Hi Readers! A friend just wrote to tell me he was dismayed to learn that at his local grammar school the kids play soccer but don’t keep score. Why not? Because this way, “Everybody wins.” Or nobody wins, of course. If losing a schoolyard soccer game is too traumatizing for kids, imagine what’ll happenwhen they learn we don’t all have exactly the same amount of talent. Or candy. Or patience for a namby-pambified world wherein we try to obliterate even the most minor of disappointments, lest they crush a kid, when really we should realize that that the way kids…
Author: lskenazy
This is ever so slightly off-topic (except that it highlights our societal assumption that everything is unsafe and everyone is super stupid), but thank you, Reader Laura, for sending in today’s product recall . The Consumer Product Safety Commission is telling consumers to immediately “stop using” the 20-inch-long, saw-tooth Gerber Gator Machete (related to Gerber hunting knives, not baby food), because stitches could result “if the user’s hand slips off the handle and slides forward across the machete blade.” I’ll bet this product could cause a lot of harm, too, if accidentally sawed across somebody’s windpipe. And imagine if someone…
Hi Readers — Today’s post comes from guest contributor Anne Collier, who blogs at NetFamilyNews.org and is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a forum for parents, kids, and everybody interested in safety on the fixed and mobile social Web. Take it away, Anne! THE SEXT TALK by Anne Collier Are we turning our kids into criminals? We just may be, thanks to the laws equating “sexting” photos with child pornography. Right now, about 4% of American 12-to-17-year-olds have sent “sexts,” and 15% have received one from someone they know, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. (Click here for more…
Hi Readers: Time to quit pickling our kids in Purell. That’s not just MY conclusion, or even just the conclusion of Slate writer Darshak Sanghavi in this TERRIFIC piece, “How To Sell Germ Warfare.” No, it’s the conclusion of scientists who were surprised that giving free hand sanitizers (and, in one case, even Clorox Wipes) to families and schools failed to cut down on respiratory infections. That’s because the flu, for one, spreads mostly via tiny droplets in the air. (ACHOO!!!) So touching things is only one way to catch it. Breathing — that gosh darn thing we keep doing…
Hi Readers! Yes, you read that right. A middle school girl in an Indiana, Rachel Greer, was in the school’s locker room when another girl walked in with a bag of ADHD pills. She put one in Rachel’s hand and Rachel said, “I don’t want this!” so she put it back in the bag and headed into gym class, according to this account. But after the girl with the pills was discovered, she fingered Rachel and Rachel admitted the truth: She had indeed touched the pill — that she immediately rejected. And, thanks to those Zero Tolerance laws we spend…
Hi Readers! Maybe you were watching “Good Morning America” today, with its incredible footage of Jaycee Dugard and her family. Jaycee is the 29-year-old who was kidnapped at age 11 and forced to live with her rapist for 18 years, bearing him two children. But, according to George Stephanopoulos, “Jaycee, in some ways, is one of the lucky ones. She finally made it home. But more than 2,000 children are reported missing every day.” Great sound bite, George — but you got spun. Yes, 2,000 kids are reported missing every day. I’m sure my mom reported me the time I…
No, not kids directing the space program. A documentary maker from Austria is coming to do a film about Free-Range Kids and she needs to find a Free-Range (ish) family in Houston. If you belong to one, or know of one, please contact her pronto! She’s practically boarding the plane! Her name is Katinka and here’s her email: katinka.nowotny@orf.at Danke Schoen!– Lenore
Hi Readers! That’s what it was for two days in February when an air traffic controller took his two kids into the tower and actually let them direct plane traffic at New York’s JFK Airport. Read all about it here and here. As a Free-Ranger, I am all for bringing kids into the workplace and even having them help out. But not at a job where lives are at stake. I know that the dad, Glenn Duffy, was right there, no doubt shadowing every move and making sure the kids didn’t say, “East,” when they meant “West.” But I find…
Hi Readers: Here t is! NPR’s Lynn Neary and me, talking about the things that parents are encouraged to believe are “risky.” Enjoy (carefully)! — Lenore
Folks — Here’s a post by my friend, Tom Henderson, at ParentDish. I admire it and him. You may too. It’s about how he taught his teenage son about sex and sexism at the same time, with the help of, yes, a blow-up doll. And a Playboy. Just wanted to pass it along. (The story. Not the doll.) — Lenore