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…
Author: lskenazy
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…
The following note was passed along to us by a dad whose kids attend a public school in Texas. It says: Parents we need your help in keeping our children safe at the playground after hours and on the weekends. It is important that children are supervised at all times. We have had reports of children climbing on the outside of the play equipment which is really unsafe. Some children are trying to sit on top of the big slide. This is completely unacceptable behavior. We are reminding our children again today the same playground expectations apply in the afternoon,…
School’s out on April 8 for many kids in the U.S. and Canada. On that date, a full solar eclipse will be visible from Texas to Ontario, and “There are risks associated with viewing a solar eclipse,” several Toronto-area school boards announced. Those schools moved their May 17 kid-free professional development day to April 8 “to ensure that students will not be outdoors during the total solar eclipse.” How prudent! That way their kids are protected from accidentally getting interested in science! “I am baffled, dismayed, and hugely disappointed by this decision,” a Toronto area school administer wrote us to…
Kids need to climb trees, jump off things, and ride their bikes fast. That’s what the Canadian Paediatric Society is recommending in a white paper published on Thursday: “Healthy Childhood Development Through Outdoor Risky Play.” If that sounds positively radical — and also common sensical — you’re right. Mariana Brussoni, a developmental psychologist at the University of British Columbia, has been championing risky play for more than a decade. But the Paediatric Society was never quite ready to endorse her call to action. It was only when faced with soaring rates of childhood anxiety, depression, obesity, and even myopia that…
Here’s a little excerpt from the interview Katie Kimball, host of the Healthy Parenting Handbook Podcast, did with me. The full podcast is here. Katie Kimball: No matter what the parents do individually with the decisions we’re making, there is a toxic culture that could be holding us back. We talk a lot with food about the root cause: What’s the root cause of our kids’ behaviors, of possible food sensitivities? Let’s apply that to parenting. What do you diagnose as the “root cause” of this culture? Lenore Skenazy: One is really obvious. You have to blame the media. The…
Kids running around and playing outside till the streetlights came on. That was Charles Brewer’s childhood — and dream. To make it happen in modern-day America, he developed Glenwood Park in Atlanta, a neighborhood that hewed to the tenets of “New Urbanism.” That mean it had, “town houses, offices, retail, walkable streets, a nice town square, and a park,” Brewer said. This would be enough, he hoped, to get kids outside to frolic like it’s 1979. But frolic that way they did not. An itch that still needed scratching. “I’m still proud of it,” Brewer says of his development. “But…
Did you know that January is Mental Wellness Awareness Month! Woo hoo! How can you celebrate? Get mentally well! That can be a challenge, especially in an era that can seem hellbent on creating new things to worry about. So here’s something that may help. Let Grow President Lenore Skenazy sat down with Tampa talk show host Maggie Rodriguez for a chat about the second edition of Free-Range Kids: How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow. Here’s a bit of that conversation that can help parents put fear in perspective: Maggie Rodriguez: Why do you think so many of us parents…