Hi Readers! Here’s a little note from a mom in Massachusetts, land of freedom-seeking Pilgrims, who adds that this Thanksgiving celebration is supposed to be as “authentic” as possible: Dear Free-Range Kids: I just got an invitation to my 3rd grader’s upcoming Thanksgiving celebration. Parents are welcome, but must have a current CORI form (criminal background check) on file. Just to come have a snack with your child in a well-supervised group setting. Which reminds me. That Squanto fellow who was always hanging around. Didn’t he seem a little TOO nice? – L.
Author: lskenazy
Hi Readers! I don’t know about you, but I let my kids eat their Halloween candy without my inspecting it. In fact, they can eat any homemade treats or apples they get, too. (Ha! Like they’d ever eat an apple on Halloween.) If you also happen to trust the world not to be poisoning your kids — and I think you should: there have been no instances of a child ever poisoned by a stranger on Halloween (here’s the Snopes report) — I’m wondering if you’d consider doing this: Send me a photo or video of your children eating an…
Hi Readers! Let’s help Bree! – L. Dear fellow Free-Rangers, I am thrilled to tell you that my daughter’s school is re-vamping recess to make it… FUN! That’s right, after years of cracking down on things like tag (no touching, someone might get hurt or feel violated), cartwheels (someone might get kicked), touch football (someone might take it too far and tackle another player), etc. we now have a new conversation is beginning. It started with our principal asking parents how to make recess more safe and productive. When another Free-Ranger and I were the only parents who showed up…
Hi Readers: This letter made me ill. Simple as that. Until we learn to blame CRIMINALS and not MOMS, we will continue to create a world of blame and fear and good ol’ pitchfork-through-the-heart cruelty. – L. (who did not bother to make any corrections to the writer’s note) P.S. This note is about the Jessica Ridgeway case, not the tragedy we are hearing of today, in New Jersey. Dear Free-Range Kids: First and foremost my heart and prayers go out to the family, friends, and community. I am a mother of two children. Daughter is 9 and my son…
Hi Folks — Here’s me, today, on the show “The Doctors.” This was not an appearance I’m proud of. I don’t think I got my point across — that kids today are pretty safe, and it is only our worst-case-obsessing culture (as exemplified by, ahem, The Doctors) that is convincing us our kids are in constant danger. What really upset me about this is…everything. That includes the fact that New York City’s parks are portrayed as citadels of crime, because there were 41 incidents over the summer. In a city of 8,000,000 people! Hey, it’s too bad there wasn’t ZERO…
Hi Readers — As you know, I don’t jump on every study that comes along (in part because that would require an inordinate amount of jumping). But this one, out today, I found interesting: Cyberbullying Only Rarely the Sole Factor Identified in Teen Suicides. You can figure out the topic from the title, obviously, but you may be wondering: How is this relevant to Free-Range Kids? The answer is not that we are here to endorse cyberbullying. (Surprise!) It’s that in the past year or two, the cyberbullying-suicide connection has achieved almost “stranger-danger” status: a very rare but very awful…
Dear Readers: Here’s a little missive from the frontiers of irrationality, brought to you by a terrified culture and a school in Arizona. . Dear Free-Range Kids: I was shocked when I received this in an email from my daughter’s school: “Mrs. K has informed me that all volunteers must have a fingerprint card prior to volunteering in our schools. I know there was different information relayed to you all with regards to the fingerprinting matter. I asked Mrs. K to clarify that for me so that you would be given the correct information. If you don’t…
Hi Readers! Once again, one of you alerted me to a phenom I was completely unaware of: Schools are asking parents to write letters for their kids’ emergency packs, in case they are separated…perhaps forever. It certainly sounds like a wrenching exercise for the parents, one that — per usual these days — forces us to imagine the very worst, saddest case scenario and proceed as if it’s likely enough to happen. It’s what I call “worst-first thinking,” and it’s the way we are being TRAINED to think about our kids. Think of the advice columnist who suggested we…
Hi Readers! Sometimes I get the kind of note that makes my day/week/month, as did this one. Naturally, it comes with one nagging question, which I am often asked. — L. Dear Lenore: Thank you so much for your wonderful book. I am not (yet) a parent but plan to start a family soon. I am so glad I picked up your book (I could barely put it down, you made me laugh more than I have laughed in a long time) before I started having kids! It caught my eye because after I began working at a…
Hi Folks! Here’s a note that resonated with me so much. It’s why I tried to start that “I Won’t Supervise Your Kids”class with kids of all different ages, and why I want kids to meet up with each other and HAVE to figure out how to have fun on “Take Our Children to The Park…And Leave Them There Day.” Even as I write this my 14-year-old is trudging off to school knowing that at 3:30 he won’t find anyone to play with at the park just opposite the school because…the kids don’t do that. They go straight home and…