Hi Readers — Here’s an example of our “Do something — anything!” school safety culture at work. Personally, I’d never heard of airsoft guns. When I Googled them, they looked totally scary and far too realistic for my tastes. BUT they are neither lethal nor, where this family lives, illegal. And, as you’ll read, none of the airsoft OR real guns mentioned here were going to be on school premises. But somehow, banning the experiments they were used in makes our middle school students safer. — L. Dear Free-Range Kids:As a result of Sandy Hook, my 7th grader and 3…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Folks — I’ve got a piece up over at Common Good about a jury awarding a family quite a gargantuan sum after their daughter, 13, died crossing the street to her school bus stop. What can a ruling like this do to childhood? Feel free to check out my worries. — L. Should kids be picked up only on their side of the street?
Readers — The Boston Marathon bombing has brought us an outbreak of sanity in the mainstream media. For instance, there’s this piece from CNN.com by Dr. Charles Raison. (For God’s sake — even his NAME means “reason” in French!) He argues that our brains haven’t evolved to parse the difference between a likely danger and an unlikely one that is shocking and rare. Terrorists, he writes: …commit acts that frighten us so unrealistically that we as a society change our behavior in ways that are profoundly out of proportion to the actual risks involved. While I certainly advocate reasonable caution,…
Hi Readers! This note comes to us from Nandini Ramakrishna, who was raised Free-Range in India and now lives in Phoenix, AZ. She writes the blog Cactus Chronicles. and tweets at CactusChron. – L. Dear Free-Range Kids: Four years ago, I was involved in an incident where the state questioned my competence as a parent. After two stressful months, the charge of neglect was dropped. I quickly pushed aside memories of this incident, until I read some distressing posts here about Free-Range parents misjudged as negligent. Those led me to write about my ordeal. I joined the Free-Range parenting network…
Readers: This comes to us from a Pennsylvania boy’s dad, who tells us it’s not a joke — it’s the sign right before you go out to the playground at his son’s after-care program at an elementary schoolI think the kids were insructed to write down the rules. Sure sounds fun! – L
Readers — This is one of the most reflective, honest things I’ve ever read about parenting and marriage. It comes to us from Kristina Beth, in Utah. – L. Dear Free-Range Kids: This is my first time saying anything on this website, but I’ve often heard about this blog from my coworker. In the beginning, I thought she was more or less nuts, despite there being some nuggets of wisdom she mentioned. I am recently divorced after nearly 30 years of marriage, and I can’t get the Free-Range philosophy out of my mind. Am I saying Free-Range Kid-raising would have…
Hi Folks! This missive comes to us from Del Shannon, a civil engineer who designs and constructs (and sometimes even deconstucts) dams around the world. When not damming, he has written award-winning essays and children’s stories. His first children’s book was the serialized novella The Map, published in several newspapers. Captain Disaster is his second, a novel. Del lives with his family in Colorado and always seems to be daydreaming of Captain Disaster (which you can order here!). – L MINDS WANDER AND INTELLECT GROWS by Del Shannon In my biased and yet still humble opinion, I, along with…
Hi Readers — Security guru Bruce Schneier (author of “Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive,”) is so right about a whole lot of things, including the fact that we should almost ignore what’s on the news when it comes to making both policy and personal decisions. Why? Because the news is filled with the rarest and most horrific events. So trying to plan our lives around them is like planning a trip to Florida solely around how to avoid shark attacks. Do that and you’d spend your whole beach vacation avoiding the water. It just…
Readers — This note came in response to the post below this one, which was about how we often leap from tragedy to blame, in order to give ourselves a sense of control. That leap is pretty basic superstition: “If I just do/don’t do X, my kids will be safe.” It’s like wearing a rabbit’s foot: Somehow, God or the Fates will take note of your diligence and spare your child. – L. Dear Free-Range Kids: The quote below is a Facebook post from someone in my feed who was invited to speak on a local news segment tonight regarding…
Readers, surely, not every horrifying event begs a Free-Range analysis, but I did want to say one thing about the Boston Marathon bombings. Beyond simply expressing my disgust and sadness, I’d note that, like so many tragedies, this one was absolutely unpredictable. No one attending did anything remotely ill-advised or imprudent, yet some found themselves in danger’s way nonetheless. Let’s remember this lightning-bolt quality when tragedies befall others, especially children. We do have a way, often, of thinking bad things happen only to the children of bad parents. When a child is hurt and a parent was not supervising, the…