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…
Author: lskenazy
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…
Hi Readers — One of you just sent in the link to this amazing site: Streetplay.com, rhndberyat where you can find the basic rules for a ton of old-fashioned games, from jacks to marbles to the one that I always heard about but never knew what it was: Ringoleavio, which sounds like Hide & Go Seek meets The Green Berets. I’m psyched to show my kids this site and hope that they’ll go try the games out, even though, even here, this will require some prying them away from their electronics. — Lenore
Hi Readers — Here’s a little study I was just reading that said that getting teens to do more walking lowers their blood pressure. I guess that’s not a big surprise, but it is a nice reminder (to me, anyway, with a son about to turn 14), that walking should be part of his day. And maybe giving him a pedometer, as the article suggests, would goose him along. (You’d think that here in New York City, where we don’t have a car, he’d be walking his patooty off. But we are surrounded by temptingly convenient public transportation.) The study…
Hey Readers — Here is a wonderful little skit from Saturday Night Live. It’s not about kids, it’s about women. But the message works for both: Buy our safety device. Or live (if you’re lucky!) to regret it. — Lenore
Hi Readers! Well today a topic we’d discussed a little earlier (and earlier still) has made the front page of The New York Times. “Forget Goofing Around: Recess Has a New Boss,” is about a recess assistant hired at an elementary school in Newark, NJ, where many of the kids had ostensibly been spending recess deliberately running into each other, or arguing, or banishing other kids to the sidelines. The Times mentions that the coach broke up a “renegade game of hopscotch,” making it sound as if she is outlawing all that is joyous about childhood. (So does the…
Hi all, the Deputy here for one more post. Lenore will be back on Monday. We’ve talked a lot about the United Kingdom and their, well, obsession with rooting out pedophiles, or as they write, paeodophiles. I think they finally, yes finally, have this problem really and truly licked. Tim Black of Spiked-Online reports that the “UK Home Office’s sex offender scheme is set to go nationwide.” His article is excellent and brings up a number of thoughtful points. Here is the link: spiked-online And just to clarify, yes, this government plan is referred to as a “scheme”! Perfect! Here’s…