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…
Author: lskenazy
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…
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! Go back to having fun! But if you want a quick break, here’s a 3-minute clip of me on the Kennedy show on Fox Business a few days ago. I wish I could figure out the embed code (if anyone can, please send), but since I can’t, just click on this. You’ll recognize some of the “Top 11 Worst Free-Range Moments of 2016.” I publicize these stories are not just to get us mad. They are to sow the seeds of change. I can’t think of anyone who wants their loving, rational parenting choices to…
Ah, the joy of telling a parent that YOU care so more than THEY do about their own kid. Nothing like that glimmering, shimmering sense of vengeance, hate and saintliness. It is with such an encounter that this wonderful piece by Bruce Grierson in Canada’s “Walrus” (it’s like their New Yorker) begins: Colette Anderson and her five-year-old son were approaching the checkout line at a Save-On-Foods in North Vancouver when she realized they’d left her shopping list at the sushi place in the mall. A hundred metres away, just out of sight. “Would you mind going and grabbing it while…
Maybe the answer to, “How can we get kids back to walking to school?” is, “Um…suggest it?” That’s what St. Raphael Catholic School in Toronto did. The student-run Heath Action Team pushed for kids at the K-8 school to start walking. They held a why-it’s-good-to-walk assembly, they organized official walk-to-school days on the last Friday of every month, and they partnered with Safe Routes to Schools, which did a study of the reasons parents don’t let their kids walk. And? Here’s what Metronews.ca reporter May Warren found: A blast of cold winter weather didn’t stop St. Raphael Catholic School student…
It was the year of Pokemon Panic—any toy that gets kids outside must be stopped! —and the year a Florida school cancelled its “Powder Puff” all-girl football game (suggesting the girls bob for apples instead). It was the year that we saw the first academic study of bouncy house temperatures—”something that no one had really examined in the published literature,” according to one of the researchers. Imagine that. But in all, it was a particularly great year for busybodies. This video went viral—a man screaming at a woman who had the gall to pop into the gas station while her…
Wondering how to stay safe this terrifying happy holiday season? Here are some actual tips from the police of Fishers, Indiana. Fishers, by the way, was named the #1 city for families by The Learning Channel. (Maybe because they’re too scared to go outside, so they’re inside watching…the Learning Channel?) It was also named one of America’s “friendliest” towns by MSN.com-Forbes. Wikipedia reports the median Fishers family income is $103,176. But read this advice from the cops and you’d think it’s the third circle of Hell. I was going to just choose my favorite tips, which include, “Residents should NEVER…
Wow! A real-world example of how NOT IMPOSSIBLE it is to pop the parenting bubble of fear. Dear Free-Range Kids: When our kids were pre-school aged I noticed that our park visits were taken up with pushing kids on the swings, or helping them up things. One day I noticed that parents were in the way of everything — making the rules, enforcing the rules, and generally stopping kids from noticing that other kids existed in the park! One day at a picnic my husband spent an hour pushing our three year old daughter — she loved it, but he…
Here’s a question to crowdsource: Dear Free-Range Kids: My son makes a wonderful Free-Range Kid. His older sister not so much. In Grade 4 she still holds my hand walking to the school bus and is very upset that I have determined that they walk the last two blocks on their own. Daily she begs me to walk all the way. I know that she is capable and competent. If she were to get locked out of the house, she is sufficiently resourceful to handle the situation. But she almost never goes outside without me unless I essentially physically propel…