It’s nice when science takes the time to confirm one’s own sneaking (or even not so sneaking) suspicions. In this case: That TV crime shows are driving us crazy with fear. In a report titled, “CSI: Mayo Clinic,” Mayo psychiatrist Timothy Lineberry and his team studied two sets of data: One, a list of crimes, victims and circumstances as seen on CSI and CSI: Miami over the course of two years. The other: a list of crimes, victims and circumstances in real life, as compiled by the Centers for Disease Control over the course of two years. You may think…
Author: lskenazy
When my daughters turn eight, they’ll get their first Swiss Army knives, and not the tiny ones with a nail file and some scissors, but real ones, big enough to gut a fish with.
Have you heard of Common Cents? It’s a non-profit organization based in my burg, New York City, that encourages school children to “harvest” the pennies in their neighborhood — that is, the pennies most of us have sitting in a jar that just keeps getting heavier and heavier. Cool idea, right? The kids put notes under the doors of their neighbors saying that they are running a penny drive. Then, on the appointed day, they stop by to pick up any pennies their neighbors would like to donate. It’s like the Girl Scout cookie drive: Knock knock. Who’s there? A…
Quick alert (before everyone goes, “Enough already!”): As mentioned right below here, I’ll be on Nightline tonight talking about dumb baby safety products (that is, dumb safety products, not safety products for dumb babies). But — news flash! I’ll be talking about them again on Good Morning America the next day. (Saturday.) That’s it. Have a great weekend and write comments that are more interesting than this! — Lenore
Well, with a couple of caveats, that is. First of all, the segment could be postponed indefinitely, should any “real” news develop. Secondly, the piece is about a Free-Range tangent, the whole issue I call the “Kiddie Safety Industrial Complex” — that is, the multi-billion dollar industry that has given us superstores full of baby products that didn’t even exist a generation ago. Things like the baby bathwater thermometer that warns you if your baby’s bath is “TOO HOT!” (Never mind the fact that, unless you have no central nervous system, you could probably figure this out with…
…and ends up a journalistic superstar! (Albeit several years later.) Susan Toepfer, former editor of Quick & Simple, OK, and the juicy bits of People turns out to have been…a Free-Range Kid! So Free-Range that she and her friends got picked up by a stranger when she toddled off (literally) with some friends. Read all about it at the new blog, True/Slant! While you’re there, True/Slant’s parenting blogger, Karen Dukess, has a lovely review of Free-Range Kids, which she calls, “The Parenting Book That Beats Valium.” (I think I’m going to have a T-shirt made!) Her piece…
A Reader Writes: “The amount of fallacies propounded by the supporters of this idea is astounding… and that includes the author of this site. She apparently thinks that only fatal abductions are a risk to be worried about, and also stacks a number from just one source against the entire population of the U.S. It’s essentially a lie. “The idea will not catch on in a big way, of course. But even so, it is just a matter of time before someone who has posted on this very page has a child suffer an injury or abuse,…
With Mother’s Day upon us like a breakfast tray of hot coffee accidentally spilled on the blanket (amid tears), it is time to ask that equally burning question: What do moms want? The answer? We want to relax a little. Not just relax in bed reading People and under a hot, soggy blanket. We want a whole new way of parenting that is not quite so overwrought. That’s a tall order in a country that has brought us a dozen different parenting magazines, a whole section of the book store devoted to childrearing issues, and the typical baby…
Or at least they let me expouse my views in today’s op-ed pages. A Happy Mother’s Day to them! And a Happy Mother’s Day to The Week (my favorite magazine), which printed a nice, big excerpt from Free-Range Kids (the book). And yet more good wishes, this time to ABC World News Tonight, which is doing a Free-Range story on Sunday night. Check your local listings (as they say). And now, if you’re a mom, eat some bon bons! If you’re a dad — hey! Put down that bon bon and head out to the park with you-know-who. You…
First off: HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! Is this way way WAY too tacky? I hope not. I am fresh out of great Free Range fodder for a sec, so here is an interview with me that is up now on the cool website Motherhood Later than Sooner. (Yup. I’m an older mom.) I promise not to keep self-promoting, but now I am taking the rest of Friday off (okay, one more bit of self promo: to film a Free-Range piece that’ll be on ABC World News Tonight on Sunday night.) That’s it. Enjoy your breakfast in bed and…