Readers, once in a while — if you ignore the school safety drills involving real helicopters and the school boy suspensions involving imaginary guns — you can feel like things are going in exactly the right direction. This is one of those moments. Look at this article, “Call to Ditch Red Tape on Playtime Safety”: …Paperwork designed to protect children at play can be discarded, according to “seminal” guidelines issued by the Health and Safety Executive. In a plain-speaking statement,it dismisses the “misguided security blanket” of reams of paperwork that purport to prevent children from harm. The statement went…
Author: lskenazy
Readers — Just another note from the frontlines of our freaking-out country! Got this yesterday: Dear Free-Range Kids: I found this story, currently going on in my greater neighborhood as I type this, incredibly alarmist. A little background: I live in a nice, average neighborhood in Seattle. We have a neighborhood blog that sometimes beats the drum of 1) call the cops on strangers, 2) never answer the door. If that is the suggestion to able adults, you can imagine how crazy we get with children. Anyhow, story is, someone wanted on a warrant for theft is on the…
Ach! You haf zee streudel nightmares too? My 17th patient today! Folks — You’ll recall the case from a few days ago when a boy was suspended from school for the crime of biting what sounds like a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun. (Supposedly he was just trying to bite it into”the shape of a mountain,” but, sure — whatever, kid. Just tell it to the judge.) Well now the school seems to be offering its students counseling. What a relief! I’d worried the kids would be left to struggle with PPTTSD (Post-Pop-Tart-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder) on their own, perhaps…
Readers — An Oregon high school is planning to stage the most apocalyptic shooter drill yet. According to local public NPR station, KLCC: If Elmira High school students go to school on April 27th, they’ll be in an active-shooter role play drill. This is Chris Heppel, who’s coordinating the helicopters that will fly in to transport fake victims. “We’ll have some type of an incident transpire where a number of folks are injured by a firearm. We’ll have students and parents, as well as some faculty practice our response to that.” The piece explains that while most local schools are…
Readers — The story below makes me so sad and so angry, and you will see why. If anyone at Child Protective Services or the police department would pick up a single book written before predator panic swept the country, they’d see that 6-year-olds were always part of the neighborhood scene, scampering, playing, or even — in many eras and areas — working! The idea that a 6-year-old can’t be outside without constant supervision is new and warped. It also seriously underestimates kids. Is there a law requiring parents to stunt their children’s curiosity, competence, maturity and independence? I fear…
Readers — I don’t want this blog to become just a compendium of nutty zero tolerance stories, but it’s Saturday night and I couldn’t resist just one more before we return to more pressing matters. The Associated Press reports that a Pennsylvania doctor’s receptionist mis-heard a student’s singing voicemail as, “Shooting some people outside of the school,” instead of, “Shooting shoot some b-ball outside of the school” — the Fresh Prince rap — and immediately alerted the authorities. The student’s school went into lockdown. The student himself was also arrested. Ho-hum. Just another day in the Paranoid States of America.…
Readers — I don’t have any comments to make about this latest “Boy Suspended for the Stupidest Reason On Earth” story, but I figured you’re going to hear it soon, might as well hear it here first. And remember: When boys who shape their pastry into a mountain that, to their teacher, looks like a gun, get suspended, only teachers who suspend boys for making mountains will have gun-shaped pastry. Or something like that. – L. Baba au gun?
Thank goodness for the Walk Mee! Now children will finally learn how to walk. All they needed was a little extra $29.99 help — and here it is, at last! And since they will reach their “key development milestones faster” — and we all know it’s a race — that must mean they will be ahead for the rest of their lives! Hey you pathetic self-taught toddlers: Eat my baby’s dust! “WALK MEE” HELPS BABIES REACH KEY DEVELOPMENT MILESTONES FASTER 1. Motor Skills 2. Physical Development 3. Balance & Coordination – See more at: http://meenobabies.com/why-mee.html#walkmee Baby or marionette? YOU…
Hi Readers! You know how you can go to one site to look something up and a few clicks later you end up someplace else completely different? (I was trying to find the percentage of parents who worry their kids will be kidnapped — a London study found 98%, but I couldn’t find a figure for the States. Can you?) That’s what just happened. One thing leads to another thing which leads you — or, now, us — to dsbfibirtr this very intriguing Dept. of Justice memo from a few years back about how important it is to combat not…
Hi Readers — Today I’m posting on Common Good about school safety…or what passes for it. Common Good believes in a common sense, non-hysterical approach to policy, and I’m thrilled to be blogging there. Here’s how the piece begins: Dear Lenore: I took my kids to Sunday school a few weeks ago and the door we usually go in had a sign on it saying that we could no longer enter there. Everyone needs to go in the door on the other side of the building. Never mind that to get there, people now have to walk their children through…