Remember the bad old days when a rape victim would show up in court and the defense attorney would say, “Why was her skirt so short?” As if the woman caused her own rape. Only gradually did it dawn on us that this is blaming the victim. Once we recognized how cruel and clueless this is, we became a more empathetic society. Except when it comes to moms. “Blaming Mothers: American Law and the Risks to Children’s Health” is a new book by Pace University law professor Linda C. Fentiman. It looks at why we keep moms in the crosshairs…
Author: lskenazy
This letter struck me as absolutely right: Dear Free-Range Kids: This article appeared on my FB. http://www.kcci.com/article/mom-charged-after-child-dies-in-changing-table-incident/8588247 The highlight: “The fact that she left the child alone for an extended period of time is what makes it criminal,” Des Moines police Sgt. Paul Parizek said.” My thoughts: She should not be charged as a criminal. This is an ACCIDENT. She did not INTEND for her daughter to die. They don’t describe how long the child was left, but I’d take the mom at her word that it wasn’t very long, probably a few…
Please share this with friends who are skeptical of school bus safety. EdWeek is reporting: In spite of recent high-profile bus crashes, a new Government Accountability Office report suggests school buses are probably still a safer way to get your kids to school than driving them yourself. From 2000 to 2015, there’s been on average 115 fatal crashes involving a school bus each year in the United States, the GAO found—that’s only a third of a percent of the nearly 35,000 fatal crashes during that time. The number of crashes remained relatively steady during that time. Got that? One third…
UPDATE: My bad for not noticing this note was written by a man, not a mom. And could it be he holds the patent? Wow, this sure does seem like a regular ol’ mom just writing in about a toy — the Fisher-Price Exercycle we were discussing in yesterday’s post. I’m sure there was no corporate brand manager behind this at all! Lenore and Naomi have lost touch with their inner child and apparently not studied on the subject of active/interactive/virtual learning. It is well known that activity spurs a child’s endocrine system to produce Brain Growth Hormones (i.e.BDNF). …
Here’s the article I was hoping to write about the new Fisher-Price stationary bike that tots are supposed to ride while watching “educational” videos. But since Naomi Schaefer Riley actually got around to putting her thoughts on paper and pixel, all the words are actually hers. How do you like that? This is from her column in the New York Post: Exercise Bikes for Toddlers are a Terrible Idea, by Naomi Schaefer Riley Parents, repeat after me: Children are not just shorter versions of adults. This is the important message that seems to have been missed by the geniuses at…
A year ago today, Mike Tang, a research chemist in Riverside, California, was frustrated and worried. He’d told his son to do his homework — read a grade-level book, like the teacher asked — but the boy, age 8, chose a baby book instead. . This was not the first time the boy had done this, and previous punishments like taking away his videogames hadn’t worked. So to put the fear of failure into his son, Tang drove him to the local shopping plaza at around 7:40 pm and showed him, “This is where homeless people sleep.” (There were no…
In California, a bill being introduced by State Senator (and pediatrician) Richard Pan, S.B.18, purports to ensure the rights of kids. The problem is: In the process it may curtail the rights of parents to raise their kids as they see fit. That is the fear, anyway. The rights that Pan lists are unquestionably great — the right of children to “appropriate, quality health care,” “social and emotional well-being,” “appropriate, quality education and life skills leading to self-sufficiency in adulthood” (right on!), and “opportunities to attain optimal cognitive, physical, and social development.” But who decides what IS “optimal social development”?…
This site tries not to wallow in nostalgia. (TRIES!) But the fact that this email comes from a reader who returned to EXACTLY where he grew up and saw only two kids is not just nostalgia, it’s anthropology: Dear Free-Range Kids: Two summers ago, I revisited my hometown for the first time in 6 years, after my dad died. A small city actually – it grew to 50,000 souls and leveled off at that number about 3 decades ago. The town is lovingly preserved….so much so that about 90% of all the schoolboy haunts I remember are still remarkably intact.…
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…
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.…