Loved this comment on yesterday’s post about the mom who let her son wait in the car for a few minutes, and ended up arrested. It’s from a reader named Lex: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on…
Author: lskenazy
Readers, “The Day I Left My Son in the Car” is a great, long piece by a mom who called me up a couple months ago, Kim Brooks. As it says in her subtitle: I made a split-second decision to run into the store. I had no idea it would consume the next years of my life Kim was running an errand and had her 4 year old son with her. He didn’t want to come in, so: For the next four or five seconds, I did what it sometimes seems I’ve been doing every minute of every day since…
Readers — How I love the ruling this judge made. So unhysterical. So human — note the passage I put in boldface. So why wasn’t the prosecutor as wise? U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said that while he couldn’t define pornography, he knew it when he saw it. Brooklyn Family Court Judge Steven Mostofsky (See Profile) suggested in a recent decision that he knows what’s not pornography when he sees it, and the images a camera-ready Brooklyn mother took of her kids are neither lewd nor obscene. Rather, Mostofsky said, they are the product of a mom who…
Today’s guest post comes from Michelle Icard, a.k.a Michelle in the Middle. I met Michelle when I was giving a talk in Charlotte, NC. Afterward, we were on a panel together and I found her ideas so compelling I had to ask for a piece of paper to take notes! What she knows about middle schoolers could fill a book — and now it does: She’s the author of Middle School Makeover: Improving The Way You and Your Child Experience the Middle School Years. (Boldface is mine.) — Lenore Assistant Managers Needed in the Risk Department by Michelle Icard If…
Readers — This is a plea for standing back and letting childhood happen. When care about our children’s safety and success, but do not obsess to the point where we can’t magine either happening without our immediate and constant intervention, we free up both generations. What can our kids do with that free time not spent with flash cards, Kumon, or classes? Goof around, “waste” time and stumble upon the things they love to do. Or so it seems to me, especially in light of this little insight from Linda Stone, coiner of the phrase “continuous partial attention,” as quoted…
Readers — What’s interesting about this lockdown story, which took place at Wharton High School in Tampa, FL, after a student reported hearing something or other about a gun, is not just that kids were locked in their classrooms for seven hours. It’s not just that one kid admitted (on camera!) that he ended up peeing in a bottle. It’s not even that in the end, a girl said she was grateful to the school for “keeping us safe” — from a threat that never materialized. No, what’s interesting is that I have no idea how we can stop this…
Readers — Let this not be the future of fun (from The Toronto Star): Staff and Grade 8 students at an inner-city Toronto school were looking forward to the three-day graduation trip to an idyllic nature camp in Eastern Ontario — until they were informed they couldn’t canoe, kayak or try archery. And swimming, rope activities and campfires? Only if “sufficient proof of safety” was provided ahead of time, along with “a script of safety routines and insurance in case of injuries.” With the requested documentation and swim tests near-impossible to complete before kids were to leave June 10, the…
Readers — Many of you have sent this story about Hawaii dad Robert Demond who made his son walk home a mile and was found guilty of endangering the welfare of a child. For this he was put on one year’s probation, and forced to taking a parenting class and pay a fine. Demond told the judge that it was a common form of punishment when he was a kid and that he didn’t see it as morally wrong or criminal. He had picked his son up from school and questioned him about a matter that came to his attention.…
Hi Readers — Here’s an email exchange from my mailbox. My comments are in red: Hi Lenore! Happy Wednesday I hope you are having a good one. I am writing to you from northern Alberta, Canada with a question I am really just hoping to get your advice on. I have a 9 (going-on-19) year old, very smart, free range daughter. One of her friend’s mother asked me if my daughter could go camping with them this weekend and I so want to say yes but I am really struggling with this one. The two girls have gone…
From my “Let’s totally not believe in our kids” file comes this press release. I say “not believe” because it is only fear that would make anyone think that literacy must be shoved into a 2-year-old — fear that playing and exploring are not enough, fear that a child’s brain is already atrophying, or missing out on “real” education. As if play ISN’T education. As if kids aren’t PRIMED to learn, and must have knowledge crammed into them, or hidden like medicine in “fun and games” directed by adults. This is so false — the idea that kids aren’t learning…