Hi Readers! A magazine reporter is looking for stories of Free-Range concepts being put into practice in real life. Schools insisting on adding back recess. Districts encouraging kids to walk or ride to class. Neighborhoods bringing kids back outside, on their own, communities informally agreeing to tone down the oppulence of the birthday parties. Happy, hopeful signs of a tide turning toward less over-the-top, helicopter parenting toward a more old-fashioned, less parent- (and money-) intensive version of childhood. We’d ALL love to hear these stories. Please — give us hope! Thanks — Lenore
Author: lskenazy
Readers — If anyone ever asks you, “What’s so WRONG about protecting our children?” and you agree that kids should be safe (who doesn’t?), but you’re searching for an example of how the hysteria has gotten out of hand: Here you go. See below. Suffice to say a grammar school in the Fort Myers area of Florida is now INDIVIDUALLY ESCORTING EACH CHILD OUT OF THE SCHOOL as his/ her parents creep to the head of the car line. The parents must show a large I.D. and the child is then RADIOED FOR. Every time I picture this, I hear…
Take your blood pressure medicine before watching this so-called public service announcement . The spot shows two women in a coffee shop, one of them with her kid. The three chat for about 15 seconds, the mom buys a coffee and then off the mom and child go, leaving the other woman — for no apparent reason — with a sneaking suspicion that the mom is a child abuser. The mom has said nothing harsh to her child. The child is communicative and bears no visible bruises. In other words, the mom and child look like me and my child,…
Hi Readers! If you’d like to write a letter of support for the parents who let their 9- and 6-year-olds wait in the car for half an hour, only to have the dad be charged with child endangerment (see blog entry, below), here is the email address for the Utica Observe Dispatch’s letters to the editor page: ddudajek@uticaod.com . Thanks! — Lenore
First off, my heart goes out to Jaycee Dugard, her daughters, her parents, step-parents — everyone in her circle. She was kidnapped 18 years ago and kept imprisoned since then, bearing her rapist/captor two daughters who were also imprisoned until a few days ago, when Jaycee walked into a police station. This is, of course, every parent’s — every human’s — worst nightmare and her story will be seared into our memory forever, along, alas, with the inevitable “advice” we’re now getting on how to avoid this same fate. Advice that makes it seem like abduction/rape/enslavement is…
Hi Readers! My friend Bob Eckstein, a cartoonist for The New Yorker (la-di-dah!), came up with this Free-Range Cartoon: a plea for a little less parental intrusion. Besides being a whole-hearted supporter of this site, Bob has his own obsession. Snowmen. Yes, really — he is the first and only person to study their history. Did you know, for instance, that in pre-printing press Europe, snowmen were the editorials of their day? A wag might erect a prostitute snow-woman, for instance, in front of the mayor’s house, as a way of hinting at certain improprieties. The perp remained anonymous and…
Readers — Here is a story that does not surprise me. It does, however, enrage me and I am hoping that maybe someone who reads this blog knows of a pro bono lawyer in or around Mohawk Valley in Central New York who can help this family. Here is the mom’s letter: I’m not sure if we did something wrong here or not, and I feel myself being pulled every which way. But the morning we left our nine-year-old daughter with our sleeping six-year-old son in a car in a busy parking lot (windows open), we really thought they’d be…
This is just too weird: Maine passed a law, about to take effect, that forbids stores from allowing any “child” to witness a wine, beer or liquor tasting. According to this piece on the Maine Public Broadcasting Website: …as of September 12th, the law will add new restrictions, designed to assure that wine tastings are conducted in a manner that “precludes the possibility of observation by children.” Hudson [a wine shop owner] says she was unclear what that meant, so she asked a liquor inspector whether she could simply draw the blinds over her doors and windows during a…
Hi Readers — We’ve been spending today thinking about what it would mean to be the youngest person to sail solo around the world. In other words, about great success and whether it is worth the peril. Here’s a nice sermon from a pastor named John F. Hudson in Sherborn, Mass., about the value of the opposite: failure. Since I have a whole chapter in my book called, “Fail! It’s The New ‘Succeed!” it naturally appealed to me. Main points? Defeats and detours can take us to the best places. Life isn’t meant to be a straight line anyway. …
Ahoy, Readers! Today’s “Free-Range” controversy concerns Laura Dekker, a 13-year-old in Holland who is already an accomplished sailor and now wants to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world. Her parents — or at least her dad, with whom she lives — is all for it. The Dutch equivalent of Child Protective Services is against it and currently seeking legal permission to step in, take temporary custody of the girl and stop her. In other words: They want to ground her. (Literally!) And I am with them. Does this sail in the face of the Free-Range…