activity measurement unit for seven days and parents were asked to self-report how often they allowed their kids to go out on their own….Kids who…
A mom lets her daughter walk home. The girl’s new friend, an older, taller boy, walks home with her…and starts talking about weird stuff. One mom’s surprising and Free-Range story: Dear Free-Range Kids: My daughter is 10, our only child. She was born when I was 43 and I did not fit in with my mothering peers. I felt constantly judged, simply because I believe that kids are lot more capable than we give them credit for. Besides that, I was just too tired to micromanage her! I needed her to be strong and independent. As an older mom with…
“World’s Worst Mom” (you know who) debuts tonight at 9/8 Central Time, on the Discovery eriekiafay Life channel. (Which, as I’m sure I’ll be saying for a while, “Is NOT ‘Lifetime!'”). To find out what channel it’s on in your neck of the cable woods, here’s a handy-dandy station finder. The show is not online and episodes don’t repeat throughout the week. Alas! – L.
It feels almost like reading, “Thou art a wicked wench!”so archaic does this Facebook comment sound, at least to me. Suddenly obsessive worry seems so over. Anyway, this was posted below a column of mine that ran in the Chicago Tribune: Call me a Helicopter Mom all you want, but my child will never walk to school alone. That’s my choice for my child. He’s six and Thank Goodness for Family restrooms because I don’t trust a child going into the men’s public restroom alone either. There are bad people in this world and I am solely responsible for his…
From today’s Personal Health column in the New York Times by Jane Brody: Lenore Skenazy, a New York City mother of two, earned the sobriquet “America’s Worst Mom” after reporting in a newspaper column that she had allowed her younger son, then 9, to ride the subway alone. The damning criticism she endured, including a threat of arrest for child endangerment, intensified her desire to encourage anxious parents to give their children the freedom they need to develop the self-confidence and resilience to cope effectively with life’s many challenges. One result was the publication in 2009 of her book “Free…
Note the name: This post comes to us from Katie Johnson Slivovsky, not Sikorsky. Katie has written pieces for Newsweek, Illinois Steward, and Chicago Parent. She works at the Chicago Children’s Museum and lives with her husband and two teens in Western Springs, Illinois. – L I’m a Helipad Parent, by Katie Johnson Slivosky If the term “helicopter parent” describes people who hover over their children’s lives, what kind of parent am I? I don’t have the skills, attention span, or desire to hover but I’m not a detached, lazy or disinterested parent. Then it occurred to…
Did you hear about the 10-year-old who rode his bike across the George Washington Bridge to New York City?! He says he, “pedaled twenty miles down unfamiliar roads and busy streets, past neighbors and strangers, out into the unknown….I didn’t need help form anyone. It took me all day, but I found the way and did it myself.” Later on, this independence seems to have served him well. He went to the moon. His name is Buzz Aldrin, and that’s a passage from the autobiography he wrote to inspire kids. Better not inspire them too much. Last week we all…
What is going on in Maryland? Here’s an email I got yesterday — Dear Free-Range Kids: I was recently involved in a “confined unattended child” case which has landed me with a misdemeanor and 6 months’ probation. The crime: leaving my sleeping 1-year-old daughter in the car with her 10-year-old sister for 10 minutes while I went into the grocery store. A woman that worked at the store called the police within that 10 minutes. The police said it was child neglect. I told him my daughter is responsible to watch her sleeping sister for 10 minutes, that…