Readers — This article explains everything I am always trying to say … but better. It’s by Frank Furedi — have you heard of him? I wrote about his book, “Paranoid Parenting,” in 2001 — seven years before I sent my son on his solo subway ride. Furedi gets how paranoia for our kids directly leads to us giving the authorities more and more sway in our lives, because they are “saving” kids from the ever-present threat of everything, but most of all from predators. Which brings us to sex offender mania. Last week I was at the national Reform…
Author: lskenazy
Here’s a bit of what happened (which is not all that fascinating), as explained by reporter Liz Duffy: Around 8:30 Monday morning, Portland police responded to a call about a man dressed in a trench coat who walked into Grant High School with a “police-style baton.” Two squad cars and a conversation with a site supervisor later, police found that the man, in fact, was a staff member of a superhero-themed summer camp with Trackers Earth and the baton he was wielding was foam. Read the rest here. And remember, hard as it is to believe: Sometimes a man near…
This note comes to us from Reilly Capps, who was a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow. Hi Free-Range Kids: It’s Reilly, I wrote you about crazy drop-off procedures at my niece’s school. This is about the new ability of Amber Alerts to come to your phone, which you’ve talked about before. It’s disconcerting, and in some cases, unnecessary. Thursday night around 9:45 p.m., the cell phones of thousands of Coloradans blared a warning sound. It was louder and more insistent than a normal ringtone — more like the sound of the “test of the emergency broadcast system” on TV. BABY…
Readers — I love this reassuring piece about the tyranny of “must do before it’s too late!” advice when it comes to parenting. And here I’ll repeat my favorite anecdote about that topic. What age was GEORGE GERSHWIN when he got his first piano? Twelve! Not that you have to be a genius to start learning a skill later than some peers. My point is the opposite. And that’s this music teacher’s point, too, in taking on the belief that there is just a small window of time to start learning X, or all bets are off. – L THE…
From my son Morry, from America’s favorite news source: WASHINGTON—Challenging commonly held misperceptions, the U.S. Department of Justice published a report this week revealing that the vast majority of UFO abductions are perpetrated by aliens a person knows rather than extraterrestrials unfamiliar to victims. “The popular notion of UFO abductions is of a person being beamed up into the sky by strange, hostile beings from Sirius or Andromeda, but the reality is that most of these abductions are committed by an extraterrestrial acquaintance the victim trusts and feels comfortable around,” DOJ spokesman Devin Shane said. Isn’t that what we’ve been…
From my mailbox: Dear Free-Range Kids: I’ve been living outside of the US for about 10 years now and am shocked at the increasing persecution of parents back home. We live in Switzerland and have a child about to enter Kindergarten. Funny thing is, the parents have been instructed that they can walk the child to class for the first two weeks but after that, the child needs to go on his or her own – how else will they learn to become self-sufficient?! In line with that thinking, the neighborhoods take responsibility for the children -…
Readers — This gets my goat! Dear Free-Range Kids: A friend of mine is looking for a pool where she can take 3 kids (age 4mos, 3yo, 5.5yo). The 5yo has just gotten confident in jumping from the edge, swimming to the side, hauling herself out, and doing it all over again (the swim lessons are working). The infant can’t even sit up by herself. The middle child is of the kamikaze sort.Well, with the increasing skills, the crew is outgrowing the local wading pools (depth of 1 1/2 feet, size of a NY kitchen).She’s polling FB friends: “Where…
The Sex Offender List was created and then made public with the goal of keeping kids safe. Not only has it had no effect on child safety whatsoever (see this study, and this article), it has bloated to include all sorts of “offenders” who do not and never did pose a threat to children. Here’s a letter I just got from the wife of one registrant: My name is Carrie. My husband is on the registry because at age 20 he hooked up with a co-worker that he believed to be 18. After he broke it off with her,…
Readers — I hope this strikes you as cruel and unusual (not the mom — the authorities): WJBF-TV ABC 6 Augusta-Aiken News, Weather, Sports\ As the anchor reports: “A North Augusta mother is in jail after witnesses say she left her nine-year-old daughter at a nearby park, for hours at a time.” And as I wrote at Reason: Hours at a time? During the summer. Gosh! That certain sounds normal and fun like a reason to throw a mom in jail — and place the child into state custody. Here are the facts. Read the rest here! …
Readers — The folks at Playworld Systems, makers of playground equipment, not only made this elegiac video about saving outdoor free play, they’re also keen on reminding us all about the importance of early childhood play. Me too, for a variety of reasons, including one you don’t hear that much about: How early childhood play can be eerily predictive of who we become as adults. Example? Here’s what one middle-aged woman remembered about the games she played in childhood: “We had all kinds of games, playing hard every day after school, every weekend, and from dawn until our parents made…