Hi Readers! Afternoon fun (yes, ’tis a joke), thanks to brilliant Brian Briggs at bbspot.com: Motion Control Advances Mean Future Generations Could Play Outside by Brian Briggs Recent advances in motion controller technology as exhibited by Sony’s PlayStation Move and Microsoft’s Project Natal reveal a future where newer generations of gamers could play things like sports or in places like “outside.” “These technologies show that we’re not far off from more active children,” said futurologist Ben Carlson. “The evolution has been rapid. First controllers vibrated, then the Wiimote simulated bowling, and now Project Natal has us jumping around the living…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Readers! This mom needs some great ideas in how to deal with friends, neighbors — and PASTOR — who equate “Free-Range” with NEGLECT. Let’s give her some strategies! — Lenore Dear Free-Range Kids: My nine-year-old, eight-year-old and five-year-old have been walking to school alone for a couple of months now. The walk is about thirty minutes child pace, fifteen if you’re adult. We built this trip up slowly we me walking them most of the way, then half etc. I promote independence in my children, they can all cook, peel and chop veg, do laundry etc. They are not…
Hi Readers! Here’s a nice story for a Sunday. Enjoy! Dear Free-Range Kids: Due to a recent bankruptcy and divorce my four children (ages 6-14) and I moved from our home of 10 years (great neighborhood) into a small group of very upscale townhomes. We are renting. I didn’t see much evidence of children around the small complex and felt a little nervous that maybe my children’s rambunctious ways (truly just normal children) wouldn’t be appreciated. You can imagine my delight when last week we had a beautiful, warm, sunny day and my three younger children (6, 9, 11) were…
Hi Readers — This note came in response to my ParentDish column, “New Study: Parents Stink.” Sometimes I am just, well, blown away by the logical leaps people take: “I am a mother of a 26 year old man and a 13 year old boy. I give my 13 year old as much freedom as I think he needs but I always know where he’s at and who he’s with. This may be hovering but it’s better then him showing up at school one day and blowing everyone away and I had no idea he had been planning this.” I…
Hey Readers — This is very cool. Last weekend I gave a Free-Range talk in Tucson. (Want one in your community? Check out Speaking Engagements, above). Anyway, there I met a woman who’d written to this blog very early on, and whose story I actually included in my book (pp. 51-52). Her name is Amy and she let her grade school boys bike three blocks away to a friend’s house and the friend’s mom accompanied them home, “just in case.” Well here’s what happened a day or two after the Free-Range talk, with Amy and another skittish mom: Dear Lenore,…
Hi Readers! Perhaps you read the other day that now even aby slings are regarded as “risky” by the Consumer Products Safety Commission. This because, over the course of 20 years, there have been a reported 13 baby sling-related deaths. It is really hard to write “death” in any story about children without sounding cavalier when adding, “Does that really mean a product is risky?” But still, that’s what I have to write. The odds are so overwhelmingly good for babies in slings — fewer than one death a year — that to label a product like this “dangerous” is…
Hi Readers — Here’s a nice little letter from the slopes! Dear Free-Range Kids: I wanted to share a wonderful experience I had this weekend. I was skiing at a local Colorado resort called Eldora Mountain, about a half hour outside of Boulder. When skiing it is common practice for “single” skiiers (those skiing without a partner — regardless of marital status) to pair up on two-person chair lifts, rather than riding up alone. That day, I was skiing alone while two of my sons were in ski school for the day. I was pleased to discover a number of…
Hey Readers! Here’s a feel-good story: Students from grade school on up are filling sandbags at a fantastic clip in order to save the town of Fargo, N.D., from flooding. According to A.P. writer James MacPherson: Thousands of volunteers are lending a hand this week to fill and stack sandbags to place along the river and near endangered homes as Fargo faces the threat of a severe flood after the river’s expected crest Sunday. But the heart of that volunteer corps are the city’s youngest citizens. It’s a job that elsewhere might be reserved for emergency workers or at…
Hi Readers — This letter below came in as a comment. I wanted to highlight it here because of its startling but spot-on conclusion: The best way to keep kids safe from molestation is to let them know they can tell us about anything sexual that has happened and we won’t be mad. The Crimes Against Children Research Center did a study that concluded the same thing: Rather than adding more and more names to the sex offender registry and alerting neighbors to a registrant in their midst, a better way to keep kids safe is to teach them what…
Hi Folks! Just found this great Wikipedia entry. I hadn’t heard of “Mean World Syndrome” before, but it really makes sense! It’s almost a relief to have a name to give the ramped up fear so many parents feel. — Lenore Mean World Syndrome (via Wikipedia) Mean World Syndrome is a phenomenon where the violence-related content of mass media convinces viewers that the world is more dangerous than it actually is, and prompts a desire for more protection than is warranted by any actual threat.[1] Mean World Syndrome is one of the main conclusions of cultivation theory. The term was…