The texts started coming thick and fast on Friday: “You’re a clue on Jeopardy!” “This is the big time!” “What more can you achieve?” The clue: “LENORE SKENAZY, WHO WROTE OF LETTING HER 9-YEAR-OLD RIDE THE NYC SUBWAY LONE, MOVED THIS TERM FROM RAISING CHICKENS TO RAISING KIDS.” If you don’t know the answer…I’d be surprised. The contestant knew the answer, too. So this was, indeed, a pinnacle. But THE pinnacle of my career? Well, it has a lot of competition. There was the pinnacle of getting my first real job. (Thank you, Fred Danzig, RIP, at Advertising Age!) The…
Author: lskenazy
This is the testimony researcher Sarah Clark gave last week in support of Let Grow’s “Reasonable Childhood Indepndence” law in Michigan. Read it and weep! My name is Sarah Clark. I am a research faculty member in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School, and Co-Director of the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, which we call the Mott Poll. The Mott Poll measures parental attitudes, experiences and priorities regarding health-related issues and trends for US children, with the goal of representing the parental perspective in public dialogue about child health topics. We…
I remember loving the library like a second, more-exciting home. The children’s room was fun, but the Junior High Room? Aladdin’s cave! And the adult room? Studio 54! Or so it seemed to 13-year-old me. These three siblings seem to be following the same path. If you are a fan of kids — or kids’ spelling — you will love their reflections on their first solo walk to the library, and what they got there. This story comes to us from Holly Grant. She and partner Lenny are teachers raising their kids in Syracuse, New York. She writes — Hi!…
After hearing a talk by Let Grow Co-Founder Jonathan Haidt at the Grace Church School in Manhattan, Larissa Romans did a bit of a dive into childhood independence. As she wrote me later (we’d never met): During Jonathan’s talk he mentioned Free Range Kids, which I started this weekend. Both Jonathan and you mention The Let Grow Experience and this past afternoon I got the chance to explore it a bit. And here I am. As a child, I remember begging to peel oranges with a knife like my older sisters. I wanted to be a big girl. I do…
Putting Parental Fears in Perspective Kidnapping remains one of the top 3 fears of American parents despite its (thank God!) rarity. One way to fight that outsized fear is to watch the video below. Then, if you’re wondering about the actual odds of your child being kidnapped by a stranger — or need to see the other odds of other childhood calamities (except disease) to put things in perspective — we’ve got a WHOLE LOT of stats below! Video by Mike Kraus at MYLKmedia. Note: It is hard to find stats that exactly match up with each other. One organization…
In his blockbuster Atlantic piece out today, “The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood,” my Let Grow Co-founder Jonathan Haidt says our culture gets it all wrong when it comes to kids: We “underprotect” them in the virtual world, and over-protect them in the real one. That’s the worst of both worlds, if we want to raise healthy, happy kids. The piece focuses heavily on how smartphones, introduced about 15 years ago, have “re-wired” childhood. They did this in part by throwing kids (and the rest of us) into a maelstrom of “likes,” comparisons, and misinformation. But phones also warped childhood by…
The University of Michigan survey that came out in the fall had all sorts of shocking stats: The majority of parents of kids ages 9-11 would not let them walk to a friend’s house, or go to the park with a friend. Only 15% — this was a national sample of 1000 parents across the demographic, geographic and economic spectrum — would would let them trick or treat without a chaperone. But the biggest shock for some of us was this one: 50% of American parents of kids age 9-11 WILL NOT LET THEM GO TO ANOTHER AISLE TO FIND…
This note about “news junkies” comes from a longtime friend of Free-Range Kids, Donald Christensen. Donald is a draftsman living in Brisbane, Australia, where he thinks about the forces that change cultures and minds. This is one of his websites, as is this. I loved this note he sent. So here it is, slightly edited!! I think that the 87 AD Roman Colosseum is alive and well today. The only difference is that the audience no longer has to sit on hard marble seats. They can now enjoy the comfort of their couch as they watch, say, an airplane crash,…
“Welcome! Play Safe” reads the sign at a Fairfax County Public School playground in Virginia just outside of DC. It goes on to list 21 rules, by my count. Gee, what a normal society we live in! First of all, the sign says, the playground should never be used when it’s frozen. Or wet. There can be no climbing on things like the safety rails (which are…fences?). And kids must not wear any clothing with drawstrings, hoods, or toggles when playing – because these could get caught on something. (Ponytails seem grandmothered in.) No loitering on the slide! On the…
Amazing the range of opinions regarding this question on Let Grow’s Raising Independent Kids Facebook group. A mom named Michelle asks: Question about leaving kids alone at a hotel. My family lives in Texas and my husband and I were invited to his cousins wedding in Colorado, we really want to go, and we want to use it as an excuse to have a family vacation for a week or so before the wedding. Only problem is it’s a child-free wedding. We tossed around our options and the kids said they’d love to stay at the hotel and binge pizza…