Hi Readers — I went to check the forecast on weather.com this morning and up popped an app, unbidden: “Mom’s Daily Planner.” How the site KNEW I’m a mom I won’t even speculate. But here are the day parts it broke the day down into: Lunchtime PM Bus Stop Evening Activity Excuse me — “PM Bus Stop” is now an official part of a mom’s day? We are EXPECTED to be at the bus stop to pick up our children? Expected to drop everything to stand guard at the bus stops that have existed for decades, where kids used to…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Readers! Allow me to direct you to my piece on ParentDish today (gotta spread the word beyond these pixels!): “Yearbook Blacks Out Kids’ Eyes for Fear of Porn Potential.” And that’s really what it’s about: A principal in England ordered the students’ photos disfigured in the yearbook so that no one could cut and paste their innocent little heads onto child porn and post them on the Internet. Talk about a pervert. Her! What kind of creep even THINKS like that? And, in a related finding so new and surprising that I don’t even have an opinion about yet,…
Hi Readers — Here’s today’s hint of the coming apocalypse. This sign: And here’s the note I got, alerting us all to it: Dear Free-Range Kids: I was visiting a dear friend yesterday in a nearby town and drove by this sign. I was so shocked by it I had to stop and take a picture. I wondered what on earth it could be about — perhaps the school district is getting rid of background checks for employees? Perhaps volunteers don’t need background checks and fingerprinting? Perhaps the door to the school would be left open…
Hi nekzradadn Readers: From today’s mailbox, an intriguing little piece. – L. . Dear Free-Range Kids: I have two boys — 6 and 8 — and am learning about letting go. Can I talk about a “What If?” a little in reverse? . I took the stupid netting off my kids trampoline because I thought it was making them complacent about how to jump safely. The net was always there to stop them from learning. . A month ago my boys and a friend were all jumping and the friend decided he would push my older son off the trampoline…
Hi Readers — One of the biggest frustrations in Free-Ranging is dealing with other people’s “What If?” fears. Why? Because they can never be answered! If a parent starts worrying about, “What if X, Y or Z happens while my child is doing…” anything, there is no way to say, “Don’t worry, it won’t.” Because, of course, something bad always COULD possibly happen. “What if??” doesn’t take into account probability, or even reality. It just builds big, bright, horrible possibilities and projects them, Power Point-like, into the conversation: “Ha! You tell me not to worry, but LOOK at this! This…
Readers — I gotta go cook a turkey, but meantime, look at this. The REASON this Cleveland elementary school is making Chapstick contraband is that kids might SHARE it: Parents were afraid that children would share the Chapstick and spread germs,” [schools spokeswoman] Sessoms said. “By requiring written permission from the parents, parents would be aware that their children had Chapstick and would be able to remind them not to share it with other children. This would also be a way for teachers to be aware so that they could deter students from sharing it with others.” For this same…
Hi Readers — A bunch of you pointed to this story today and indeed, it’s pretty irresistible: A teacher sent a memo home to all sixth grade students saying the could NOT bring pencils to class. Furthermore “… any students caught with pencils or pens after Nov. 15 would face disciplinary action for having materials ‘to build weapons.'” The higher-ups at school later said the teacher was not authorized to send home this note. (Then they took her out back and shot her with a Ticonderoga #2.) — Lenore
Hi Readers! This is such a disturbing story. A Scottish boy who was 10 was painting scenery on the ground for a school play back in 2003 when one of the other painters got up, bumping into him. This caused him to fall on another student’s paintbrush, which — this is so horrible — pierced him through the eye, causing blindness in the eye and brain damage. Now a court has ruled that the teachers at the school should have “foreseen” that such an event was, if not likely, at least POSSIBLE. Wrote the judge: When one looks at the…
Hi Readers: Or rather, a belated HELLO! I am so sorry I totally missed alerting us all to World Hello Day on the 21st– a day when we are all exhorted to greet 10 different people. This reminds them and ourselves that most people are pretty good, and that talking beats fighting. Also that everyone is better off when we are greeting each other, rather than, say, sneering or snorting or staring with ill-concealed suspicion. So why not make this long Thanksgiving weekend a Hello Weekend? And yes, that means even saying a kindly hello to the folks you see…
Hi Readers! Well, it’s not that I want to see MORE Worst-First thinking out there. I’m just looking for examples of it — examples of incidents when people, confronted by normal behavior (like the kindergarteners in the post below this one) AUTOMATICALLY interpret it in the WORST way FIRST. E.g, “This is perverted!” rather than, “This is probably quite normal.” The most salient example I have of this I may have already told you about. A young man at a grocery store passed a mom and a kid in an aisle and waved at the child. Nice. He happened upon…