Dear Abby: I have a problem. I read a supposedly “helpful” advice column yesterday about public bathrooms and whether children are safe from pedophiles if their mom is waiting right outside the door. The piece said no! No way! As a matter of fact, it added, slightly off tangent, “Children have been violated in a matter of seconds in the play areas of fast food restaurants with the parents RIGHT THERE!” Now when I think about McDonald’s “ball room” it has a whole new meaning. Ick. Signed: Newly Scared of Fast Food Playspaces That Seem Too Small For Most Grown…
Author: lskenazy
Super scary predators. Innocent victims. Great ratings. Anyone else get the sneaking suspicion that Shark Week is just a fish version of Nancy Grace?
Hi Free-Rangers! Daniel Bigler, a pre-school teacher/Children’s Studies major in Spokane, Washington — and the blogger behind Danielsaurus.com — has taken it upon himself to find us some inspiring movies. “The premise,” he says, “is simple. Each week we go out in search of a fresh movie either for or about kids that keeps in line with the philosophy of letting our kids have ‘Free-Range’ childhoods. Movies with strong child characters breaking the rules, venturing out on their own, and living life to its fullest.” Feel free to add your own recommendations, caveats, and anything else, below, as we…
Just shows how much you can learn from Twitter. I just read a Tweet that had this remarkable revelation: When you ask people to review your book — they do! Or some of them do, anyway. So — call me a fruitcake — I’m thinking of doing the same thing for Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. If any of you happen to have read my book and feel like you’d like to review it on Amazon — as in RIGHT HERE, one simple click away! — I shall not stop you.…
Hi Readers! Here’s a story most of us can relate to, from mom of two Kelli Oliver George, whose funny, addictive blog is Rancid Raves. I LOST MY SON AT THE FAIR, BUT I FOUND HIM — SUPRISINGLY! NOT by Kelli Oliver George I thought about Free-Range Kids long and hard last night when I lost my 3.5-year-old at a huge, dusty county fair with thousands of folks milling around. My baby! Lost! The entire time I hunted for him, I kept repeating to myself what this site has been preaching: the statistics are actually LOW and realistically, he was…
Here is a great quote, lifted from The Week (my favorite magazine*), which lifted it from David Iganatius in The Washington Post. It points out that we have gotten so used to thinking in terms of preparing for the very worst, the very least likely scenarios, that that we don’t realize how overbearing (and often dumb) our safety measures have become. I was thinking the same thing today as I struggled to open the super-tamper-resistent seal on my can of whipped cream. I really was not that worried about someone tampering with my whipped cream. — L This September,…
Kudos to the Kansas City Star and reporters Eric Adler and Emily Van Zandt for their FRONT PAGE article yesterday (sent to use here by many readers — thanks!): “Statistics tell parents that the world is not so dangerous for their children” Listen to this! Despite the trepidation that naturally arises when releasing our kids into the big, bad world, statistics show that for the vast majority of American young people, their world isn’t as dangerous as it’s often made out to be. Tragedies — car crashes, serious sports injuries, childhood suicide, water accidents, to name a few –…
Hi Readers! This essay, from Leah R. Weiss Caruso, talks about the less visible side of Free-Range parenting. The part about letting our kids learn from their mistakes — and giving them the freeom to make mistakes at all. One of the chapters of my book is called, “Fail! It’s the New ‘Succeed!'” Leah, a Cleveland mom of three who runs the blog The Momma Rocks, is on the same track. — Lenore Raising the Free-Range YOU By Leah R. Weiss Caruso Much of what we read about raising Free-Range Kids is about the kind of activities kids are…
Okay, here is some weekend reading to sink your teeth into. It’s an article from the Economist: “Unjust and Ineffective: America has pioneered the harsh punishment of sex offenders. Does It Work?” The short answer is “No.” We are putting people on sex offender registries who do not belong there at all. People who peed in public. Streakers. Johns. Teenagers who had consensual sex. The registry does not discriminate between violent pedophiles and once-horny young folk who are now 30-year-old housewives, like one of the people profiled in the piece. Wendy Whitaker was 17 when she had sex (at school…
Just purchased, for 35 cents, a slim German text book last checked out of New York’s DeWitt Clinton High School in Feb. of 1931. (By Aaron Weiss, if you were wondering. It says so on the call slip.) What really got me is the “Law of the State of New York. Education Law – Section 1128” slapped there on the inside of the cover: “Whoever willfully detains any book or other property belonging to any Public Educational Institutition, shall be punished by a fine of not less than one or more than twenty five dollars or by inprisonment in jail…