Hi Readers! Here’s a lovely little rant about raising brave kids by the “Nanny McPhee” (and, oh, Shakespeare) actress, Emma Thompson. It’s from an interview she did with BabyCenter. The whole interview is here. The rant is HERE: On why ‘bravery’ is her favorite lesson Nanny McPhee teaches the children: I think it’s good to be brave because then you’re also slightly more able to cope with failure and failure of course is your best friend in every regard really. Children are brave and they’re more likely to take risks and they’re more likely to learn really important lessons. That’s…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Readers — As the school year gears up and we are talking about how great it is when kids walk to school, here’s a “real world” note I just got from one guy. Sigh: My children’s school has no school buses, and at our first PTA meeting one parent was being praised for setting up a private school bus, paid for by the parents. I mentioned that since everyone is close enough to walk, that’s what we should be focusing on, getting more children to walk, but everyone comes up with the “what if?” arguments. To which I replied,…
Hi Readers — In response to the story somewhere below, about “Annie’s Mailbox” spreading the belief that a family decal on a car could delight, incite and invite predators, another reader sent in this wonderful study about wallets. Yes, wallets. Researchers in England “dropped” 240 wallets outside, to see which ones would be returned. Forty of the wallets contained a baby picture, 40 had a family photo, 40 had a picture of an elderly couple and another 40 had a puppy pic. Then there were 40 with a receipt from a recent charity contribution (but no photo). And the final…
Hi Readers — I just love what is happening in Evanston, Illinois, and not just because I’m from that neck of the woods. Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, is encouraging all students, all ages, public, private, you name it to WALK to school for the first week of the academic year. This is so smart because, even before parents get around to arranging car pools, or figuring out how they’re going to drive their kids to school each day, the kids get in the groove of walking. So instead of having to BREAK the daily drive habit, the kids get…
Hi Readers! This is just one strange story. A 15 year old Florida girl, Bridget Brown, saved up $700 in babysitting money and used it to take her friend, 13, and younger brother, 11, on a plane ride from Jacksonville to Nashville. The trio cabbed it to the airport, boarded the flight without any problems (Southwest allows kids age 12 and up to travel without adult supervision), and got to their destination. They called their parents from there and immediately flew home. Bridget is quoted as saying the impetus for this trip was simply this: she just wanted to…
…seems to be confirmed in this article from the BBC, about a recent, random survey over there: 1 – Many people would think twice about helping a child, for fear their actions could be misinterpreted as an abduction. 2 – About half say they think it is unsafe for children to play unsupervised. (But the article doesn’t seem to state what age, so maybe they were thinking about very young kids). 3 – One third say that if they let their kids play on their own they would be judged harshly by their neighbors. 4 – And yet — get…
Hi Readers — Thanks to YOU I get a ton of cool links and stories every day. Since I can’t get around to blogging about all of them (and sometimes don’t even know what to say, beyond, “Wow!” and “Yikes!” and “Gah!”), I tweet them out. And since I know not everyone’s on Twitter, I’m just going to give you some of my recent tweets right here. Enjoy! Discuss! — Lenore *Such a funny, weird sign. And think how it will affect USA kids’ self esteem (you darn Canadians)! http://bit.ly/celp9t *John Walsh coins term, “Bus Surfing.” Pervs following the school…
Here’s how! Phew! All thanks to the U.K. show, “That Mitchell and Webb Look.” L. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UjGwW9FN_4]
Hi Readers! New research shows, “A Simple Morning Walk to School Could Reduce Stress Reactivity…” well, it’s a really long title (41 words!). But basically, a new study at the University of Buffalo concluded that walking to school seems to reduce the amount of stress a heart feels a little later, and that’s good because such stress can lead, down the road, to cardiovascular disease. The study was a small, slightly strange one that compared 20 kids who sat in a chair and saw a slide show of passing suburbia to 20 kids who walked a mile on a treadmill…
Hi Readers! Here’s a story from Palo Alto Online about some neighbors who created their own “camp.” It’s run by older kids for younger kids (with parental supervision), it’s very casual, and it’s just a great way for everyone in the nabe to get to know each other, and also get used to playing outside, with each other. It’s sort of like re-introducing a wounded bird back into the wild: A slightly artificial program by which kids are introduced back into the world of childhood. Hooray for the moms who started this and hooray for the group that inspired them,…