UPDATE! It will come as no shock to readers of this blog that the shirt on the windshield turned out NOT to be a bold new way to kidnap and sex traffic mall workers, but was in fact a “random prank.” Imagine that. * On my Yahoo news feed comes this story of a young Michigan woman who found a shirt wrapped around one of her windshield wipers. Admittedly, that is odd. But odder still is how this non-event has gone viral — 100,000+ shares — along with breathless warnings about how we must all be on the lookout for…
Author: lskenazy
A quick and accurate look at where have all the children gone, from a blog called Fix.com: Source: Fix.com Blog If you have any other theories as to why we don’t see as many kids playing outside, on their own — or how to restock the pond, as it were — let us know. And coming soon: An infographic on the benefits of free play. – L.
Here’s a sign from a church in suburban Chicago. The reader who sent it to me wrote: I’ve shown this sign to quite a number of people expecting them to be as floored as I am. Nearly universally, though, the reaction has been along the lines of “well, you can’t be too safe these days. Things are different than when we were young.” I don’t know whether it’s more frightening that kids are being mandated to be supervised in the bathroom long after they no longer need physical help, or that we as a society seem to be accepting that…
Woo hoo! Here is the very first official Free-Range Kids video, by yours truly and genius Mike Kraus from MylkMedia. It explains — cheerfully — how we get risk wrong and end up terrified for our kids. Buzzfeed did a wonderful synoposis. Buzzfeed, baby! Please, please share this on Facebook and everywhere else! It will help your friends understand how society floods us with fear, how we’re pre-programmed to hold onto the most horrifying images, and how our brains work like Google. When we ask ourselves, “Is X safe?” our brains retrieve the easiest information to find — the scariest…
The temporary injury of a girl whose brother hit her in the eye with a foam Nerf gun dart has made the news, at least in the Daily Mail. Love or loathe them, the fact that they ran a large article and four pictures on this one incident (and remember “incident” is the word we use when nothing much really happened), is a perfect example of the way we look at childhood. It is always through the lens of what could go tragically wrong, and what we can do to prevent that rare problem from ever happening again. Here you…
“Free-Range” can mean many things to many people, which is fair, I guess. It’s not like I have the trademark on “free-range.” But I actually do have the trademark on “Free-Range Kids” (because my friend is an intellectual property attorney), and the Free-Range Kids book/blog/movement does not believe that serious illnesses can be cured homeopathically, or that kids don’t need any rules whatsoever in their lives. That being said, I don’t think any of us should care how long this mom, or any mom, does or doesn’t breastfeed her kids, and I am not against giving kids free time and…
This week, a jury in Manhattan found Pedro Hernandez guilty of murdering Etan Patz in 1979. As the New York Times reports: Pedro Hernandez, a former bodega stock clerk who confessed to luring 6-year-old Etan Patz into a basement and attacking him, was found guilty on Tuesday of murder and kidnapping, a long-awaited step toward closure in a case that bedeviled investigators for decades and changed forever the way parents watched over their children. A Manhattan jury convicted Mr. Hernandez on the ninth day of deliberations after the second of two lengthy trials that brought renewed attention to Etan’s disappearance…
Zachary X, now 19, is in jail awaiting sentencing for five pictures his teenage girlfriend sent him of herself in her underwear. He faced a choice between a possible (though unlikely) maximum sentence of 350 years in prison, or lifetime on the sex offender registry as a “sexually violent offender”—even though he never met the girl in person. Here’s what happened. About two years ago, when Zachary was a 17-year-old high school senior in Stafford County, VA, a girl in his computer club invited him over to visit. She introduced him to her younger sister, age 13. This younger sister…
Trying not to vomit on my pink-colored muffin: Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I wanted to see if you’d be interested in receiving tips from parenting expert ______ , Psy.D on 3 Foolproof Was to Make Sure Your Child Feels Your Love, even during the chaos of daily life. A Clinical Psychologist specializing in Neuropsychology, and mom of two, Dr. ________ has great insights on how parents can make sure their child really feels their love, even on the days when they are challenging, frustrating and even obnoxious. Yep, parental love simply does not get through to kids unless…
One of the ways we could change America from fearful to cheerful would be if more schools started doing the Free-Range Kids Project. That’s the deal whereby the teachers tell the students to go home and ask their parents if they can do ONE THING that they feel they are ready to do, that for one reason or another they just haven’t done yet: Walk to school. Ride their bike to a friend’s house. Or…make dinner. I describe the project here. Meantime, below are some tips from Aviva Goldfarb in The Washington Post, should your kids choose cooking as an…