A mom writes: Dear Free-Range Kids: We are a homeschooling family of 7 children ages 16-4, but our kids participate in sports at the school at our church. This year I was asked to coach the elementary cross country team. The students aged 6-10 run a lap around the campus (about a half mile) to start practice. On this particular morning, I had 6 runners. The smallest was my own, and she is 7. One boy had a meltdown (he has Autism) and I had to call his mother. As I get off the phone, a woman from the school…
Author: lskenazy
Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor of Reason Magazine (where I am a contributor) interviewed the Fox Business Network host Kennedy. I’ve been on Kennedy’s show, she is fantastic and funny and Free-Range, but I never knew this had happened to her: REASON: What keeps you awake at night? Obviously you have a chance to talk about that on your Fox Business show every day, but the bad news of today doesn’t necessarily reflect the kind of macro stuff that makes me either happy or unhappy about where we are in the world right now. KENNEDY: My thing is slow-burning statist mission…
Adrian Crook, the dad behind the blog 5Kids1Condo, taught his four oldest kids — 7, 8, 9 and 11 — how to ride the city bus to and from school for the past two years in Vancouver. The result? Fantastic. The kids love it, and became friends with the bus drivers. Once Adrian even received an email from a random bus passenger saying what a pleasure his well-behaved kids were. BUT (you knew there had to be a BUT) recently someone reported these “unsupervised” kids to the Ministry of Children and Family Development — the Canadian equivalent of Child Protective…
The Tallahassee Democrat reports that a bill filed by Rep. Emily Slosberg, D-Boca Raton would make it illegal to leave a child age 6 or younger in the car for any length of time. But why? Considering more kids die in parking lots than in parked cars, and that the kids who DO die in parked cars were forgotten there for an average of 4.6 HOURS, not a few minutes, this bill is motivated by a misguided sense of danger. No one thinks kids should wait in cars for a long time, but that is already against the law in…
A federal judge in Colorado, Richard Matsch, has agreed with what we have been saying for a while here at Free-Range Kids: The public sex offender registry is not making kids any safer. At the same time, it is cruel and unconstitutional. The judge ruled in a case filed by three men on the registry. All have been unable to live normal lives as registrants. Remember our story from last week about Adam, the mentally disabled man on the registry? He lost his part-time job of wiping tables — a job he loved, as well as the chance to participate…
Justin Murphy at The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, NY reports that: Children at Pittsford’s Jefferson Road Elementary School who come up with a fun new game for the playground will need to do a few things before recruiting their classmates to play along. First, they should write out the name of the game, the rules of play and the mechanism for rotating other children into play if it’s in progress. Their parents can then submit that form to the chairwoman of the school PTSA Parents on the Playground committee. The committee will review the game to ensure that it…
This week’s Time cover story may remind you of our post from last week, The Case Against Starting Serious Soccer Lessons Too Soon. Time’s cover is: Crazy Travel. Crazy Costs. Crazy Stress. HOW KID SPORTS TURNED PRO Time’s press release summarized the issues perfectly (boldface mine): This week’s TIME cover story focuses on the booming business that is overwhelming American families: the youth sports industry. Sean Gregory writes, “Across the nation, kids of all skill levels, in virtually every team sport, are getting swept up by a youth sports economy that increasingly resembles the pros and at increasingly early…
This “WARNING NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY” sign comes to us from Ron Lieber, author of the “The Opposite of Spoiled.” He spied it at a Park City, Utah, rec center next to a kiddie splash pad where there is no pool anywhere in sight. Consider it a stark reminder that we have not only gone crazy with fear about unlikely dangers, we’re also crazed with fear about about unlikely lawsuits. Or maybe there’s some kind of “warning sign mentality” that is the modern-day equivalent of putting a horseshoe on the wall for good luck: Can’t hurt! By the by, read…
The woman who looked to be about 60 walked up to the podium and spoke in a quiet voice. She was at a St. Louis synagogue that was hosting an evening of presentations about the sex offender registry. I spoke, too. But this mom’s story has haunted me in the weeks since. I asked for a copy of her speech, which is below. She prefers to remain anonymous. – L. THE SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY AND THE MENTALLY DISABLED I am a mother, advocate and caretaker of a 30 year old young man with IDD. That is an intellectual and developmental…
If you’re wondering how far our fears of accidents, predators and insurance claims can take us from sane to nutty, read on: Dear Free-Range Kids: Since all three kids are now back from the various camps they’ve attended this summer, I’ve been doing some reflection. I don’t recall summer camps being nearly as overprotective when I was a kid. We could do things like go to the bathroom on our own, at least. But in the scout camp that my younger girls attended, all activities were done with a group and kids were never to be out…