Readers — Are you and your children ready for a nuclear explosion set off by terrorists during the school day when the highways are so jammed you’d get stuck in traffic trying to reach them and die of radiation poisoning? That is the pressing question posed by California’s Ventura County Health Department, as you’ll see in the memo below. There is something bizarrely fatalistic about telling folks to stay inside so their kids “will have healthy parents to come home to.” They WILL? Not, “If this happens, this could happen and then this COULD happen…” Just, they “WILL”? And does…
Author: lskenazy
Dear Readers: School has begun, which means that at least one group of sixth graders is about to undergo an enormous, transformative experience. Hint: It does not involve filling in any bubbles with a #2 pencil. It involves getting out into the world. As I’ve mentioned here before, every year, Joanna Drusin, an English teacher at a magnet school in Manhattan, has her students, age 11, do a “Free-Range Kids” project. That is, they can pick one thing that they think they are ready to do (that’s legal!) that, for some reason, they haven’t done till now. Once they…
Readers — Here’s the story of a girl who had a great summer, thanks to confident parents, an abundance of local kids and a dearth of 911-dialing neighbors. It was a good reminder even for ME that kids can be on their own a lot more than we’ve gotten used to, or even feel comfortable with. – L Dear Free-Range Kids: As a Free-Range mom who was raised Free-Range herself, I just had to share this story. We live in Southern California, about 30 miles north of San Diego, in a city of 150,000. This summer I decided to let…
Hey Readers — The folks at financial T. Rowe Price asked if they could sponsor a post and I said sure — provided they write about something Free-Range. Stuart Ritter, a financial planner there, obliged and voila — some basic help with a topic I find hard to talk about with my own kids (not to mention my own soul): How to manage money. – L To All Free Range Parents — Teach Kids Financial Literacy or They Won’t Leave the Ranch Here is a scary thought: according to a survey released by T. Rowe Price earlier this year,…
Readers — Here’s a marketing video designed to drive us crazy. How? It makes us worry about a problem that is exceedingly rare, easily avoided and yet dramatically re-enacted to a soundtrack that veers from heartbreakingly sad to effervescently hopeful JUST at the moment the product-as-hero shows up. The ad and the idea encapsulate the exact zeitgeist of our time: In the absence of cholera, polio, famine, dropsy, diphtheria, cholera, death by stoning and the Gestapo, we are urged to focus nonetheless on the fact our kids COULD DIE very easily TOMORROW unless we take serious precautions. Also, if we…
Readers — Here’s a feisty comment that came in response to the post about a reader’s YMCA that requires kids who haven’t passed the swim test to stand not more than an arm’s length away from their parents in the shallow end, and also to wear life jackets — virtually ensuring that the children can NOT learn to swim, because they don’t get a chance to practice. It comes to us from reader Emily. She was responding to “Jill,” who opined in favor of the measure. And then we’ll see things from the Y’s point of view: Jill — Maybe…
Readers: I just got a note about a class in Pennsylvania that sounded so good — and anachronistic — I wrote back immediately. Here’s what the teacher wrote back: Dear Free-Range Kids: Thanks for being gracious enough to help get the word out about the program. I’m calling it “Sharp Kids – Outdoor knife skills for responsible girls and boys ages 8-12.” Here’s the link to a regional events calendar for the full listing. And provided that I can get enough kids registered, it will be held as two separate classes on Sunday, October 5, 2013, right…
Readers — Here’s the rub. Some schools in Texas are no longer allowing parents to walk their kids directly to their classrooms, as a result of Sandy Hook. On the one hand, that’s great! Since when do kids need to be hand-delivered like registered mail? One mom in this article by the Dallas Fort Worth CBS affiliate says of the new rules: “They may have security, but I want to know where my kid is going at all times.” Now she’ll learn that this level of supervision is not only unnecessary, it’s no longer even allowed. On the other hand,…
Readers: An Aussie mom presents us with a new school development — or at least one I hadn’t heard about. I feel bad for the immune deficient kids, but being out in the world means they will be faced with germs everywhere. What if they take a city bus to school? No one sick is allowed on the bus? And what about staffers: Are teachers allowed — or forced — to leave if they have a tickle in their throat? What a can of germs this opens up! – L. Dear Free-Range Kids: I have another bee in…
Readers — This is one of the most fantastic editorials I’ve ever read. It’s in Canada’s National Post. The only think I don’t agree with is blaming a particular party for over-reacting to remote childhood dangers. Our entire culture is tied up in knots about danger, unable or unwilling to understand that risk is inevitable — it doesn’t represent negligence, it’s just part of life. — L A new school year began on Tuesday, and Toronto’s often hysteria-prone news crews were geared up for the scare stories that always get served up by nervous parents this time of year. It…