Big news, readers! World’s Worst Mom — a reality show hosted by yours truly — is coming to TV! It debuts Jan. 22 at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. You can see little glimpses of it in this promo for the whole lineup on new channel it’s on, Discovery: Life (formerly “Discovery Fit & Health”). Woo hoo! Each week I visit a different family where one or both of the parents are very anxious for their kids’s safety. One mom, for instance, allows her son, 8, to skateboard — provided he just stands on the board, not moving, on the lawn.…
Author: lskenazy
Readers — Here’s a mom in a tough spot, looking for some great ideas. When we give our kids responsibility and independence, the results are usually wonderful. But I’m not sure of exactly how to do that in this situation (young child, special needs, in hiding), other than to start out by having her girl help preparing food — a fun and immediately rewarding way to do something “grown up.” Please pitch in with more suggestions! – L Dear Free-Range Kids: Here’s our situation. I’m a single mom of a special needs 5 year old. She requires constant supervision because…
Readers, after my post about the $19.95 “Find’Em” scent kit that saves your child’s scent to share with the search and rescue dogs, one of you, a Mr. Adams, complained to the company on Facebook about its home page, which declares: “In the U.S. a Child Goes Missing Every 40 Seconds.” Mr. Adams wrote: It is absolutely abhorrent that you use such ridiculous and untrue scare tactics to peddle your wares. The statistic you cite has no relation whatsoever to the actual (extremely small) number of kids who are abducted and need to be “tracked.” Shameful. Find’em Scent Kit…
Readers — This is a clip from HBO’s The Newsroom, about a news team deciding if and how to obsess about the Casey Anthony case. Of course it’s fiction, but boy — writer Sorkin really understands how TV works. (He should!) The part where the expert in the news meeting breaks down a few minutes of the Nancy Grace show should be required viewing in every journalism school in America. Heck, in every SCHOOL in America, so we get a little insight into what’s being thrown at us and what it does to our brains. And thanks to Donald Christensen…
Readers — Allow me to tiptoe off topic, slightly, to print this comment that came a while back in response to “An Insane Focus on Safety, Including the Hazard of ‘Eating Bread.'” As you know, Free-Range is all about battling hysteria when it comes to the idea that NOTHING is safe enough for our kids. When I see evidence of this beyond parenting, I realize our mission, more broadly, is to fight back the creeping conviction that only by non-stop focusing on safety and its handmaiden, DISASTER, can we be considered responsible. Which is a long way of saying I…
This festive season, remind parents that their precious kids could be abducted and killed if the rescue dogs don’t find them immediately. What better way to send happy holiday greetings than the $19.99 FindEm Kit, that preserves a child’s scent for the day they are abducted? As the website declares, “A Child Goes Missing Every 40 Seconds.” Ok, so they forgot to add that a child going missing has nothing to do with the number of children who are actually abducted. Just like the number of children falling off swings is not the same as the number of children who…
Readers — I hope that this is the story of just one over-coached kid. But…maybe not. This is a piece from SpikedOnline by the inimitable Josie Appleton who runs the Manifesto Club in Britain, which is like Free-Range Kids mixed with Reason.com. A “panto” is the age-old, slapstick, audience-participatory Christmas pantomime show (not silent!) that has delighted Brits for hundreds of years. Until now. Turning All Adults into Panto Villains, by Josie Appleton It is a tragic fact that today’s child-protection culture and related laws often have the perverse consequence of leading decent adults to withdraw from interacting with…
Hi Folks! I was just reading the latest from the amazing Centre for Parenting Culture Studies in Kent, England, and found this piece by Zoe Williams, author of the new book The Madness of Modern Parenting. (Then I ended up reading some other stuff by her, like this. So fun!) This piece ran in The Guardian. Go Zoe! (Boldface mine.) The Madness of Modern Parenting, by Zoe Williams Plainly, something is up with the business of parenting, the way we parent, the things that are now perceived as minimum parenting standards…. [I]t has become something that one does well or…
GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU PERVERT…and please bring me a toy firetruck. Assume all Santas are child molesters and teach kids not to sit on their laps. That’s what a well-known “child safety expert” in Australia is suggesting. Child protection activist Hetty Johnston this week backed the concerns of Queensland parents worried the time had come to stop their children sitting on the lap of shopping centre Santas for Christmas photos. “What we would like to see is shopping centre owners updating their child protection policies,” Ms Johnston said. “The directive would be for children to stand beside Santa,…
Then they came for the merry-go-rounds, and I said nothing. Then — The city is putting the brakes on spinning playground equipment following reports of injuries, a Parks Department spokeswoman said. Rotating metal saucers that kids ride at two Park Slope [Brooklyn] playgrounds were recently welded into place so they can’t move, and the city has made similar modifications or removed a total of seven disks citywide “in the interest of public safety,” the spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman declined to discuss how many injuries had been reported or other specifics. Turning the spinning disks into statues angered Park Slope parents,…