Over at Let Grow we have a precious video: Kids actually PLAYING together, at school, outside, during COVID. It’s the work of Kevin Stinehart, Pickens County, SC, Teacher of the Year last year, who believes in safety AND the power of play. The health protocols inside the school were strict: Distancing, masks, cleaning, etc. But outside, the kids were afforded something that seems almost dreamlike — a pretty normal childhood experience. Ever since it became legally and medicinally feasible, Kevin has been running a Let Grow Play Club, where an adult is on the premises, like a lifeguard, but the…
Author: lskenazy
On Saturday, Texas became the third state in America to enshrine the right of kids to a Free-Range Childhood. It follows Oklahoma and Utah in enacting a “Reasonable Childhood Independence” bill. When the Texas law goes into effect, fully one tenth of American citizens will enjoy new freedom under laws that Free-Range Kids and Let Grow helped to get passed. That is so cool! Give a cheer! And a beer! And a new lack of fear on the part of parents who want their kids to play outside and engage in age-old “independent activities” without worrying this could lead to…
Most of you won’t remember this Sesame Street classic — or will you? Some day this kind of independence will be normal again. Parents will trust their kids. Kids will trust their abilities. And it will seem sick and strange to call 911 to report a happy, confident child becoming a part of the world. But until then…take a look:
Over at Let Grow we have a LESS THAN ONE-MINUTE video by professor/author/TV host Tim Caulfield on how to rationally determine if you should let your child walk to school. Check it out by clicking here!
Rachel Flynn, a professor of child development and therapist, recently testified in support of Nevada’s “Reasonable Childhood Independence” bill, saying that over her 23 years in practice she has seen kids in decline as their unstructured, unsupervised time evaporated. This, she testified, was across the board: The decade prior to my doctorate I was a director of youth development programs working closely with children and families from diverse backgrounds — ethnicities, socioeconomic status, urban and rural populations. The children I’ve worked with also range in their cognitive abilities — the gifted and talented as well as those who are…
Kids and parents — rejoice! Both Texas and Oklahoma passed laws yesterday that ensure parents that giving their kids the freedom to do things like play outside, walk to school, and wait at home will NOT BE MISTAKEN FOR NEGLECT! If you’re a Free-Range fan, you may recall when Utah passed its first-in-the-country Free-Range Parenting law in 2018. Having two states follow suit is culture-changing news. Even better: A similar bill has already passed the state senate in Nevada and now looks likely to pass in the assembly, too. Let Grow, the non-profit that grew out of Free-Range Kids, is…
A woman’s spidey senses went wild on a Target run, and she was ABSOLUTELY SURE she was about to be trafficked. How could she be so certain? She saw three different men, all shopping and not smiling. They looked so evil, her blood ran cold. When she went outside (accompanied by store personnel, at her request) they even had a WHITE VAN. I leave it to you to guess whether it had a whole lot of windows. Yahoo put that story on their home page today. Here’s my essay about it, over at Let Grow. FOR SHAME, Yahoo. For…
A British study confirms something that you may have been feeling: Ten is the new two. More precisely, 11 is the new 9. Parents who played outside at age 9, on average, now don’t let their kids go outside, unsupervised, until age 11. This is not in response to an actual rising crime rate — crime today is lower than then ’80s and ’90s when today’s parents were growing up. (And it’s not down due to helicoptering — crime is down against adults, too, and we don’t “helicopter” them.) The higher age “floor” is in response to a sad…
And if you like the whole Free-Range Kids gestalt, come visit LetGrow.org, the nonprofit that grew out of it and promotes childhood independence right and left! https://twitter.com/i/status/1385012305813905410
Becky Diamond is a reporter who has spent years and years in actual war zones. But now she’s really scared. She’s worried about what is happening to childhood. The scheduling, supervising, intervening, optimizing — and the psychological issues those can engender. So she wrote a letter to her son reminding him — and herself — that resilience is a muscle that you need to build. The building begins in childhood. When you’re trusted to roll with some punches, it doesn’t really matter whether you pop back up or pause to lick some wounds, because either way you have gotten a…