Ok, readers: MORE advice needed. This time on how to persuade a school that it is being crazy excessively protective. Dear Free-Range Kids: I am so very upset right now and would love to have your (and other FRK readers) advice. I emailed the elementary school principal, asking where my son can park/lock his bike. (FYI, we live nearly a mile from the school — no bus service if a mile or less.) This was his response: Hello Mrs. MOM, To ensure the safety of our children, students are not allowed to ride their bikes to school until…
Author: lskenazy
Readers, this comes to us from my friend and mentor Nancy McDermott. Nancy writes for the online journal Spiked and is an associate with the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent. Here she is responding to my wondering why so many Americans don’t think children should play at the park unsupervised. Somehow we have replaced and ethos of resilience with an ethos of vulnerability. For example. We went to our son’s middle school orientation last night where I learned that he was going to have to do something called Family and Consumer Science (FACS) full time,…
Readers — Enough with the craziness. Let’s leave on a high note with this video, below. And a shout out to my neighbor, Clarence Eckerson, Jr., for making it! Lakewood, Ohio: The Suburb Where Everyone Can Walk to School by Clarence Eckerson, Jr. The inner Cleveland suburb of Lakewood (population 51,000) calls itself a “walking school district.” Lakewood has never had school buses in its history, and kids grow up walking and biking to school. Mornings and afternoons are a beehive of activity on streets near schools, as kids and parents walk to and from classrooms. You can feel the…
Readers — In response to the case of Nicole Gainey, the mom arrested for letting her 7-year-old walk to the park alone, Fox Boston called in Dr. Karen Ruskin to educate the entire Northeast on how to parent. We want to live in a safe world, says Ruskin in this interview, “But we don’t.” Kids 7,8,9 and 10 should not walk to school or even venture outside without you, she says. Perhaps by age 11 you can let your child out in “short spurts,” but really, folks, “It is your job to be the parent,” and if you trust your…
Readers — Welcome to Worst First Thinking: This Time It’s Law. Writes the Denver Post (boldface mine): The owner of the Aurora movie theater that was the site of a deadly 2012 attack could have reasonably enough foreseen the danger of such an attack to be held liable for it, a federal judge ruled Friday. Noting “the grim history of mass shootings and mass killings that have occurred in more recent times,” U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled that Cinemark — owner of the Century Aurora 16 theater — could have predicted that movie patrons might be targeted…
Readers — This is a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what happened when Debra Harrell was taken into police custody for letting her 9 year old play at a popular park while she worked her shift at McDonald’s. WJBF-TV ABC 6 Augusta-Aiken The interrogating officer is so officious that it is disturbing to watch. How wonderful, then, that Harrell has since gotten a promotion at work and a pro-bono lawyer — and the sympathy of the world. She is now suing WJBF-TV, the station that aired the interrogation, because when they first posted it, it included footage of Harrell giving her name,…
Readers — Here you go, from commenter Laura: Dear Free-Range Kids: Just me venting. I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly, and in their fall movie previews in their current issue, they preview “St. Vincent”, a film starring Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy. Melissa and her 12 yo son move into this new area after a divorce and the first thing she needs is a babysitter for her son! Now, maybe the grumpy old man can be the neighbor her son goes to if he needs help — but a flat out babysitter?Even pop culture is telling parents that pre-teens…
Readers, I am thrilled that Andrea Peyser had the guts to put our kids-waiting-in-cars hysteria into focus. From her column today: “We’ve become hyper-fearful about any children being left alone for even a second,” said Lenore Skenazy, a public speaker and author of “Free-Range Kids, How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts With Worry).”… “What we’re seeing this summer, parents who make a rational decision to let their kids wait in a car for a brief period are treated as if they’re leaving them in the Mojave Desert with an empty Dasani water bottle,” Skenazy told me. After…
Readers — this is making my stomach turn, even though I, too, have felt frustrated at times when I couldn’t reach my kids. — L. KPTV – FOX 12
Readers — Here’s a note about a show I had not heard of. This post comes to us from David Kleeman a “playvangelist” at the PlayCollective, a research and strategy company in New York. For 25 years, he ran the American Center for Children and Media. SEE ANNE PLAY by DAVID KLEEMAN Finally, North America has a TV series for Free-Range Kids kids. If you have Amazon Prime, run (carefully…and not with scissors!) to check out Annedroids. In Canada, it will air on TVOKids. Tween inventor and scientist Anne lives in a junkyard and fashions “droids” from bits and scraps.…