Let’s find out for real (more or less) what is going on with Halloween these days. Over on the Free-Range Kids Facebook page, we’ve got a poll running: What age did you let your children start trick or treating on their own, without you or another adult, or even older siblings. While I’d love you to take the actual poll, I’m also curious about a question I didn’t ask there and will ask here: How does that compare to the age YOU started? And while we’re at it, please also let us know what your town is doing re: Halloween.…
Author: lskenazy
Alex McDaniel tweets a lot — about sports, books, politics. She’s fun, and not a punch-puller, and when she tweets about her life as a mom, usually it’s for laughs. For instance here’s one from when her son was two: me: no eating cookies in the bed 2yo: i eating them in my mouth Love that. So a couple weeks ago, after tweeting about her son using the potty and the funny things he said, she added: “3-year-old for sale. $12 or best offer.” Which kicked off a human trafficking investigation. As McDaniel writes on the blog MagnoliaStateLive: The saga…
UPDATE: Zach’s hearing, scheduled for Weds., Oct. 18, has been postponed until further notice. Zach Anderson, the young man from Elkart, IN, whose harsh punishment for consensual teen sex made headlines around the country in 2015, has been arrested for two violations of probation. What, exactly, did he do? He had dinner at his parents’ home with his younger brother, 17, and the brother’s friend. The brother thought his friend was 19, but he turned out to be 17. Zach is not allowed to have contact with anyone under 18 except his siblings. That’s Violation #1. Then, at church, Zach…
An extremely insightful and rather frightening op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times looks at why Millennials are “so wary of freedom.” It’s by Clay Routledge, a professor of psychology at North Dakota State University, and it cites stats about how the younger generation is less convinced that democracy or free speech are good ideas. This crosses party affiliations, so it’s not like only conservatives care about liberty (which would be depressing in its own right). The logical question then becomes: What unites so many young Americans in these attitudes? I propose that the answer is fear — the ultimate enemy…
Down in Brisbane, Australia, they apparently have changing rooms where parents — not just moms — can change their kids’ diapers. But one mom saw a dad in the room and screamed bloody murder. Reports the Brisbane Times: An embarrassed father left a shopping centre parents’ room with his naked son in his arms after a woman declared the room was “only for mothers” and told him to “get out you sicko”, according to a second mother who witnessed the exchange. Tamika Ives said she came to the man’s defence, bringing him back to the change room where he had…
It can be painful to think about the freedom we had — the bike riding, the kicking around, the going to get candy — that many of our kids don’t. Here’s one story of how to get it back. Dear Free-Range Kids: Here in Toronto, I started a group called the Toronto Free Play Co-op. The point was to find other people in the neighbourhood who are on the same page as far as being free range and valuing free play. It’s worked quite well — there is power in numbers, and in having these conversations. We started last summer…
When the telegraph was first invented, it was so strange and new, people worried it would disrupt the world’s weather patterns. And as I learned at a dinner last night with (name drop!) Nadine Strossen, former head of the ACLU, when the internet was in its infancy, the government demanded grand censorship powers, to protect the potential porn hub (as it were) from corrupting children. But The Supreme Court ruled in favor of free speech, thus allowing the web to flourish. All of which is to say, fearing that new technology is going to unleash hell on earth and…
In Chester County, PA, kids will no longer get the chance to scramble for candy tossed from floats at the annual Halloween parade because suddenly the local tradition is too dangerous. According to The Daily Local News, Parks & Rec director Keith Kurowski “was fearful that one of about 25 parade floats might injure an unattended child, or a marching band member with a flag or mock rifle might mistakenly strike a youngster.” Yes, those marching bands are vicious. You see a majorette with a flag? Run! There’s nothing they like better than to “mistakenly” (wink wink) strike a youngster.…
Many, many of you have sent me this interesting piece: Thoughts on Vegas and Why Men Keep Doing This, by Charles Hoehn, author of Play It Away. (Free book here!) It ran on the blog Be Yourself. In trying to parse why Stephen Paddock and a few other men have unleashed massacres (something, thankfully, most men do NOT “keep doing”), Hoehn rolled around some ideas, including that the lack of play can lead to deep depression and pathology. I, too, believe the drive to play is installed at birth by Mother Nature, for a reason: To teach us, in a…
I iassrntati am in Boston giving some talks, and once again, some parents tell me that one reason they’re not sending their kids outside is the fear that some busybody will call 911. That is why we must make it not only normal, but blazingly, officially LEGAL to give our kids some independence, a point the Texas Policy Institute’s Brandon Logan and I make in this piece of ours that appeared in the Austin-American Statesman. Commentary: Giving kids an old-fashioned childhood is not abuse By Brandon Logan and Lenore Skenazy — Special to the American-Statesman A few years back,…