It’s like steak seasoning. The media takes a rather straightforward story and liberally sprinkles its favorite seasoning on it — a zesty mix of fear, hypothesizing, and cherry-picked “man on the street” interviews — and voila! A yummy story the public gobbles down. You can watch this process in action every September when a child is dropped off at the wrong bus stop somewhere in America (it happens!) and the kid finds their way home, unharmed. That would be a boring story if not for…steak seasoning, this one with extra hypothesizing! “Luckily, Xavier got home safely. But what if he…
Author: lskenazy
Independence Day is every day for families in eight states, including four — Virginia, Connecticut, Illinois, and Montana — that passed a “Reasonable Childhood Independence” bill this year. “I’m really excited,” said Evelyn Hackel, a naval architect and mother of Elsa Hackel, age 12. She should be! When Elsa was 9 and walking home from the library in Falls Church, VA, the police knocked on her front door before she even got her coat off. They told her parents she was too young to be outside, alone. “There were four cops,” Evelyn recalls – more than had shown up when…
Maybe this will convince other moms not to make outrageous claims on TikTok. The Petaluma, California, “mom-fluencer” who claimed her kids were the victims of an attempted abduction in a Michael’s parking lot has been sentenced to 90 days’ jail time, 30 of which must actually be spent behind bars. On December 7 of 2020 – yes, a day that will live in infamy — Katie Sorensen called the cops. She reported that she’d been shopping at the craft store with her kids, 1 and 4, when a couple seemed to focus on them, and followed her out to her…
When it turned out that four siblings, aged 1 to 13, had survived in the jungles of Colombia for 40 days after their plane crashed, killing all the adults on board (including their mom), the world was dumbstruck with awe. How could kids that young be that resourceful? “My responses is: ‘They do this routinely,’” says anthropologist David Lancy, author of “Child Helpers: A Multidisciplinary Perspective,” and a number of other books about kids in other cultures. “They look after their brothers and sisters, including babies. They hunt. They forage. They build shelters.” They put us, in short, to shame.…
A recent front page article in the Wall Street Journal chronicles a problem that seems to be a sign of the times: Parents accompanying their kids on job interviews. And calling their kids’ bosses to demand better treatment. And showing up at their kids’ jobs to fight their battles. These stories can seem apocryphal, but The Journal’s Te-Ping Chen dug up some jaw-dropping examples. One Seattle restauranteur recalled a co-worker whose mom asked the manager to let her son have Sundays off to watch football. That idea got sacked. A Dollar Tree shopper told The Journal she was going into the store one day…
Her parents had prepared her for ALMOST everything. When Tom D’s daughter, age 6, asked if she could walk to get a Gatorade all by herself, her parents said yes. Then they gave her some money, her mom’s phone so she could be tracked, her dad’s number for emergencies, and a hand-drawn map – even though the store was just a few blocks away. This was in a Detroit suburb. Dad Tom has asked his last name not be used, for fear of retribution from the cops. Because, yes, the cops were called. No sooner had the girl turned onto…
This certainly not the biggest problem facing America. But on a summer-jobs-for-young-people site (giving parents ideas to give to their kids) one suggestion was to have kids run a “Neighborhood Park Hour.” One hour, mind you. The site explained that kids can make a flyer “and get parents interested in paying for ‘Park Hour’.” So far, so good. Then it adds, regarding those paying parents: “This means they still bring their children to the park and stay there with them, but they get to sit on the sidelines and read, work, or do whatever else they’d like while your child…
In 1983, childhood was so different, it’s almost hard to fathom. As you’ll see in this giddy vintage video, kids were zooming around playing BIKE TAG without adult supervision (or helmets). Endless nostalgia, however, doesn’t help our cause. I share this with you to simply remind us of what our young are capable of: Bravery, camaraderie, some folly and some risk. All of which add up to…well, it looks a lot like happiness. The psychologists would probably say these kids are self-actualized and self-organized. I say they are the jolt we need to help us to loosen our own grip…
How I appreciate this story from Olivia Eaddy, a Pennsylvania mom I met when we did a parenting panel together. A few days later, she dropped me a note: Dear Lenore: True life moment. So yesterday, while gardening, my 6-year-old Aaron came out to help me. After a few minutes of helping he says, “Mom, I can climb that tree?” (It’s a smaller flowering tree out front. ) I said, “Show me!” Shocked by my response he said, “Mom — it’s this tree right here!” I said, “I know — now show me!” After a few more attempts to clarify…
My sister was watching Michael Smerconish on CNN a few weeks ago. He was interviewing an expert on how social media is wallopping kids’ mental health, and my sister, Hannah, was incensed on my behalf: “They didn’t even talk about overprotection, or kids being in adult-run activities all the time, or how it feels to be treated like a baby when you’re 8 or 10 or 12.” She told me to write to Smerconish and say, “Hey! You’re missing a big piece of the picture. Maybe the biggest! Consider the lack-of-independence angle!” So I did what she said. (She is…