Hi Readers — I know not all of you follow Twitter, so I’m pasting some recent tweets (Tweets?) here for your perusal. Wonder which ones you’ll comment on! L. Swing sets removed from some W. Va. schools after kid jumps off, breaks arm, gets $20,000. Stop the insanity! http://bit.ly/d36m4y Strong essay: “Confessions of a Childhood Bully” — a woman who tormented her baby sis as a kid, just…because: http://aol.it/bSmYYZ Yowza. SLEEPOVERS are the latest parental obsession. Parents TERRIFIED. http://bit.ly/9XZQGb Warning! EVERYTHING can kill you! Especially onion dip! And escalators! (My piece, in Readers Digest): http://bit.ly/c2jbLn “Judge not.” Moving, realistic piece…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Readers! Meg Rosker is a writer, wife and mom of three in Redington Shores, FL. She blogs at withoutablueprint. To keep recess alive and well at your school (or bring it back from the dead), check out the resources at saverecess.com, Kaboom and Playworks! — L RECESS IS NOT A WASTE OF TIME by Meg Rosker “When my children come to school I want their bottoms in chairs, learning. When they come home, I’ll let them play.” These words were spoken to me at a recent school meeting by a woman who is a parent AND a public…
Hi Readers! I’ve been behind in my emails and just found this cool idea. Comes from a gal named Catherine. Let’s do it! Dear Free-Range Kids: How about a post-Halloween column where you challenge your readers to scan their local news and post ANY violent incidents that happened at Halloween? I just scanned my local news and there was nothing (not surprisingly). It would be interesting to see if your readers can find even ONE. As a journalist, if I was working for one of the big stations or papers that’s the story I’d be running today: “Stats show no…
Hi Readers! Probably by now most of you have heard of this bizarre case: A 4-year-old girl and a boy her same age were racing their bikes on the sidewalk, training wheels and all, when they ran into an elderly woman using a walker. The woman fell, broke her hip and died three weeks later. Tragic. Now her estate is suing, among others, the 4 year olds. When the girl’s lawyer (just writing that is weird) protested that the girl was too young to be held liable, the judge said if she were YOUNGER than 4, he’d agree. But as…
Hi Readers! As you may recall, I was recently in Australia, where I was sort of surprised to hear how much their culture mirrors ours in terms of fear. The Aussies seem to be a bit less frantic — props to them — but there were still enough, “What about predators?” to make me feel at home. (And, for the record, also enough Payless Shoe Stores and McDonald’s.) And now here’s this interesting note from down under about Halloween on the local soap opera: Dear Free-Range Kid: Here’s how nonsense goes viral. After having avoided the Australian soap ‘Neighbours’ for…
Hi Readers — Read it and creep: This kfzeyatits fantastic article from The American Spectator is about how Manchester, New Hampshire, imposed a law, on the books for decades, making Halloween officially the Sunday afternoon BEFORE Oct. 31. The law was, of course, in reaction to all the usual Halloween fears — razors, poison, torture — that over the years were discredited. And yet the restriction lived on. Why was that such a crime? As author Andrew Cline so perfectly puts it: Halloween is more than a massive candy-grab. Prompting kids try on grown-up personas and slip into the darkness…
Hi Readers! Here’s a letter that’ll make you smile! — L Dear Free-Range Kids: Today, thanks in part to you, I am going to have a copy of my house key made for my son. My son is in second grade. He and his sister go to different schools and I thought it would be easy to do the carpool circuit, but logistics have made it a royal pain for him to sit in the car for an hour every afternoon, so he asked if he could start riding the bus. Wonderful idea, right? Friday morning I send him to…
Hi Folks! Here’s my Wall Street Journal column from today. Hope the link still works! (Sometimes the Journal only allows the first few graphs for free. Guess we’ll see!) Happy Halloween almost! L. P.S. I am off to Portland, Ore., to give a lecture, so I’ll be a bit out of pocket. Meantime, I just wanted to say that I’ll be on John Stoessel’s show, which repeats many times over the next few days, talking about the same thing: Parental fears. It was fun!
Hi Readers! I read this piece and it blew me away. It’s by David Hess, a minister outside of Rochester, New York. Kudos to him — and a thanks, too, for letting me reprint the whole thing! THE NEW URBAN MYTH: THE DANGER OF REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS AT HALLOWEEN by David Hess It’s almost time for the annual Halloween sex offender hysteria. This seemingly has replaced the urban myths about poison candy and razor blades in apples. I was interested to find that there has actually been a recent empirical study of the issue. An article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch,…
Okay, Readers. Let’s help this mom out! Dear Free-Range Kids: Finding this blog several years ago validated my desire to back off and let my kids be kids. At that time, I was mostly associating with “helicopter parents” and feeling inadequate for not wanting to micromanage my children’s every waking moment. And yet, one helicopter parent I continue to associate with is really starting to get on my nerves, to the point where I don’t know how to respond any more. My 9-year-old son is good friends with a boy in our neighborhood, who lives only a couple of blocks…