Hi Readers — You read that headline right. Apparently in England it is now illegal to sell a pet to anyone under age 16 who is not accompanied by an adult. (England? Are you feeling okay? Something bump you in the head?) Anyway — this granny did! And she was fined 1000 pounds (about $1500) and given a curfew and forced to wear an “electronic tag.” Even more unbelievable: It was a sting! The kid — a 14-year-old — was working for the police! And the authorities had targeted this particular shop because on another occasion the granny ostensibly sold…
Author: lskenazy
This note! And all the others! Dear Free-Range Kids: I don’t exactly remember when or how I stumbled across this site — but I recall that when I did I had been feeling absolutely miserable with being a parent. Sad but true. I was inundated with everyone telling me that to be a good parent I had to play with my kids all the time, follow them everywhere, watch them always and I noticed how I didn’t even exist anymore and to top it off, everyone was telling me that THAT was parenthood! I hated it and was growing…
On April 1, 2008, The New York Sun ran this column of mine. Alas, the paper has since folded (so to speak). But I think we can agree this column is still doing its work. Two days after it was published I found myself on the Today Show, MSNBC, FoxNews and NPR defending myself as NOT a terrible mom. That weekend I started this blog. My Free-Range Kids book came out last year and the paperback version is coming out later this month. Quite a journey! — L. WHY I LET MY 9-YEAR-OLD RIDE THE SUBWAY ALONE by Lenore Skenazy…
Hi Readers — Here’s a link to my essay on ParentDish, “Can a Mom Leave Her Kid Alone at the Library for Three Minutes?” It’s about a mom who left her kid in the children’s room to run upstairs and check out a book in the adult department. She told the librarian she’d be back in a few minutes and the librarian warned her that this was okay, but that the dangers of the real world lurk in the library too. My piece said that while I don’t think librarians should be treated like babysitters, this seemed like a fine,…
Dear Readers: This one just proves what monkeys we become when we refuse to use our brains (or tails). A 5-year-old boy in England climbed up a tree at the end of recess. Fine. But rather than helping — or even ordering — him down, the teachers followed their “health and safety” guidelines…and left him there. Their rules apparently say they are supposed to “observe from a distance” (lest they distract the child) rather than actually DO anything. Well they observed from such a distance that it wasn’t until about 45 minutes later that some lady passing by saw the…
Thank you, Onion, for your invaluable perspective: Increasing Number of Parents Opting to Have Children School-Homed.
Hi Readers — his just in. Read it and grin. — L. Dear Free-Range Kids: My 9-year-old son and I went to a little strip mall yesterday. It has five stores. Joey needed a haircut and I needed thank you cards and wine. I sent him with money to get his hair cut while I hit the other two stores. This is where he always gets his hair cut and he knows what clipper setting he needs them to use and such. He came running into the store saying that they would not cut his hair without a parent present…
Hi Readers — Well, here it is. The ad that a bunch of you alerted me to this week. It shows a mom and daughter in a mall, near an escalator. The mom is letting her daughter shop “on her own” for the first time. (“On her own” turns out to mean with two friends, who are waiting right at the bottom of the escalator.) The girl is 3. No, I jest. The girl looks to be 11 or 12. That’s what makes this ad so ridiculous. Because by the time the girl is at the bottom of the escalator,…
Hi Folks! Here’s a lovely essay by The Wall Street Journal’s Laura Vanderkam about, well, the cultural significance of The Baby-sitters Club. Yes, I know how ridiculous (or at least American Studies for Dummies) that sounds. And yet — you don’t sell 176 million copies of any series without making some kind of impression on society. And the impression young readers got from the girls in the Club was that kids their age could actually be responsible and make money. Like adults! As Ms. Vanderkam puts it: Hidden in the plots that show that friendship is good and that teasing,…
Hi Readers! This is an encouraging story (from boston.com), in that Arlington, MA., a town outside of Boston, is pushing to get more kids biking to school. But the fact that this initiative is CONTROVERSIAL is enough to make you bang your head against a bike horn. (Or vice versa.) Here’s a bit of the story, which begins by describing how bike-friendly the town seems to be: No corner of the town is more than a few miles from the Minuteman Bikeway, the most popular bike path in the country. The town is home to two bicycle stores and a…