Hi Readers! You’ll love this! — L Dear Free-Range Kids: This isn’t so much a camp story as it is an “independence” story. My son was by nature very timid and could have easily have been crippled by this nature had I allowed it. Instead, I kicked my kids out of the house on every nice day and made them find something to do rather than sit inside. Many a summer night saw my backyard filled with up to a dozen neighborhood kids in sleeping bags under the stars and unsupervised. Shockingly, they were never once kidnapped or molested. …
Author: lskenazy
Hi Folks! This video was sent in with a comment that says it all: In the US, a 15-year-old can’t wait outside for a parent to pick them up, a 10-year-old can’t walk to school alone. In the UK, a 14-year-old can’t babysit a toddler … and in Nepal these kids are using a wire over a river to get to school everyday! — Kate Parker Adams The video will remind long-time readers of a similar trek made by school kids in South America who also used a zip line (over a river) to get to school. And it’ll remind…
Hi Readers — Gosh, there have been so many interesting letters lately! Here’s one that has me so proud for the writer. It is so difficult to break old habits, and harder still when those are based on FEAR. But as she discovered: When we deal with the real world, instead of the dreadful illusion we have of it, the world is OURS. All props to her for being so brave! — L. Dear Free-Range Kids: At the age of 34 I have just started taking classes at night without having a ride home from a relative. ( I’m mildly…
Hi Readers! Well, I was miffed a while back about the rules against BRANCHES at the school in New Jersey. But the rules at THIS pre-k make Jersey seem like the garden state! — L Dear Free-Range Kids: At my pre-school we can fail inspection if the children take off their jackets and put them in their cubbies before washing their hands unless we sanitize all of the cubbies afterwards. The reason being that their dirty hands would contaminate the cubbies. Never mind that those kids were just rolling in the grass in their jackets that they just touched with…
I love this piece about a man, a boy, and a zipper incident in the men’s room. At church. Enjoy! L.
Hi Readers! The other day I got a note from a reader saying, “We need more GOOD news about Free-Raning.” And so, here we go! — L. Dear Free-Range Kids: A few weeks ago you posted something that another reader did to create a sense of community. I’ve been meaning to follow up, but things in Wisconsin have been, umm, kind of crazy lately, as you may have read. Anyway, I live in the sort of neighborhood where there a lot of renters, and not very many kids. My husband and I have been bemoaning this for years.…
Hi Readers: This letter made my day. Might make yours, too. (After your blood stops boiling.) Dear Free-Range Kids: I am 14 years old. I go to a school in small town Kentucky that is extremely over-protective! Rubberbands are consided a weapon and if you are caught with one, you get the same punishment as if you carry a knife or gun! It’s ridiculous! But this is just the beginning. Every year we have a lady who wears a “National Center for Missing & Exploited Children” t-shirt come and tell us that all people in the world are evil and…
Hi Readers! I’m going to be giving a speech next week at the Tri-State Camp Conference — country’s biggest convention for camp owners — and I’d love to include some stories about how camp helps kids come into their own. I didn’t go to overnight camp but my husband did and he said it was THERE that he got to become a “grown up.” (Well, if by “grown up” we mean young man who could admit he was interested in girls.) It took him about three years to catch up with his summer persona in the real world. Spending a…
Hi Readers! Here’s a lovely little essay from Bree Ervin, author of the blog Think Banned Thoughts (which, apparently, she does). — L. Making a Point about Toothpicks by Bree Ervin My husband and I are very picky about the preschools we chose for our children. The preschool our daughter attends has a merry-go-round which they had to fight the state to keep, a ridiculously tall slide, and a science room with real animal skeletons, bird’s nests, owl pellets and some safe chemicals like baking soda and vinegar for the kids to do science “spearmints” with. We knew when we…
Hi Readers — Here’s a brilliant idea that came in response to the previous couple of posts about how our kids can become more responsible when we back off a little. This mom not only liberated her OWN kids from too much help (however kindly proffered), she liberated a whole classroom! — L. Dear Free-Range Kids: I always hated when my kids wanted to dress themselves — not because I was dying to do it, but because I would have to defend myself against the “bad mommy” accusation from the other preschool parents. My guys like wearing stripes and plaid…