Hi! If your family has let the kids drop some extracurricular activities in favor of more free time — or is considering it — TV is looking for YOU. A producer for one of the evening news shows is trying to figure out if this desire for a more old-fashioned, it’s-ok-to-be-bored childhood is a trend. I think it is! If you embody it, just add a little comment here and I’ll be able to forward your note to the producer. Or tweet me. Thanks! — Lenore
Author: lskenazy
Hi, View fans — I’m so thrilled The View is airing a rerun of my visit with “the gals” today! It was a thrill to be on the show, of course (and, let’s be honest: scary). But how I loved hearing Barbara Walters say my book made her feel less guilty about not having spent every single second with her daughter when she was young. (That’s right — as my book says, with lots of science to back it up: Constant parental stimulation is not necessary to raise a decent kid!). And to hear Whoopi talk about how we…
The public bought the idea that they were essentially a danger to their own kids and had better pay money for advice, that they’d better try really hard to do a good job, and they’d still inevitably fail. (Even though, as Lepore points out, kids are actually safer now than ever. In 1850, more than one baby in five died before its first year, by 1920 that had dropped to one in 20, and today infant mortality is at one in 200.)
Readers, I hope you’ll allow me a weepy moment. New York City schools get out late. For us, graduation was Wednesday. That’s when I wrote this, which I also posted on the Huffington Post New York page: 10 AM. In an hour my younger son graduates from grammar school. He’s the “boy who took the subway by himself” last year and made headlines worldwide, but last night he was just a boy desperately poking me at about 3 AM, trying not to wake his father up. I followed him into the darkened living room and as we sat down on…
Would you believe they have charged some intern to walk him across the parking lot?! Geesh people. He’s TEN!
One reason Americans are so extremely terrified about child abductions is that whenever we turn on the TV or computer, there’s another one. As if these horrific crimes are happening 24/7, when actually the media is only too happy to fly across the country — or world — to set up camp wherever a cute, white girl has disappeared. Tight news budgets get thrown out the window for a story like this. But because that story then shows up on our screen at home, it feels like it’s happening right around the corner. All the time. What happens…
Perfect together, here, on their new “New York” page.
Another story of strangely advanced kids — or is it strangely inept cops? — this time from Germany. Enjoy! — Lenore
I spend a lot of time trying to convince skeptics that “Free-Range” does not mean, “Send Your Kid Down the Mississippi on A Raft.” So when I present this article, it’s only because it delights me so: The story of a boy who will be in fourth grade next year who got lost in the wilderness and didn’t panic. Instead, he tore up his yellow slicker to leave little ribbons in trees as a sign to searchers: I’m nearby! He also followed a stream figuring it would lead to a lake where there might be people. And upon reuniting with…
Hi Free-Rangers! Just though I’d share this little note I got from Australia this morning. Makes you realize it’s a small world after all: A small, paranoid, danger-halucinating world. This is from a lady named Vivienne: Walking in Ikea. I am a pleasant-enough, smiley grandmoter of 9. A man with his daughter of about 3 or 4 parks her near me as he steps to look at a shelf. I smile as I step past and the child screams. “Don’t leave me Daddy! Someone is going to steal me!” I almost pass out with…