Everyone loves the dandelion bouquet and burnt toast that will appear in many bedrooms Sunday morning, accompanied by kids bouncing on the balls of their feet, excited to present mom with such bounty. But for a keepsake, you might want to download the free “Fill in the blank” card we have over at Let Grow. It has kids finish sentences like: “My mom ALWAYS says this: __________________” And “I learned how to do THIS from my mom: ________________________.” And “My mom makes me smile when she does THIS: _____________________________.” In other words, the card stands ready to prompt hilarious or…
Author: lskenazy
You can want your kids to have a Free-Range childhood and then come face to face with the fact that, often, this is simply not “done” in your neighborhood. Most of the other kids are inside on devices or outside, in uniforms. You may worry that someone seeing your kids out and about could summon the cops. What to do? Read this. It’s a short, easy list of ideas from a dad of three for getting kids excited about going outside AND getting the neighborhood relaxed about seeing them there. Lots of good, real-world advice from a dad who has…
Here’s just one of the many eye-opening chunks of a study of 5–point harnesses (the kind that go around the waist, between the legs and over the shoulders), by social-worker-turned-movement-therapist Barbara Chutroo: Infants’ brains have fewer neurological networks than those of adults but they grow rapidly. This rapid neurological organization of experience occurs in response to sensory and movement stimulation. Piaget said the child’s first stage of cognitive development (thinking) is sensory motor, meaning that infants think through sensory and movement explorations. As a child receives sensory information, the child organizes a sense of the world and of his or…
As you may have heard, “Old Enough” is the Japanese reality show now on Netflix showing kids age age 5, 4, 3 and even 2 running errands on their own. It’s a bit extreme (2-year-olds shopping?) but also extremely lovable. The kids are sometimes a little scared or sad, but they are also incredibly determined. As I wrote over at Reason.com, we see one girl, age 4, tasked with fetching a cabbage by herself: Her mom has left one for her in the barn, but the girl assumes she must pull one from the patch. Cabbages grow on stalks thicker…
Random passersby convinced they care more about our own kids than we do? They’re rampant. “Put a sweater on that kid!” “Don’t let her ride that way.” “Your little girl looks so tired!” Those kind of comments are what we might call gran-eurisms: Things a passing grandma might say. Of course they raise a hackle or two, but what gets my increasingly short-tempered goat are the ones convinced that THEY are aware of imminent danger to your kid that YOU are too stupid, self-absorbed or awful to trouble yourself about. That’s what happened to this fellow, Johnny Roccia, when he…
See the police blotter below, for the rest of the lady’s complaint. It was sent to us by Jim Epstein, a video producer at Reason. In fact, Jim made this Halloween video with me a few years back. And, heck, he also made this video of two very, very anxious parents in Queens who finally let their kids, 10 and 12, walk to the store on their own, once I paid them a calming (“YOU HAVE TO LET THEM GO!!!!!”) visit (“I’LL STAY WITH YOU AND IT’LL BE GREAT!”). Actually, it WAS great and afterward, the parents started letting…
Aside from Daylight Savings Time it feels like there is almost NOTHING both parties agree on anymore. Except for Free-Range Parenting! Last week the Colorado State Senate joined the Colorado House in UNANIMOUSLY voting for what is now called the “Reasonable Childhood Independence” bill. It had two Republicans and two Democrats officially sponsoring it, but in the House, TWENTY SEVEN representatives asked to please be listed as CO-SPONSORS. Yes, yes, it still has to be signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis, and we won’t count our chickens, etc., etc. (Even though there are at least 27 of them.) BUT…
In other cultures, the idea of parents getting on the floor to play with their kids is as strange as the idea of parents getting on the floor to slurp their water from a bowl. It simply isn’t done. Anthropologist David Lancy has studied childhood the world over, and in most of the places — other than the Utah city where he lives — kids ran around in a mixed-age group, playing, helping out, watching adults and copying their skills. But they did not expect adults to play with them. When I was raising my kids, however, I thought that…
Imagine going to a party and no one shows up. That’s childhood in a lot of towns today. Even kids who’d love to walk down the block won’t, if there’s no one outside to play with. Vanessa Elias, a parenting coach and mom of three in Westport, CT., realized that her town needed to make an actual COMMITMENT to getting kids to go outside and do things, unsupervised — especially going outside to play. She felt that re-activating kids would be one way to combat the tide of anxiety and depression plaguing so many young people. So she and several…
Dan Emery’s three kids are 21, 18, and 15. They live in a suburb outside of New York and grew up being allowed to go places on their own, make their own money from odd jobs, and deal with their own minor issues at school. In a piece over at Let Grow Dan (owner of the NY Guitar School) interviews them about how these Free-Range experiences forged them. The answers should give us all some support for loosening the leash. For instance, one of his kids said she was glad she got to be out and about on her own,…