Readers — The so-called “Cinderella Law” working its way through Parliament may sound as if it is going to rescue ragamuffins stuck in their own little corner in their own little chair. But in fact, by expanding the definition of child cruelty to include emotional, psychological or even intangible nnzersdana harm, it holds the threat of criminalizing any of us who think our kids can handle more than the state (or some tsk-tsk’ing agent) believes they can. So if I think it’s fine for my kid to play outside unsupervised, or stay home alone a bit, but the state thinks,…
Author: lskenazy
Lots of good ideas here (from Clickhole):
LOOK! Thank you, Marjorie Ingall, for making this into a Bingo Card! (And here’s a site that allows you to do the same. So fun!) Readers — Commenter Jenny Islander sent in this brilliant Child Hysteria Bingo board! Feel free to add more ideas: Welp, I think I’ve finally read enough of Free-Range Kids to make a Bingo board. Make a 5×5 grid, put Free [Range] Space in the middle, scatter the other options randomly over the grid, and play along! SCARY BLACK PEOPLE SCARY MEN SCARY PO’ FOLKS FACTS SCHMACTS, WE’VE GOT A WITCH HUNT GOING…
Readers — The belief that our kids are in constant danger from the worst of the worst of the WORST can (and did) lead to cases like this. As reported in Saturday’s Austin American-Statesman by Chuck Lindell — Austin day care owners Dan and Fran Keller spent more than 22 years in prison after three young children accused them of dismembering babies, torturing pets, desecrating corpses, videotaping orgies and serving blood-laced Kool-Aid in satanic rituals so ghastly, their names became synonymous with evil. It was the early 1990s, when a cottage industry of therapists, authors and investigators argued convincingly —…
Readers — My kids are far from babies, so I don’ t know if the following comment is true across the board. Is it? Sounds quite likely. It came in response to my post about the Owlet device that measures your baby’s blood pressure, movements, oxygen level, etc. — L. On a related note, is it just me, or have baby products become more of a pain to use in the last few years? It is almost as though the product designers said. “If our product isn’t a huge inconvenience to use, parents won’t believe that they are suffering…
Today, let us give thanks for The Onion and pieces like — CNN Holds Morning Meeting To Decide What Viewers Should Panic About For Rest Of Day ATLANTA—Kicking around ideas ranging from an uptick in child kidnappings to a new link between laptops and cancer, senior CNN staffers held their regular daily meeting this morning to decide which topic viewers should panic about for the rest of the day. “It’s always kind of tough to get our meetings going each morning, but once we got some coffee in us, we were able to toss around a few ideas on what…
Most fascinating letter of the week (boldface and headings, mine): Dear Ms. Skenazy: I am the mother of four young children and a reader of your blog, which was introduced to me about a year ago by several unrelated people. I hope you don’t mind that I have a response to your recent post, “The Cult of Kiddie Danger.” I agree with your assertion that a component of your alleged “crime” in allowing your son to ride the NYC subway alone (and writing about it) was a sort of apostasy from the state religion of fear and helicopter parenting, but…
Americans remain confused about reality. As Vox reports: Nearly two-thirds of Americans think violent crime increased over the past year, even though violent crime has been on a general decline for two decades, according to a new Gallup survey. The survey teases out different mini-trends, but in the end Gallup concludes on its own site: For more than a decade, Gallup has found the majority of Americans believing crime is up, although actual crime statistics have largely shown the crime rate continuing to come down from the highs in the 1990s and earlier. …. Some argue that consumption of news…
Readers, here’s a piece I wrote for The Weekly Wonk that got picked up by Vox. My thesis: It is considered good, even holy, to imagine danger all around. The more perils you point out, the better a person you are. The Richland, WA, school district is phasing out swings on its playgrounds. As the district’s spokesman recently told KEPR TV: “It’s just really a safety issue. Swings have been determined to be the most unsafe of all the playground equipment on a playground.” Ah yes, those dangling doom machines. All they sow is death and despair. But while this…
Readers — Do parents really have to strap a vital signs monitor on their healthy babies? That’s the question David King, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Sheffield in the UK, sought to answer. And frankly, it was easy. No. No, babies do not suddenly need a real time, smart phone read-out of their heart rate, muscle movements, temperature, blood oxygen level and “pulse oximitry” (sounds soooo advanced!) . What’s more, the idea that this info prevents Sudden Infant Death syndrome is false. As King writes in the BMJ (British Medical Journal): In the 1980s and 1990s a…