Hi Folks! This post appears on Nicole Roder’s blog. Author Nicole lives in Maryland with her four kids and a fierce Boston terrier, who “protects their home from some ubiquitous danger only she can see.” She called me to ask for a quote, and I wrote later to ask if I could reprint her piece! Yes/yes! Best part is the GREAT LIST of THINGS THAT ARE NOT DANGEROUS FOR KIDS TO DO, which I have highlighted in red. In fact, all the highlighting is mine. – L. SOMETIMES YOU JUST WANT TO PUNCH A JUDGMENTAL STRANGER IN THE FACE, by…
Author: lskenazy
This story comes from a reader named Jennifer who wrote: So I am in 3 separate mommy groups and each of them in the past few days has posted this OMG! alert: http://faithit.com/mom-amanda-cropsey-florczykowski-warns-sex-trafficking/ Jennifer’s plea: Stop this insanity from gaining credibility! . I’m trying. Here’s the viral post: My name is Amanda and I’m a Longview, Texas resident. I’m convinced that our two-year-old daughter was the victim of a potential sex-trafficking scam yesterday. I got in the check-out line at a local store early afternoon. I took my daughter out of the cart and the couple ahead struck up the…
A reminder from a reader that the way we package our “news” ends up affecting the way we see the world, and our job as parents. And the easiest way to package any story is by making it seem as if X could have been prevented SO EASILY, if only a parent had been more vigilant: Dear Free-Range Kids: My biggest peeve is how when a criminal is involved, that person — not the parent — seems to get a free pass from public scrutiny. Consider the common case of somebody trying to steal a car, discovering a baby…
A surprise! Dear Free-Range Kids: Ran across this “article” on Facebook: https://www.romper.com/p/15-things-parents-did-in-the-90s-that-no-parent-would-do-today-9192?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=pro&utm_campaign=fbpro&sr_source=lift_facebook I grew up in the ’90s in suburbia MI and remember this stuff. Now as a mother of an infant, I wish parenting wasn’t such a monumental, risk adverse task. Just last week I left my (overtired, recently screaming, just picked up from daycare) sleeping 8-month-old in a warm, remote-started, brand new, locked, electric car on a 50 degree day with a dog as backup for no more than THREE MINUTES as I ran into the corner store to buy a block of organic, locally produced cheese for…
Since you might have missed your latest copy of The Siberian Times, here’s a story for you, perfect for a blizzard: Little Saglana Salchak has spoken for the first time about her sad 6 hour trek through treacherous snow drifts with wolves around to get to a neighbour’s home from her grandparents’ remote farmstead. Miserable at finding her 60 year old grandmother ‘cold’, she was sent to call for help by her grandfather Borbak who is totally blind. He did not realise the time he told her to make the walk: it was 5 am, a pitch dark. The four…
The new-ish service, Hop Skip Drive, is basically Uber for kids. If parents are busy and they need their kids to get delivered somewhere — school, dance class, karate — some background-checked caregiver (all the drivers pictured are female) picks them up and deposits them. And naturally the parent can follow the entire ride with an app on their phone. Because…just because. Because our culture believes that if kids are not constantly supervised by their parents, either in person or electronically, they are in danger, the parents are negligent, and disaster looms. And also because apps just do this. So…
What does it take to raise a child? Parents? A village? Or, now, a robot? The Institute, the newsletter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), reports that there are at least two robot nannies coming on board. Writes Ian Chant: Kuri is a roving robot that roams around the home to assist with tasks such as waking up the kids when it’s time to get ready for school, telling bedtime stories, and singing the children’s favorite songs. When parents are not home, they can view their children through the robot’s built-in cameras, which they can monitor via…
UPDATE: Hi all! Just thought I’d clarify the reason for this “Attempted Luring” post. I highlight the media’s obsession with a very unlikely crime — stranger abduction — because constant coverage makes it seem common and ubiquitous. It’s the same reason I highlight the stories that run when a child is dropped off at the wrong bus stop and the narrative is, “Oh, how incredibly lucky we are that they child wasn’t immediately snatched by a predator!” No one writes, “A child walked by a building today and we are just incredibly lucky no brick dislodged and hit her on…
The sign below signals the end of childhood — and parenting — as we know them. Apparently in Queensland, Australia, children are not allowed to walk or bike to school under age 12, and parents are not allowed to let them, according to this police notice, posted on Twitter by Stephen B @BicycleAdagio: . What’s ennddzzysh most terrifying is not the draconian decree, but the belief that any time a child is unsupervised the child is AUTOMATICALLY IN DANGER, which means that parent is AUTOMATICALLY NEGLIGENT. This is a new world view and it criminalizes not just parents who believe…
*In France: Dear Free-Range Kids: I was linked to your blog article on parents volunteering in US schools and the need for police background checks in certain cases and wanted to write you to tell you about my 5-year-old’s last field trip. A sign-up sheet for a class field trip to a winery owned by one of the student’s parents was posted outside my son’s kindergarten classroom door. They wanted to have at least 3 parents in addition to the teacher and the teacher’s assistant. You just put your name on the list and show up. On the day of…