Hi Readers! In response to my downer about dealing with a tsunami of media “What If?”s, here’s one woman’s note answer to: What happens when you, with some slight hesitation, let your child go outside on her own? Dear Lenore: I understand your anxiety, and can only join the chorus of those saying please, please don’t give up. Your book has SIGNIFICANTLY changed our family for the better, and we were already what I called “half-range” to begin with! My daughter (10) has been riding her bike to school for a month now, with buddies, but no adult. …
Author: lskenazy
Okay, first, here’s the positive piece I showed you folks yesterday. It ran on The Huffington Post. Now here’s another, from Canada, by Shannon Proudfoot at the Canwest news service. She even found a dad to interview who did not think the idea was nuts. As for TV, this interview was fun to do, since the anchor — funny, bright Rosanna Scotto, an anchor on New York’s local Fox channel — was openminded. And here’s an earlier post on the topic that ran in SFGate, by Amy Graff, who is going to take her own 7 year old to the…
Hi Readers! I’m writing this today, because by evening tomorrow, I have a feeling I will be in the crosshairs for something that has happened to some child somewhere in this country, or even another country that has heard about Saturday’s “Take Our Children to the Park & Leave Them There Day.” After doing nine TV interviews, a couple dozen radio interviews, and being written about in papers that called me everything from “crazy” to “moron” — and one that even ran a political cartoon showing despondent kids abandoned by their drunk parents, who are raising a toast to “unsupervised…
A very positive piece! Running to do more media and hope to write more soon! — L
Hi Readers — Just watching the Take Our Kids to the Park Day story on WABC, one of my four TV appearances today (WCBS, WABC, WPIX and WNBC) and find it amazing that the famous lawyer interviewed, Ron Kuby, warns parents that letting your kids have some unsupervised time at the park is illegal. Actually, it is not illegal, according to New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, which says there is no specified age at which a kid can be outside (or inside, for that matter), unsupervised. I think all of us agree that we wouldn’t want to leave…
Hi Folks — Well, yes, the cover of the NY Daily News. That’s good and bad. Good — it certainly gets the word out. Bad, maybe this headline: “Leave Your Kids in the Park: Mom’s Bizarre Campaign.” Put that way it does sound a little bizarre. But what’s way more bizarre to me is the doctor that the article found to interview: Dr. Alan Hilfer, chief psychologist at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, says a 7-year-old shouldn’t be left alone in a backyard, much less a park. Really? What is happening in his backyard? The proverbial alligator up from New…
Hi Readers! Getting lots of interest in Take Our Kids to the Park…And Leave Them There Day. Watch for it/me on CNN on Thursday at about 11:30 a.m. EST, and in a whole bunch of radio interviews and newspaper articles over the next few days. Meantime, here is a GREAT QUOTE from the former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. He appears along with a lot of other well-known and loved New Yorkers, including Regis Philbin and Ray Romano, on a new DVD called New York Street Games (which also comes with rules for the old-fashioned games, like stickball, and…
Hey Readers — Short, sweet and safe. Wise words lifted from a comment that just landed here: “Dear Free- Range Kids: [I am a] Peds ICU nurse and can tell you that the real dangers are overlooked. Lock your second story windows, make sure your kids understand car and bike safety. Model safe behavior. Don’t talk and text while driving. It really is simple. Also, I can tell you that I have NEVER once taken care of a kid who was assaulted by a stranger. I have taken care of MANY who have been…
Hey Folks — Branching out. Here is my story on the cover of today’s Salon, all about how our quest to make playgrounds safer than safe has also made them safer than fun. Here’s a snippet: …For the past 40 years or so, we have certainly been working to make our playgrounds safer than safe — maybe even safer than fun. Seen an old merry-go-round lately? Or a swinging gate? How about a seesaw — the kind without springs, where, when your so-called friend suddenly plopped you down, you felt it? Didn’t think so. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has…
Hi Readers — Usually I flip through parenting magazines and am amazed by all the items, activities, foods and basic childhood rites of passage they find dangerous (and possibly deadly). But kudos to Parents Mag for this lovely little blog post about Take Our Children to the Park & Leave Them There Day — which is coming up this Saturday. The tone is receptive, open and calming. Couldn’t ask for anything more. Of course, there are some comments along the lines of, “This is absurd!” and, “Life isn’t the way it was when WE were kids,” and, “It’s easy to…