“A mother’s worst nightmare almost came true in broad daylight after a man may have tried to lure her toddler daughter in a residential area.” . Gee, that’s a lot of hedging for the first paragraph of an article. Something ALMOST, MAY HAVE happened. Yikes! But so begins a “news” story on KHQ, a news station covering Post Falls, Idaho. I’ll leave you to guess whether there really was a bad man luring kids in broad daylight…or a Parks Dept guy setting up a T-ball game. . Here’s the write-up and the rather amazing TV story accompanying it that manages…
Author: lskenazy
The New York Times columnist Jessica Grose has a plea for all of us adults: Stop Micromanaging Halloween. It’s a trend that’s been growing like the Great Pumpkin ever since from back when *I* was a kid being warned about poison candy. (The number of kids poisoned by a stranger’s candy in all that time? Zero.) But over the decades, the meddling has only gotten much more intense. There’s the new-ish phenom of the “Switch Witch” — guess who gets to play that role? She lets the kids choose a few precious pieces of their loot then swaps out rest…
Most parents believe it’s important for kids to develop independence in their elementary school years by doing things “away from direct adult supervision,” according to a new survey by the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. But in a national poll of 1000 parents, the hospital found “a sizeable gap between parent attitudes and actions.” For instance, less than a quarter of parents of kids ages 5-8 let them prepare their own snack. Meanwhile, only half the parents of kids age 9-11 were willing to let their children find an item at the store while they shopped in another aisle. The majority…
When Henry was 18 he had sex with a 16-year-old he met on a dating app who said he was 18, too. The 16-year-old’s parents found out, called the cops, and Henry was charged with a sex offense. He took a plea: No jail time, in return for seven years on the sex offense registry. Henry’s is just one of about 60 registrants’ stories told by sociologist Emily Horowitz in her new book, “From Rage to Reason: Why We Need Sex Crime Laws Based on Facts Not Fear. If you believe that our country’s sex offense registries should actually make…
This article in the Journal of Pediatrics — Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Wellbeing: Summary of the Evidence — has been getting a ton of attention in the last few days, especially on Twitter, so we are updating our blog post about it. If the article’s title sounds like what we’ve been saying here forever — darn tootin’. The authors are three prominent researchers in child development: David Lancy from the Dept. of Anthropology at Utah State, David Bjorklund at the Dept. of Psychology, Fla. State, and our own Peter Gray, a professor in the Dept. of Psychology and…
Stunned joy is what most of us felt when we learned that Charlotte Sena, the 9-year-old abducted while riding her bike in upstate New York, has been found and returned to her family — alive. The alleged perp has been seized, bringing the number of active Amber Alerts in the entire USA to…one: Keshawn Williams, a 15-year-old from Cleveland. One is one too many, obviously. But it is a far cry from the hundreds of thousands that the media mentioned in the coverage of Charlotte’s disappearance. Stats to drive any parent crazy: The Washington Post reported that “About 460,000 children in the…
What a fantastic study: Research recently published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that when people are prompted to talk to a stranger, surprising things happen: They start to feel less awkward after doing it a few times. They feel less likely to be rejected. They are more willing to do it in the future. They consider themselves more convivial and approachable. All of which adds up to OPTIMISM and CONFIDENCE. And aren’t those what we want for our kids? You can INSTILL confidence. The experiment was clever: Researchers at two universities — one in the U.S., one in Britain…
All hail Michaeleen Doucleff! She’s author of the incredibly great, life-hacking, eye-opening book, “Hunt, Gather, Parent.” She and her daughter Rosy traveled the world to witness the parenting practices that have been working for millennia in traditional societies. They watched kids happily hunt, gather, clean up, make food, and help their parents every which way, in three far-flung, indignous communities from Africa to Canada. And meantime, here in America, she dropped a note to the nonprofit that grew out of Free-Range Kids, Let Grow: Dear Let Grow: I saw your story about the 6-year-old being harassed at the store. It reminded…
Today’s Atlantic has a great piece called “The Very Common, Very Harmful Thing Well-Meaning Parents Do.” And what is that common thing? TRACKING. As the article’s subtitle puts it bluntly: “Surveilling your kids will only backfire.” The piece is an excerpt from the new book “Growing Up in Public,” by Devorah Heitner. We caught up with Heitner to talk about the ever-expanding adult supervision of kids. Contents have been edited for length and clarity: LS: Devorah, Is everybody tracking their kids? DH: I interviewed a professor at the University of North Carolina and she said college students’ parents are still tracking…
At the tippy-top science high school in the Philippines, kids get classes only four days a week. They’ve got every Wednesday off — to spend time at their favorite school club. Lino Salvana is a 10th grade student at the Philippine Science High School Main Campus in Quezon City. (Photo above.) He explained to us why he loves club day so much: “Drudgery and mental stress are part of the average day in school. These are magnified several-fold at the Philippine Science High School, the best and most competitive high school in the Philippines. Recognizing the tremendous stress our schoolwork…