Readers — We’ve been chronicling the most appalling reactions to the Sandy Hook shooting, but this drill, at Carl Ben Eielson Middle School in Fargo, ND, was actually in place BEFORE Newtown! In fact, the school postponed it till about a week ago: A drill whereby the fire alarm was sounded and teachers were instructed to KEEP THE KIDS INSIDE THE CLASSROOMS and barricade the doors because it COULD be an “intruder,” fiendishly trying to lure children outside, where he could shoot them. Herewith, I give you the article and let the mom who sent it in take over the…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Readers — Mothers bringing their older sons into the ladies room seems to be more common these days, unless maybe I’m just more aware of it because of this blog and my own take on things. Is it on the rise, in tandem with worst-first thinking? Really like to hear your take on it. — L. Dear Free-Range Kids: I recently visited New York City for the first time during the holidays. I lived downtown Chicago for 8 years so I am used to participating in cautious and seeing cautious behavior but this one was new — something…
Hi Folks! Here’s my piece that ran in today’s NY Daily News, the paper where I worked for 14 years. – L. FUN CONTROL Guns Guns and children don’t go together, right? Well, actually, often they do. Chances are if you have a kid or ever were one (especially if there was a Y chromosome involved), at some point you played cops vs. robbers, aliens vs. predators, SEALs vs. Osama — some good guy/bad guy confrontation. Often it involved a toy gun made out of anything: sticks, Play-Doh, pizza. And it was pretty obvious to everyone that there was nothing…
Readers — If you want to watch the decline and fall of Western Civilization, check out this article in yesterday’s Washington Post about a suburban D.C. school, Stratford Landing, whose PTA purchased a rather cool-looking piece of climbing equipment. They bought it, using bake sale and other fundraising money, from a playground company that naturally makes sure all its products meet national (and international) safety standards. Nonetheless, the school district decided was too dangerous. It has literally wrapped the structure in police tape and forbidden kids to use it. Says the Post: Never mind that the same equipment is installed…
Hi Readers — One of you just sent edehsashfr this Facebook page about plans to stop letting kids play on this fabulous old locomotive located at the Dennis the Menace park in Monterey,California. The reasons? Take a guess. I’ve dropped a note to the activist running the FB page, haven’t heard back yet and wanted to get this post out quickly, while perhaps there’s still time to save this treasure. It is GOOD not BAD for kids to climb on big, exciting trains. If parents are worried, they can keep their kids OFF. If parents are PSYCHED, why can’t they…
Readers — Sometimes it is hard to keep swimming upstream, but here we go. Cary Grove, a high school in suburban Chicago, is set to run a lockdown drill tomorrow, this one with someone shooting two blanks in the hall, “in an effort to provide our teachers and students some familiarity with the sound of gunfire,” according to a letter from the principal. Sure, I understand the impulse. And I know that many people will say, as does a woman in this CBS news report, “Better safe than sorry.” But I’m with another woman quoted, who pointed out that look,…
Hi Readers — This just in: A 5-year-old in an after-school program who used his Legos “inappropriately” to make a gun may be suspended for two weeks — if he does it again. But as this Fox25 story out of Boston explains, this is no ordinary tot. He is a recidivist, having used his FINGERS to make a gun just a few weeks earlier. So you can see why school officials are so terrified. Can’t you? As the principal explained: “While someone might think making a Lego gun is just an action of a 5-year-old, to other 5-year-olds that might…
Ah, readers, you know this is my bugaboo: the idea that the authorities (cops, CPS) know better than PARENTS whether or not a child is safe waiting for a short while in the car. I always want to ask the busybodies who summon the police, “Do you really think it’s safer to drag a toddler across a crowded parking lot, where they could get run over, or into a STORE where there could be a ROBBERY in progress and the child could get SHOT?” I mean, if we’re going to do some wild “worst-first” thinking about kids in the car,…
Hi Readers — Seth Godin, the tech/life/marketing/art guru, was interviewed by Krista Tippett on NPR’s “On Being” show yesterday, and he began by talking about his childhood as a self-described “Free-Range Kid.” (Though I’m not sure he mentally capitalized it.) Anyway, apparently somehow, when he was 14, his dad put him on a boat in downtown Cleveland (?!) at 1 a.m. with a stranger, and he — Seth — ended up finding his way home. It didn’t sound like his dad was trying to abandon him, just that something went awry and it was a formative experience for Seth, who…
Hi Readers — Here’s a question I’m curious about. It’s the winter corollary to my summer query about whether any kids still mow the lawn. Weigh in! – L. Dear Free-Range Kids: I do not even have children, but I was one once, so I believe that qualifies me as somewhat of an expert. I am constantly confounded these days by what I perceive as the infantilization of children. As a kid growing up in Yonkers, N.Y., once a snow day was declared (minimum of 8-12 inches of snow for that!), we’d all meet outside with scrapers and shovels in…