From G.K. Chesterton, a journalist who gets it. For “man falling off scaffolding” substitute any tragic story of a child in the news. “It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still…
Author: lskenazy
Readers — It’s kind of amazing to hear all the reasons we can’t trust our kids to be smart, safe or competent. As Peter Gray puts it in his book, Free To Learn, “I doubt there has ever been a human culture, anywhere, anytime, that underestimates children’s abilities more than we North Americans do today.” More proof: Dear Free-Range Kids: I stumbled upon your book while reading an article about a woman who was arrested for letting her 7 year old walk to the park alone, and I wholeheartedly agree with re-normalizing childhood. It’s sad that I live in a…
Dear Readers — Please note that this letter is not recommending a Free-Range regimen for everyone or anyone, it is just this family’s experience. But a heartening one! (Boldface, mine.) Dear Free-Range Kids: My 10 y.o. son is an impulsive, ADHD type, also recently diagnosed with Aspergers. He’s been kicked out of several daycares and before/after school care places over the years and is often in trouble at school and on the bus (despite not giving my too much trouble at home). At the end of last school year, he got kicked out of literally the last after-school…
Readers — A 6-year-old boy with autism had disappeared from his San Jose, CA home at 9 a.m. Turns out, he had wandered off and was found in the middle of the night by a group of homeless men and women who live in an encampment nearby. Does this remind anyone else of the Guinevere and the Fire song posted here last week? The one in which a girl, heeding her mom’s advice, avoids seeking help from the Aboriginal encampment near her home and runs to a white family much further away — and in the meantime, her mom dies?…
Readers — Here’s a note to us about excessive school security: Dear Free-Range Kids: A local retired police office has written a book on how he thinks schools should prevent mass shootings. Tucson News Now Of course the author includes a chapter on what he feels schools should be doing to prevent mass shootings. Some of his suggestions include: Making each school accessible by only one central exit and entry point, installing a locked door that could withstand gunfire and a “greeting window” made of bullet proof glass, training some of the school staff to carry guns, and he suggested…
I am so glad one of you sent this Fred Small song in…even though I’m now typing with tears in my eyes. What a song, what a story, what a lesson. (This is not a video — only audio, so don’t wait for the picture to start moving): And a good song for us to hum when someone starts talking about stranger danger. – L
Readers — After we questioned the wisdom of a TV talk show psychologist who told Boston viewers to only let kids out in “short spurts” and then only once they reach age 11, the aggrieved psychologist posted a link to this blog, which I hadn’t seen before. I’ll give you just a taste: Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids book and website spawned the fad of letting kids roam around on their own with little, if any, parental oversight. It’s stunning that this even needs to be said, but here’s just a little glimpse of what can happen to kids without adult…
Readers — This is a story that happened in 2012 in Canada: Ryan Gibbons, a 12 year old with asthma, was not allowed to carry his life saving medicine at school. School policy was to keep the inhalers under lock and key and staff repeatedly confiscated spare inhalers from Ryan, added Gibbons. “I received many a phone call stating Ryan had taken an inhaler to school and they found it in his bag and would like me to come pick it up because he wasn’t even allowed to bring it home with him,” [his mother] said. “There’s supposed to be…
Readers — I try to feel for the parents so steeped in the acid of fear that they cannot think straight. So I am trying to feel sympathy for this mom. KING5 News reports: A Seattle mom has never been more terrified to send her 11-year-old child to school on a bus. Karenza Ferris thought her daughter, Zya, would ride a yellow bus during her first year as a middle school student at Jane Addams. Zya assumed the same. “A yellow bus would come, they would pick me up, and they would drop me off at school,” Zya said. Except,…
This fthbbeyeef mom believes that letting her kids walk to school by age 9 — as she did — is not only okay, it’s important: [B]eing out in the world, taking chances, making choices — is a critical part of progressing from childhood to becoming an autonomous adult. It is also an important way for us to reduce our environmental footprint, and in light of growing childhood inactivity and obesity, it is directly linked to a health imperative as well. … When my daughter Alexandra was 9 we had some long talks: she thought it was too far, so we…