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…
Author: lskenazy
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…
Predictably, this article is getting a lot of attention: Why I Won’t Let Any Male Babysit My Children, by Kasey Edwards, in Melbourne, Australia: When our first daughter was born my husband and I made a family rule: no man would ever babysit our children. No exceptions. This includes male relatives and friends and even extracurricular and holiday programs, such as basketball camp, where men can have unrestricted and unsupervised access to children. Eight years, and another daughter later, we have not wavered on this decision. Kasey trots out the idea that since more men molest kids than women do,…
UPDATE: This story is from Roxbury, NJ, not Roxbury, Mass. My bad. The area’s Wikipedia page lists crime stats from 2009: 0 murders, 3 robberies. In Roxbury, Mass, the school district just hired the former chief of police, Jim Simonetti, to evaluate their security. And guess what? He has recommended the district spend over half a million dollars on “MAN TRAPS” to be installed at all three public schools. That’s the real term. Man Traps. These are interrogation rooms that visitors must pass through on their way into the schools where they will show I.D.s. If the guests pass…
Welcome to Free-Range Kids. Can you say “Free-Range Kids”? Free starts with F, and F is a letter! Like this “letter” I got, below…except “letter” is not the same as “letter,” and…oh gosh! If they ask you that question on your SATs, just choose, “C,” because you don’t want to leave a question blank! This came as a comment from Stacey Gordon on the post, “To Get Kids Cooking, Stop Talking.” Come on… You know good and well that children cannot exist outside the constant stream I call the CONE OF VERBIAGE that keeps them SAFE, or just from…
This essay comes to us from Natalie Johnson, a mom of three who wants to Free-Range, but feels some of the ever-more-common misgivings about letting her kids out of her sight. Natalie works at The Wild Network, a non-profit in the UK that helps communities get the tools and inspiration they need to “re-wild” children in their own neighborhoods. The group was launched after the success of the documentary Project Wild Thing, which looks at the reasons today’s kids don’t play outside as much as previous generations. Their website is here, their Twitter feed is @wearewildthing, and here they are…
Did you noticed the Free-Range Kids’ moment at the Oscars last night? No, not the one where everyone suddenly had to problem-solve on their own and rise to the occasion — just like kids do in free play, the activity we have snatched (like an Oscar!) from them. It was this moment, as described by Jocelyn Noveck in The A.P.: Winners often thank their moms, but Benj Pasek, one of the best original song winners from ‘‘La La Land,” had an especially endearing shoutout for his mother. ‘‘I want to thank my mom who is amazing and my date tonight…
Your fun for the weekend, from The Onion, which gets it just about right just about every time: WASHINGTON—Saying no one in the country is responsible or reliable enough to serve as a legal guardian, child protective services officials from all 50 states confirmed Friday that they had found all of the nation’s adults unfit to be parents and had taken custody of approximately 80 million children. Child welfare workers told reporters they removed all persons under the age of 18 from their unsuitable living situations and placed them under state supervision after home visits revealed that none of the…