Not that 2020 has that many highlights, but doing Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast was one of them for me. What a smart, funny, thoughtful guy — an anthropology major! (Which explains why he brought up hunter/gatherers.) Over at Let Grow we boiled down his parenting practices, including my favorite: His refusal to pretend to be fascinated by every little thing his daughters do, because he doesn’t want to give them unrealistic dating expectations: “There’s no dude out there that’s ever going to stare at them knitting and be thrilled.” You can read the rest of Dax’ words of wisdom…
Author: lskenazy
Want to save kids from rape and molestation? Me too. Unfortunately, instead of going after actual sexual predators, some police officers have discovered that it’s easier to just trick people. These cops go on adult dating sites, pose as grown women, find lonely guys, flirt, and then claim they are actually underage. But the photos they send of “themselves” depict real women in their 20s. When the mark arranges a date, the cops arrest him as a predator. These stings are the subject of a remarkable piece in The New York Times Magazine by Michael Winerip. I highly recommend reading…
…constantly praise his daughters. It’s all there in a rollicking 2-hour conversation we had on his “Armchair Expert” podcast. WOW DID I LOVE DOING THAT PODCAST! Hope you love it too. Click here to hear it!
On my “Supervision Not Required” Podcast This Week: Are Kids in Other Countries More Independent? The short answer is yes, often, but in surprising ways. I talk with Christine Gross-Loh, who has raised her kids in America and Japan, while also traveling the rest of the globe. In Japan, the parents don’t worry about kids eating too much candy, in Guatemala kids don’t tune out when the teacher is talking to someone else. But most interesting to me is Christine’s theory about why we Americans are constantly telling our kids to share — a tic which turns out to…
What do kids with approximately 127 hours of free time a day, thanks to COVID, do? They get creative. They also seem to get out the X-Acto knives. (Yay!) We harnessed this kid superpower by holding a Let Grow Cardboard Contest, and are pleased today to announce our winners. Check them out by clicking here. Below is our Grand Prize Winner. One of those guitars is real, and belonged to Anaya’s grandpa, RIP. The other is one Anaya made out of cardboard to honor his love of music (and her).
A study of 1,000 kids aged 13 and 14 in England found their anxiety levels dropped when in-person school closed. Reports the BBC: Researchers compared findings from a survey taken in October last year to answers given by teenagers in May this year. Both girls and boys recorded decreased levels of anxiety during that timeframe. In October, 54% of 13 to 14-year-old girls and 26% of boys of the same age said they felt anxious. When surveyed in May – several weeks after schools shut to most pupils and nationwide lockdown restrictions came into force – the proportion dropped to…
Good news, parents: If you let your kids wait in the car for less than 10 minutes on a cool day—doors locked and fan on—a caseworker and sheriff are actually not allowed to come to your home, threaten to take your children away, and strip search the kids. These very basic rights were just vindicated the hard way: by a Kentucky mom in federal court. Holly Curry sued the cop and the caseworker, insisting that the day she was investigated for child abuse, the two authorities so wildly overstepped their bounds that they should not be afforded qualified immunity. In…
You see them at the store and their kid is glaring, swearing, or possibly biting someone. (Maybe you.) Give those poor, beleaguered parents the benefit of the doubt. You see a kid waiting in the car a few minutes in front of the pizza shop, or pharmacy. Give those parents the benefit of the doubt. You see a kid walking, biking, playing, waiting, doing something on their own. Give those trusting parents the benefit of the doubt. In a lovely essay, educator Mike Yates talks about how easy it is to judge. Read it by clicking here. And judge not.
We’ve got 5 food experiments over at Let Grow, and some are quite amazing. In one, kids learn how to transform liquids into edible “pearls”: Mix any kind of liquid (juice, chocolate milk, maple syrup) with unflavored gelatin, warm the mixture, and drizzle it into cold oil. This process will create tasty “pearls.” The young cooks can make a few different pearls and have a sibling, parent, or friend taste each one and guess its flavor. Sound so cool! I plan to try it, because I’d love to feed these weird globs to friends and family. Another one of the…
A week ago, Tennessee’s Department of Education announced it was going to start conducting monthly “child well-being” assessments of every single kid under age 18 in the state. These could be by phone, email, or a knock on the door. On home visits, the so-called “well-being liaison” would be allowed to interview the children privately. Did the state set any standards for what sort of person would be given kind of access and responsibility? Well, the liaisons had to be at least 20 years old, and they had to pass a background check. That’s it. The parental uproar that ensued,…