Hi Folks! Wow, leave your blog for one little day and the talk turns to porn. I feel like the Free-Range Parent of a blog. Anyway, I was in D.C. at the Family Online Safety Institute’s annual conference and it was fantastic to be among all sort of bigwigs from places like Yahoo and Disney and BT and TimeWarner, all listening to panelists putting online fear into perspective. As far as kids go, the biggest danger online is not predators (just like predators aren’t the biggest risk off-line, either, in what we quaintly used to call the “real world”). No,…
Author: lskenazy
That’s where I’m at, in Washington D.C. I’ll let you know what I find out! So far, it’s just nice being reminded that the Internet is safer than the headlines make it sound. You know — same as the real world. Virtually.
Loved this essay about Soupy Sales. Maybe you will too. Note the last couple of paragraphs. And thanks to Angela Gunn for sending it in. — Lenore
Hi Readers! Modern-day parenting keeps replacing playing time with “teaching time,” whether that’s time devoted to Sanskrit or soccer. Here’s a rather philosophical look at why play could be the ingredient that REALLY makes kids soar. (And society, too.) Thanks to Steve DeSanto for sending it in! Dear Free-Range Kids: Your posting of the Gever Tulley “5 Dangerous things…” video and his Tinkering School got me to wondering if you were familiar with Eric Hoffer, a philosopher and Longshoreman who became famous back in the 1960s and was interviewed on TV several times! He also taught at Berkeley. You may…
Hi Readers — When you get right down to it, a lot of Free-Range Kids ends up being a plea for more community. More helping each other, more trusting each other, even more hanging out with each other. And here is a story of just that: A brief glimpse of how nice it is when we create community, instead of accusation. Dear Free-Range Kids: My 8-month-old son hates riding in the car, generally, but he loves visiting Grandma, who lives 3.5 hours away. So it’s a very long trip home. Late in the evening, we pulled into a convenience store…
Hi Readers — First of all, thanks for all the help on the post before this one, when I asked for ideas and zingers. I printed out your responses and they really helped. Alas, as anyone who chanced upon my 3-nanosecond appearance on Fox & Friends this morning knows, the event did not go quite as well as I’d hoped. The topic was whether or not parents should track their kids via a new GPS device, the Big Brother. Oh wait. Sorry. It’s actually called the “Little Buddy.” While I think I managed to stammer out the fact that Free-Range…
Hi Readers — Tomorrow I’m on Fox & Friends at 8:20 a.m. Eastern Time talking about the Little Buddy Child Tracker — a device that allows parents to track their kids’ every move. What upsets me is the rationale behind the product: That children are in danger every second they step out the door, and that any GOOD parent keeps them under constant surveillance — either in person, or, now, by GPS. Not only does this reinforce the notion that we are living among depraved monsters, it also reinforces the notion that if, God forbid, anything bad DOES happen to…
Hi Readers! I’ve been enjoying this video for a couple of years now. Maybe you’ve already seen it — it’s a TED talk by Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School. It’s the argument that got me to allow my kids to start using matches. Have fun! (And get a fire extinguisher.) — Lenore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuoH8nsrlqI
Hi Readers! Yes, here is another “I left my kid in the car for a sec” story. Why? Because I am astounded to find commenters even here on Free-Range Kids berating the parents who make this sane, safe choice when circumstances call for it. These parents are not leaving their children in active volcanos. They are leaving their kids in the equivalent of a playpen while they run an errand. It is time to decriminalize this behavior and time to realize, as some commenters have written: not every moment of parenting has to be OPTIMAL or PERFECT. If that’s what…
Hi Readers! You’ve seen some of the facts here before — like the fact no child has EVER been poisoned by a stranger’s candy, as far as university research can tell — but if you need a little Halloween pep talk, here it is, on Huffington Post. My main point? If you want to see where childhood is headed, look at Halloween. It’s going from a joyful, neighborhood, kid-centric day (or night!) to a parent-planned, neighbor-distrusting, often indoors and/or daytime “event,” slathered in suspicion and Purell. Why? The “sake of the children,” of course. And to think I used to…