Update from Philly.com, which was even kind enough to alert us to this! Police on Thursday issued this statement: “On April 5th,2017, the parents of Baby Doe were located; they reported that their baby was fine and they did not believe that the male was attempting to remove the baby from the stroller.” The video below ran in yesterday’s New York Post. It shows a man in a Philadelphia Dunkin’ Donuts who goes up to a stroller, leans over the hood from behind, places his hands into the stroller, and seems to be (to my eyes) trying to get…
Author: lskenazy
Bryce Maine, an Alabama grandson who puts all other grandsons to shame, chose as his date to the Eufaula High School prom: Grandma. . At first, the Washington Post reports, Grandma — that is, Catherine Maine — demurred: “I just thought, well, it’s just so nice that he wanted me to go,” Catherine told WTVM. “I kept asking him, ‘Don’t you want to take someone else?’ But he kept saying, ‘No, I want my Nanny.’ So I was just so shocked, privileged that he asked me.” . “My grandma is the most important woman in my life and she’s never…
Last week a spokesman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children went on Good Morning America and told us to stop teaching our kids “Stranger Danger,” despite having rammed that fear down our throats for over a generation — a point I discussed in this post. To demonstrate how important it is that children learn to approach a stranger for help, in case they ever need it, Good Morning America and the spokesman, Callahan Walsh (John Walsh’s son) staged a bizarre little experiment. They dressed a school stage like an abstract minimalist grocery store and then asked a…
Readers — The parent-criminalizing bill that was postponed a few weeks ago is back on the Rhode Island House agenda for TUESDAY, APRIL 4. Here, once again, is local activist Randall Rose’s explanation and plea: The bill that criminalizes leaving kids in cars, S72, is having a hearing Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee at the State House, Room 313. People can come and sign up to tell the committee what they think of the bill at this hearing, which starts at 4:30 or 5 Tuesday. This is the last hearing on this bill. . If you can’t…
On Good Morning America last week, a spokesman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children — the people who put the missing kids’ pictures on the milk cartons without bothering to explain that the vast majority were runaways or taken in custody disputes, not nabbed by predators — told parents NOT to teach their kids stranger danger. And actually, NCMEC told me that, too, when I interviewed them for my book — I quote them. But it always felt like they were talking out of both sides of their mouth, because when they were interviewed by OTHER sources,…
This letter illustrates the kind of “Mothers must be perfect or all bets are off!” belief that makes my blood boil. (Ouch!) Dear Free-Range Kids: I had a friend whose wife went into labor sixteen weeks early due to all kinds of complications. She was in the ICU for nearly a month, massive blood loss, several major surgeries, medically induced coma, you name it. Then she developed a serious infection. They weren’t going to put her on the antibiotic the disease specialist recommended because, get this, it’s not safe for breastfeeding. . My friend (normally the most mild-mannered guy you…
When yet another mom wrote about her kids ALMOST being sex trafficked — an assessment she made on the basis of noticing some men at Ikea (yikes!) who seemed to be looking at her children — I checked my favorite urban-myth-busting, hysteria-slaying site, Snopes, searching for “Ikea sex traffic.” There wasn’t anything there — yet. Now there is: a gloriously rational take-down of the idea that predators are prowling the aisles of popular stores, tearing children away from their moms, racing them out to their cars and then across state lines, without anyone stopping them. Not the screaming mothers. Not…
Okay, 89,000 shares of this piece from ForEveryMom: Mom’s Warning to Other Parents After Being Followed While Shopping: “We Were Targets” A trip to IKEA with her 3 kids turns terrifying when her family is targeted for human trafficking by two men. Diandra Toyos is a Southern California mom of three kiddos aged 4, 1.5, and 7 weeks. Looking for a fun outing, she and her mom decided to take the kids to their local IKEA recently to do some couch shopping and “get the kids out of the house.” But Toyos never could have imagined that their lighthearted shopping…
It is a quirk of our era that we don’t seem able to do anything — fill in a crossword puzzle, drink a glass of water, butter a roll — without having some expert reason for doing so. It’s good for the brain! The immune system! Epigenetics! Hand-eye coordination! Kidney function! Marital bliss! This is irksome, because it means that we keep expecting and ingesting all sorts of silly studies, as if the unproven life is not worth living. It is with that caveat that I present to you Part Two of the “Why dhrieraktk Aren’t Kids Playing Outside on…
Stephan Pastis, forgive me for reprinting this here, but we are so on your side! And you are on ours! Here’s the link to Stephan’s Facebook page, and his website, and — heck — his Twitter feed. And his road tour calendar! And for those who can’t read the strip because it’s too small on your phone, the script is below! . STEPHAN STROLLS DOWN MEMORY LANE: When I was a kid, my dad drove me around in the back of his pickup truck. When I was a kid I flew across the country by myself. When I was a…