Hi Readers! It’s that festive, super-suspicious time of the year, as evidenced by this invite, from the Riverside Intermediate School in Fishers, Indiana. You know — 2011′s Safest City in America. I guess it’s filled with the kind of upstanding citizens who need to be vetted by the state police before helping with kids’ class parties. — L Hello Parents, I hope everyone is doing well. You all signed up to help out in some way with our classroom at Meet the Teacher night. I realize that everyone’s schedule is busy this time of year, but we will…
Author: lskenazy
Readers — I got this letter yesterday in my email. Why does it make me SO MAD? “Children are Unique, Beautiful and Fragile” begins its CRAVEN plea. I’m losing it! I really feel this is a HORRIBLE thing to say or even IMPLY. I probably sound like I am in FAVOR of child maiming. I’m not! I just HATE this plea to emotion and terror when it comes to KIDS. It is INFECTIOUS! Here’s the charity’s WHOLE LETTER — it’s just four sentences of SKIN CRAWLING smarm! (And I’m sorry I keep updating this post — I just keep getting…
Readers — There is something poignant, sweet, weird and wonderful about what you’re about to read. Remember it when friends say they can’t possibly go Free-Range because it’s too scary. – L. Dear Free-Range Kids: Back in ’09 I read your book, and allowed my boys to walk to get ice-cream for the first time. About a 5-7 min. walk from our house. Rob was 12, and Isaac would be 11 in a few months. I had written you a few times back then. I had experienced a stranger abduction when my pastor’s daughter was abducted and murdered in…
UPDATE: *********Readers, one of you asked us to start a list of parks that still have merry-go-rounds. Does yours? If so, please tell us where it is!********* Readers, did you grow up with a merry-go-round at the park? And now? Interestingly, I couldn’t find any laws that state merry-go-rounds must go, only reams of regulations as to how high they can be, how fast they can spin, etc. So maybe their near-extinction is simply due to a combination of excess rules, along with the specter of lawsuits. From one law firm’s website: If your child was severely injured from…
Readers: A few weeks ago I spoke at The Hamlin School in San Francisco. It’s an all-girl school, housed in re-purposed mansion and headed by the dynamic Wanda Holland Greene. She and I were so on the same page after my talk (and I overheard her say she’d laughed so hard her “stomach hurt”) that we decided to continue the conversation with any parents who cared to join us, in her office. There, we talked about our own childhoods, what we loved doing as kids, and how we could give those experiences BACK to our kids. And then Wanda wrote…
Readers — Here is an actual letter from a school superintendent, sent in by a reader after she and her husband had asked why their kindergartener was getting only getting one 20-minute recess per day. Writes the mom: I was told it was because of curriculum at first. That seemed odd because we went from 1/2 to full day in this district recently. Anyway, the 2nd time I asked it was because not every one brings a jacket. My response was that I would go to Salvation Army and pick up extra jackets. And then we got this letter: The…
From the heartland — Michigan’s Newaygo Public Schools — comes a warning that’s scary. But probably not the way it was intended to be: Dear Parent: This morning, near 95th & Clay Street, some students and an adult reported a suspicious vehicle near one of the bus stops. The vehicle is described as a white “rusty” minivan that slowed down and stopped near some students. We do not have evidence that the driver of this white minivan interacted with students. We did have students and another adult concerned about the presence of this vehicle, however, and subsequently filed a report…
Hi Folks! I appreciate this writer’s dilemma and asked Jill Vialet, the founder of Playworks , and author of the new book Recess Rules to respond! I love her organization and learned a bunch of almost uncannily fun games at a workshop they gave in NYC a few years back. (And I’m not much of a playground game person myself.) – L Dear Free-Range Kids: I love the Free-Range philosophy and was wondering if you could do a post on how to address actual bullying while staying Free-Range? I teach at a very very small school and we have minimal…
Hey Folks — I liked this comment on the post from the “Wonderin’ ” mom who looked around and felt perhaps the helicopter parents had done it “right,” and she’d been wrong to Free-Range. Dear Free-Range Kids: Long time reader of this blog, first time commenter. I just felt I had to respond to “Wonderin”‘s questions. I was definitely raised Free-Range. My dad is a hippie, and my mom is from Africa, so that’s just how they were. I had a horse when I was 13 and I was able to walk over the stable, saddle up the horse, and…
What is so important to show our schools? This USA Today article that states, unequivocally, our schools are NOT GETTING LESS SAFE and so they don’t need new security measures (boldface mine): It’d be easy to conclude that school has never been a more dangerous place, but for the USA’s 55 million K-12 students and 3.7 million teachers, statistics tell another story: Despite two decades of high-profile shootings, school increasingly has become a safer place. …”I think (the concern) has to do with the psychological impact of some of these incidents,” says David Esquith, director of the U.S. Department of…