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…
Author: lskenazy
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:…
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…
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.”…