Here’s the first of what will undoubtedly be a bulging bag full of Halloween warnings. In fact, please share whatever excessive warnings or procedures your school or town is dishing out this Halloween. Meanwhile, note how this “helpful” advice takes one night of candy gathering and turns it into a lifetime of suffering and sorrow. Because just ONE SUB-OPTIMAL childhood meal/activity/food/experience = lifelong regret. That’s how fragile kids are. Dear Free-Range Kids: The scariest part of Halloween has nothing to do with your costume. As kids fill their bags with candy, they’re also filling their mouths with gum disease and…
Author: lskenazy
From my inbox: Dear Free-Range Kids: Fall started last week and all the signs of the season are in the air. Temperatures are starting to cool off, fall festivals are in full swing, college football is on the weekends, and retailers are pushing for the holidays with sale items. While the fall is a fun time, it is also stressful time for many. From the pressure of another year rapidly ending to worries about the upcoming holidays to the change in the clock, many people find fall to be a stressful and depressing time. Why is this? How can people…
This fantastic piece in the New York Times, The Overmonitored Nursery, is by new mom Sophie Brickman. She chronicles what life is like FOR THE MOM with all the new gadgets to monitor your baby every. single. second. After bringing healthy baby Ella home from the hospital, Brickman and her techie husband slipped the Owlet Smart Sock on the infant’s foot. This gizmo measures, among other things, the baby’s blood oxygen level. Cut to: an hour later. A piercingly shrill electronic version of “Hush Little Baby” blares through our room as a blue neon light strobes frantically. I leap out…
Kudos to the ScaryMommy blog for scaring up this truly bloodchilling memo from a pre-k. While cheerily (or perhaps dutifully) noting “Autumn is officially here and so is our second month of school,” it then launches into the real meat of the matter: Your kids stink and it’s all your fault. “We made it through a really tough first month with tears, attitudes, unwillingness, not listening, not obeying the rules and especially, too much talking and not enough sitting in seats when asked to. We work on this every day at school, but we need help from home, too. We…
Tonight I’m speaking on a panel in Ridgewood, NJ, organized by local activist extraordinaire Jeanne Johnson on “Moving Forward Together: Fostering a Pedestrian Friendly Community.” Her initiative is called Walktoberfest. . Getting all of us back outside, walking around our neighborhoods, is good for our bodies, souls, friendships, local businesses and even property values. The only downside is you don’t get to spend more time in your car. Darn! . Meantime, here’s what happens if we all stay inside, and the kids do, too: Dear Free-Range Kids: . I am at a loss. I grew up in Chicago and now…
Can we say it again? Most people are good. Even the people who ring your doorbell. Here’s a teen who found a wallet with 00 in cash in it. As Inside Edition reports: Tyler Opdyke, 18, found the wallet in the driveway of a home in Sacramento, Calif. Surveillance video shows him approaching the home. The homeowner, Melissa Vang, didn’t want to open the door because he was a stranger. So the teenager held the wallet to the camera to make sure she knew the money was all still there. He then leaves it by the front door. “When I…
Michael Hynes is the superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford School District on Long Island. As he confesses in this short and inspiring video, he loved school as a kid but gradually grew to hate it, and it’s only thanks to his love of tennis that he didn’t drop out. In fact, he hated school so much that he became a teacher, then a principal, and at last a superintendent with the power to reform. Hynes’ goal is redirecting schools away from test scores and toward the “whole child.” That might sound jargon-y, but it makes sense. Kids are not just brains…
These “close encounters” with near sex-traffickers are like alien abductions. They are shared wildly — gleefully — by people seemingly thrilled to know this horrible scourge is out there so they can be scared and angry. This latest story, from Reno, involves a mom and dad who noticed every detail about a night that sounds outrageously ordinary. They passed by some people they didn’t know! They went into the parking garage and there was a car — with people in it! They felt scared for their kids and compelled to write a Facebook post warning people everywhere about this terrible…
HEY! I forgot to add the video I made a few years ago about a cartwheel ban. Enjoy! . Yes, a school in Canada banned cartwheels. What’s worst about this is the school’s reasoning: Cartwheels have been banned at M.T. Davidson Public School in Callander. Cartwheels are not permitted on school property in the playground rules section of the school’s draft handbook for 2017-18. The rule came into effect this school year even though injuries have not been reported, principal Todd Gribbon admitted. “The activity can cause concussions, and neck and wrist injuries,” he said. True — an activity, including…
In this 9-minute video you’ll meet Shawna, an Oklahoma mom not allowed to play with her kids on the playground because of a “sex offense” she committed at age 19: She had consensual sex with a boy, 14. That was 15 years ago. She is on the registry for life, and registrants are banned from playgrounds. This short was made by David Feige, a public defender and documentarian. Below it I have excerpted some of what he wrote about Shawna and another “offender” you’d probably be proud to have as your son. Don’t read it if you can’t stand…