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…
Author: lskenazy
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…
Readers — Here’s a letter I just got from a fellow journalist I’ve met a few times, and like: Dear Lenore: I hate to say this but I think the helicopter mommies are right. Now that I am seeing kids in college who grew up this way, I have to admit they are pretty darn perfect. They are getting into the best schools, they are well behaved, they are kind and smart and lovely, they are getting great jobs (oh yes, with their parents’ help but hey it’s working for them!) and they never seem to get into trouble. I…
Readers — This story from The Telegraph makes Kafka look like Louisa May Alcott. I don’t share it as a tale of, “Look what’s happening all the time!” because, thank God, it is unique. What it does illustrate is what happens when the government is allowed to make parenting decisions. Drastic ones. Always, of course, “for the sake of the child.”- L. ‘Operate on this mother so that we can take her baby’ A mother was given a caesarean section while unconscious – then social services put her baby into care by Christopher Booker Last summer a pregnant Italian mother…
From today’s New York Times’ obit about Al Plastino, who drew scores of Superman comic books from the 1940s through the 1960s, as well as the Superman and Batman newspaper comic strips: Alfred John Plastino was born on Dec. 15, 1921, in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx. His mother died when he was 6. His father, who made hats and sold them from a store on Fifth Avenue, often dropped his son off at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where young Al would sketch Monets and Michaelangelos. In other words, Al’s dad left him alone, as a child,…
Readers — It is downright BIZARRE that we have criminalized normal behavior that’s consensual. That’s what has happened to teens who have sex, write Shelly Snow, author of the blog With Justice for All: Dear Free-Range Kids: I just finished reading your birthday blog, and I realized, as I have before, that much that you advocate for is “the way it used to be.” It hit me so strong because I have just had an interesting–to say the least–commenting exchange on an article. I was trying to make the point of the necessity to distinguish between a statutory-but-otherwise-consensual situation, and…