Melissa James is a 38-year-old copywriter in Yorktown, VA, wife of a Department of Defense analyst and mother of two who decided to do something a little…wild: Dear Free-Range Kids: I enjoy your website and had declared myself a Free-Range Parent about a year before discovering you. (I had adopted the term after reading the articles about the kids walking home from the park whose parents kept getting reamed for “negligence.”) Anyway, very few kids in our upper-middle-class, very safe neighborhood are ever seen outside. People know my two—Audrey, 7, and Preston, who turns 10 today — because they are…
Author: lskenazy
These tips from HealthyChildren.org for when a child can go to a public restroom are not just hilarious and ridiculous, they are also insane, starting with this one: ​The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children feels that children of any age should not be permitted to use public restrooms alone. Any age? Why? Simply to keep Americans so scared of stranger danger that they keep supporting the Center? The website goes on to gift us with: My Public Restroom Survival Guide Never send a child into a public restroom alone. Ask for assistance from a security guard or employee…
This piece originally appeared at the National Association for Rational Sex Offense Laws site. What Luke Heimlich did was wrong and deeply disturbing. It also sounds like it was not a one-off. But he was punished, he was treated, and he has not re-offended. If he hadn’t slipped up on an administrative issue — missing a registration date — he would be going on with his life. How does “outing” him make anyone safer? And if it doesn’t, then what’s the point, other than shame and vengeance? Who do we allow to redeem themselves, and who do we condemn forever?…
This persecution of parents who love their kids and make the rational decision to let their them wait in the car a few minutes MUST STOP. Here is the latest case, reported by Elizabeth Broadbent at ScaryMommy (which should be SCARED Mommy in this case!). The mom, Heather DeStein, 28, has a 3-month-old. She drove her husband to work, and by the time she got to he store, her baby had finally fallen asleep. It was 36 degrees outside, and much warmer in the car, where the heater was running. The baby had on a winter onesie — “the kind…
Nothing wrong with playing, chatting and creating online. But still — anyone else appalled by this ad? (And yes, we KNOW it’s not an ad for the National Park Service, or Boy Scouts, or the U.S. Rubber Ball Association, or …). . . .
Just try to figure out what the American Academy of Pediatrics and this spokeswoman are saying in this Good Morning America interview about babies and their sleep. Apparently the AAP has reversed its stern directive which said that babies should be in the same room — but not the same bed — as their parents for six months, but preferably for the first year. This was presented as a must do as recently as October of 2016. Here it’s explained HealthyChildren.org: Room share—keep baby’s sleep area in the same room where you sleep for the first 6 months or, ideally,…
You know the old saying: When life hands you a CPS investigation (or two), make lemonade. That’s what Danielle Meitiv of Silver Spring, Maryland, is doing and we are thrilled! The famously Free-Range mom is running for Montgomery Country County Council Member at Large, she told us, “to make this county the best place it could possibly be for kids.” The election is next year. Danielle rose to national — international! stratospheric! — prominence when her kids, age 10 and 6 at the time, were picked up by cops for walking home from a park together, unaccompanied by an adult.…
This article by Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason (a site I write for, too) is a must-read: House Overwhelmingly Supports Bill Subjecting Teen Sexters to 15 Years in Federal Prison Nolan writes (boldface mine): Teens who text each other explicit images could be subject to 15 years in federal prison under a new bill that just passed the House of Representatives. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, has called the measure “deadly and counterproductive.” “While the bill is well intended, it is overbroad in scope and will punish the very people it…
A mom, a toddler, a slide. A mom named Kara wrote this on the CityMoms blog about a day she was spending with her 18-month-old at the park: This was not the first day we had gone down the slide together, either. I had done it before at other parks and probably several times at this particular park as well….Then one uneventful trip down the slide and I heard some crying. I looked up and realized my son’s leg had gotten tucked up under us from the force of gravity going down the slide. He screamed. A lot. As you…
Not to pile on United. But… . Dear Free-Range Kids: AARGH!!!! . Can you please do a piece on unaccompanied minors policies? I’m having the most frustrating day trying to get my 15 year old to his academic summer camp in July. We live in Vancouver, Canada and his camp is in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a kid who’s traveled extensively internationally with us, and last year flew to Tokyo on his own for camp. . However, according to United Airlines, he’s a child. He can’t fly by himself *EVEN IF WE PAY THEIR RIDICULOUS FEE* because it’s a connecting…