Hi Folks — Here’s a nice story from Leslie in Georgia, and a response from her friend that has me shaking my head. Is NOTHING safe enough? NOTHING? Not the most normal, delightful, sane, sweet slice of childhood, as dangerous as a daisy? To many Americans, the answer is simply nope, nothing IS safe enough. Next question please. – L. Dear Free-Range Kids: Wanted to share a quick Free Range victory… Background: we live in a gated “country club” community, on a quiet street off the main avenue. There are very few kids on our street for my six-year-old to…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Folks — It constantly stuns me how much we don’t believe in our kids, convinced they will be hurt, frustrated, killed or bored without our constant ministrations. But to see this standard of supervision extended to dogs is fairly knock-me-down-with-a-chew-toy shocking. There’s something about our society that CLAIMS it is for all-natural this and that, but it is for the most unnatural ideals of parenting people and pets EVER. – L Dear Free-Range Kids: This came across my Facebook page from an East Coast friend who’s another Free-Ranger. She and I adopted rescue dogs about the same time, and…
Hi Folks — Here’s a totally fascinating topic that I didn’t realize was quite so widespread: The daily, sometimes hourly, online updates about our children’s grades. My sons’ schools both have programs like the one described below, but I don’t have them on my phone so I don’t check them very much. It seems to be the schools’ assumption, however, that I should. As such, they are demanding a kind of two-fer: The kid AND parent, as a team. It reminds me of the way “arrival” and “dismissal” morphed into “drop off” and “pick up.” The assumption is that OF…
Hi Folks! As you have probably figured out by now, I actually LOVE safety. Helmets, car seats, seat belts — all get a thumbs up from me. But when we start re-defining EVERY activity as high-risk and requiring special safety gear (or when the marketplace tries to convince us it does, so it can sell us more stuff), independence starts to seem too daunting. A case in point: Dear Free-Range Kids: I thought of you just now because I was driving through Watertown, Mass., a more hip and urban suburb than mine, and saw a mom with 3-4 preschool kids…
Hi Readers! Here’s a cool observation and a request for more, by way of Dawn Siff, a New York City producer, blogger and vlogger who tweets @momlandia. – L Dear Free-Range Kids: I love the show “Parenthood,” which is produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. It’s a sappy hour-long drama that very loosely follows the premise of a movie by the same name, which came out in 1989 and starred Steve Martin and Mary Steenburgen. I never miss an episode. I think it’s wonderful and even pretty realistic in its dialogue and depiction of family dynamics. I have noticed,…
Hi Readers. Have a great weekend. Here’s to letting our kids go out in the neighborhood.- L. Dear Free-Range Kids: Well here in N.J., Halloween, as per governor’s orders, is postponed till Monday and on Halloween itself I told my kids, who took the news with amazing grace. Our friends had lost their homes, so losing Halloween was small by comparison. My soon to be 8-year-old decided that people needed a reason to smile though, and put on her costume convinced her brother to do the same, leashed the dogs (we are hurricane sitting), grabbed the candy bowl and…
Hi Folks! Two stories for you. Here’s the one to remember when folks start “What If”- ing your decision to send your kids outside to play or walk to school or do pretty much anything without you. One question I always get is, “Well what if they get HURT and you’re not there?” Here’s what if, sent to us by a mom named Jennifer who lives in St. Paul, MN, where she teaches ethics at the state university and homeschools her two kids.: Dear Free-Range Kids: We had a Halloween experience that reinforced my view that most people are…
Hi Readers! Another day, another report from the frontlines of our obsession with predators. Allow me to make a strange analogy. As the storm Sandy approached us this weekend (I’m in New York), Mat McDermott at the blog TreeHugger wrote a post, “What if New York City Invested in Climate Change Adaptation Like it Has in Combating Terrorism?” Says Mat: New York has pulled out all the stops in preventing another massive act of terrorism—going so far in some cases that it has trampled civil liberties….—but has done far less to mitigate the effects of a much longer term, slower…
Hi Folks! I am at a friend’s apartment, borrowing her internet connection. I live in New York City — Queens — which was hit hard by Sandy, but my neighborhood was not severely affected. I wish everyone could say the same. Anyway, for those not dodging downed power lines, it’s a great day for the kids to go forth and revel in candy and independence — both sweet. But how can parents start letting go? Maybe it’s not that hard — at least, that’s what I just saw. On Saturday, I gave my Free-Range Kids lecture in Whitby, Ontario, and…
Hi Folks! Did you know I write a weekly syndicated newspaper column? Yup. Been doing it for seven years, through Creators Syndicate. (And dare I suggest, maybe your local paper should run it? It’s not always about Free-Range topics. I cover everything from bioterrorism to Barbie.) Anyway, here’s my latest, about a letter you read here, and a case far away. – L. PREDICTING THE UNPREDICTABLE Abductions. Earthquakes. What do they have in common besides the horror they create? They are both, to a greater or lesser extent, random. And randomness — call it “fate” — is something we 21st…