Aiden punched Noah because Noah wouldn’t let him on the slide! Ooh! Now what? Well, if this took place in Missouri, at recess, Aiden could be heading to jail. In an era when we have finally come to realize that zero tolerance policies and the kyetrdysia school-to-prison pipeline are permanently damaging kids by saddling them with criminal records and churning them through the justice system, Missouri is going the opposite direction. Starting this year, KFVS reports, a new statute increases the punishment when students get into a fight: The change means that if your student is caught fighting once they…
Author: lskenazy
Sometimes when I post about the Sex Offender Registry, I get comments like, “Those scum don’t deserve to EVER live a normal life!” This note below is to remind us that a study of 17,000 people on the registry by the The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board found that about 5% were “clearly dangerous,” and 100 could be classified as sexual predators. Not that the other thousands and thousands of registrants were all Romeo and Juliet cases, or teens who sexted. Just that most people who have been arrested for a sex crime don’t do it again. Some will.…
These musings come from a reader who blogs at southgeek and describes herself as “someone who sees and greatly fears that our personal freedoms and independence are being sold down the river in exchange for imaginary security. And when it comes to security of children, well, all bets are off.” . Agreed. But today she sent me a grumbling, discerning email about the way weather reports keep getting more and more hysterical, and that’s what I’m posting here: . Dear Free-Range Kids: Years ago when I moved to Alabama, I first saw meteorologists on the local TV stations breaking away…
Many of you sent in this dramatic story of a dresser falling on a Utah 2-year-old and his twin brother rescuing him from underneath it. It sickens me the way KSL TV news showed the worst part of the video three times in two minutes, but here you have it: . As MSN reports: A video monitor in the bedroom of twin brothers Brock and Bowdy Shoff, 2, captured an unsettling incident last week in which a dresser toppled on the pair as Brock climbed in an open drawer. Brock can be seen trapped for nearly a minute before Bowdy…
Here’s Harvard’s Steven Pinker musing on what happens when a legitimate movement — the movement to improve child safety, for instance, or to awaken sensitivity to minorities — achieves its main goals, but insists on acting as if today’s dangers and insults are on par with those of the past. His point about child safety — that it’s good kids are no longer coal miners but ridiculous that in the name of the self-same “safety” today they not longer get to play at the park alone — is a building block of the Free-Range Kids movement. We, too, want safe…
Voila a wonderful sign and wonderful way to ring in a New Year! Sent to us by a guy named Marty: In case you couldn’t read the sign, some highlights are: Let’s work together to help and support each other. We all share this world together. Let’s make the words below important again! *Please *Thank you *Yes M’am *Yes Sir *How can I help you? *Of course I’ll help! *I’m sorry *I forgive you *I respect you *I see your point *I couldn’t disagree with you more. Let’s go grab a beer! That one is my favorite. It’s way too…
A 5-year-old in Berwick, Pennsylvania, woke his dad up early on a Saturday morning and said it was time to go to school. Daddy told him no, hon, it’s Saturday—no school!—and went back to sleep. Now the dad, Jeffry Wagner, is facing child endangerment charges. Unbeknownst to him, his son continued to get ready for school and ventured out into the chilly day to make his way to the bus stop. Of course, no bus arrived, so the determined little boy started to walk to school. And then, reports CBS Pittsburgh: [A] motorist spotted him and called police, who picked…
A City Councilman in Los Angeles, Mitch O’Farrell, has proposed a bill to keep playgrounds “free of creepy activity” by not allowing anyone unaccompanied by kids to enter one. Shamefully, that is already the rule here in my burg, New York City. This has lead to the arrest of two women who dared to eat donuts on a playground bench in Brooklyn (exposing kids to potential predators AND processed food!), and to the ticketing of seven guys who were playing on chess tables too close to a Mahattan playground (tables placed there by the city, but whatevs). The fact that…
It is a measure of how insane our sex offender laws have become, to announce that this proposed bill in Montana is a RELIEF! Senate Bill 26 would prevent 18-year-olds who have provably CONSENSUAL sex with another teen under the age of consent (younger than 16, but at least age 14) from having to register as sex offenders. It would also cap the time they can possibly serve in prison at just five years. My heart actually aches as I write that. “JUST” five years? For consensual sex with a fellow teenager? And yet, a giant kudos to the bill’s…
. A squirrel chomped the leg of a senior citizen sitting on the porch of a retirement home in Deltona. WESH TV reports that the victim ran inside, furry felon still attached, whereupon it bit three more seniors. This is terrible. (Especially for a squirrel fanatic like me. One bad squirrel does not a bad species make!) Anyway, I bring it up because at the end of this “news” story, the reporter (“Robert Lowe”!!!) says in all seriousness, “Tonight I spoke with the parent company which runs the senior living center here in Deltona. They described in detail what happened…