Hi Readers — Forgive the belabored headline. Here’s a story one of you alerted us all to in the post below this one: A Swedish woman left her baby outside a Massachusetts restaurant for 10 minutes while she ordered inside. Someone saw the boy, called the cops and the cops called Department of Child and Family Services to file a report of “potential abuse or neglect.” Now, I know that leaving your kids outside is common in Scandanavia and uncommon in the States. But as Pentamom put it in a comment: If I were empress of the universe, when…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Folks! Here’s a big chunk of a wonderful essay by my friend and fellow journalist Christopher Moore, published in the New York weekly, Our Town. I guess when life hands you lemonade…write a column: Lemonade Stand-ing Watch by Christopher Moore At least in my Manhattan ‘hood, there are a crazy number of kids out on the sidewalks hawking cold—or at least cold-ish—beverages. The only problem: their parents are out there with them. The overprotective parent strikes again. And these adults can dramatically change the you’re-on-your-own tradition for kids with summertime stands. Yes, this is a case of a person…
Hi Readers — This “Dumbest Things” piece by the folks at Cracked is so perfect, click and enjoy. And remember, back when Cracked used to be the runner-up to Mad, I wrote scads of articles for it. (Just not recently, when it became brilliant social commentary.) Favorite Dumbest Thing schools are doing to “protect” kids? Well, it’s a toss up between the school banning ALL photography (lest it lead to and/or become child porn), and the individual radio frequency i.d. tags that a school purchased to track kids…except that if a kid IS somehow abducted from the school grounds, the…
Readers — I am SO SICK of our finger-pointing culture ever-ready to criminalize a normal, if tragic, parenting moment. In this case, a woman named Felicia Tucker is being charged in the drowning death of her toddler nephew Joshua because he got out of house and she didn’t realize it quickly enough. He drowned in a nearby lake. According to an article in The Courier Post Online: Tormenting Tucker on Friday was whether Joshua had suddenly learned to open the front door or whether it had not been latched. Tucker said she and her sister had taken “every precaution” in…
Hi Readers — Just had my first cuppa coffee, along with my first “Arghhhh!” (Some people have a donut, I have apoplexy.) Here is what inspired my gnashing and thrashing, from the One Step Ahead folks: The Wrap Strap. A wide, squishy Velcro safety belt you bring along to the grocery store to strap your kid more LUXURIOUSLY into the shopping cart seat. Quoth the web site: “No more broken, stiff, icky shopping cart belts — give baby a clean, cushy harness that’s hers alone!” Hey, while we’re at it, why not give her a clean, cushy world that’s hers…
Hi Readers: Firsts off, thanks to all of you who sent this in: The very first app the FBI is releasing to the public. It’s the “Child ID App,” allowing you to store your kid’s photo, height and weight in one easy-to-retrieve place, and to forward this info instantaneously to the authorities. It was developed, according to the FBI’s site, to put “Child Safety In Your Hands.” After all, the site notes: “A child goes missing every 40 seconds” — that’s 800,000 kids a year. “Many never return home.” My question: Does the FBI read its own statistics? Because I…
Hi Readers! This was a comment on the post two below this one, and I was nodding along so much, I decided to give it its own post. It’s by a woman named Nanci, who describes herself as “a Midwest mom of two.” — L. Dear Free-Range Kids:.. I really think the bottom line problem is that our society today is “too safe.” When we begin to defeat all the things that used to be dangerous, we lose quite a bit of perspective. We start to gauge safety/danger against absolute safety. One hundred and fifty years ago it was…
Hi Readers! First of all, thank you SO MUCH for the fantastic suggestions on how to help parents get over the fear of BLAME, in the post below this one. Here’s one response that I wanted to highlight because I hear you: We need success stories here, too. Enjoy this one! L. Dear Free-Range Kids: *Other* parents’ ability to let go of that worry have encouraged me to do the same. A recent example: My 13-yo son is attending band camp, 2 miles from our home, for an hour a day M-F. Problem is, I tutor 2 days a week…
Hi Readers! Here’s my situation: When I speak with parents who feel they really have to watch their kids ALL the time, often it’s not just because they fear that otherwise “something terrible” could happen. It’s also because they fear that IF something does, THEY will be blamed. So even if parents are pretty sure their son, say, is ready to walk to school, or scooter on the sidewalk, or play basketball in the park with his friends, they still won’t let him do it, on the off-chance of that double whammy: Disaster + blame — blame they will heap…
Hi Folks — Now that the notion, “How could anyone let their kids walk alone outside?” is back in heavy rotation, here is the blog post of a mom whose 12 year old son was brought home to her by the cops. He wasn’t in any trouble. He was simply scooped up because the cops didn’t think a middle schooler should be walking, by daylight, in an urban area. It freaked them out. I always worry when people in power are scared of non-scary, formerly normal childhood activities. As this boy was picked up in pretty much the same area…