Readers: Here’s a lovely piece about …well, not exactly about any Free-Range issue in particular. But it sure resonates. — Lenore By Julie Ann Kodmur Who knew how much you could learn from a bunch of horses?! Certainly not me — until my then-3 year old daughter started taking lessons at a humble barn in the small town in the Napa Valley where we live. Watching the children practice emergency dismounts early on got my attention: little bodies flying over the big bodies to land smartly on the ground with big smiles, nice and tidy, nice and safe,…
Author: lskenazy
The latest victim of parental terror? Sleepovers. According to this AP story by Kelli Kennedy, parents are afraid of everything from junk food to “inappropriate” movies, to Internet surfing, to the possibility of their children being drugged and raped. The modern parental thinking method applies: Since a drugging/fondling incident DID happen once, and since it was ON THE NEWS, it must be happening ALL THE TIME, and it could POSSIBLY, even PROBABLY, happen to MY kid, so in order to avoid this fate, I must PROTECT my child by glue-gunning her to my side. (Ouch!) Now,…
So here’s the story, as reported in The Daily Mail: A 9-year-old boy from Germany visits his five cousins in England. They go to a park, the boy climbs a tree, a neighbor complains that the kids are being rowdy, the tree-climber gets a ticket. It’s crazy to ticket a boy for climing a tree. But I have to say, while I would normally make this an “Outrage of the Week!” the boy’s dad blew it for me by saying that now his son will be too scared to come back to England. The whole problem with the world…
Readers — Here’s a cool idea courtesy of a babysitter named Casey up in the Canadian town of Saskatoon.It not only sounds fun, it sounds like a great “Challenge of the Week.” Or at least something you might enjoy trying. Let us know how it goes if you do! — Lenore The kids I babysit and I are doing a HUGE summer project this year. We have planned to go to all of the parks in our city, play on them, and rate them on a scale of 1-5. So far we’ve been to about half of the parks and…
Readers — This comes from a dad outside of Philadelphia. Obviously, not every child with autism has his son’s abilities or temperament. But here is one dad’s story: By Roy Lewis Our oldest is now 26…and autistic. When he was 8 we moved to a house in a nice safe suburb that was a quarter mile from a nice, safe 1920s suburban shopping mall with commuter trains and bus service. The idea was that he could have some independence as he got older, even though he probably would not be driving at the same age as his friends,…
Lovely Washington Post essay by Michael Gerson on summertime, camp, growing up, letting go, etc., etc. — with one alarming factoid: Can it be true that some Girl Scout camps FORBID climbing trees? Talk about the ultimate Free-Range metaphor. And to think I was just eating Girl Scout cookies for breakfast. (Kids, do as I SAY, not as I eat!) — Lenore
And basically get outdoors, if only to remember “that we’re just tenants — and ones without much sway.” Here’s the piece, by Nicholas Kristof, which quotes from Richard Louv’s classic, “Last Child in the Woods.”
Cool entry on the “Alas, A Blog” blog questioning the conventional wisdom that holds: If only kids had more gym, health and nutrition classes, they’d all slim down. An eight-year study of about 1700 kids gave half of them a greatly enhanced gym/nutrition/health curriculum (and healthier cafeteria food), while the other half got the same old same old. Kids were measured in third grade and again in fifth and surprise (there goes the grant!), there was no difference in the two groups as far as weight was concerned. The “Alas” blogger rightly asks whether weight should matter…
Here’s a good idea for any community: Keep those darn kids out of the library! Certainly don’t want them milling around books and such. Next thing you know, they might want to take one home with ’em, just like a bottle of scotch. Luckily this small North Carolina regional library knows what’s good for kids. Read on! The Hyconeechee Regional Library staff would like to thank all of our customers for making 2009 Summer Reading a success! We hope that you will continue your library visits throughout the rest of the summer and into the upcoming school year. To…
The headline on this USA Today story sums it up: Playgrounds: They’re safer but still can be dangerous. As opposed to — what? Anything can be dangerous. Nothing can be 100% safe. Yesterday a man walking through Central Park got hit by a falling branch and now he’s in a coma. Should we cordon off Central Park? Chop down all the trees before another innocent victim gets hurt? What’s just nauseating about this article, detailing the potential risk of every square inch of playground equipment, is its complete lack of perspective. It points out, for instance, that thousands of kids…