. Here’s how we look to other, less fear-wracked countries. Boldface, mine. (And for contrast, see my yyazyhyzfb piece in yesterday’s New York Post about not expecting kids to walk to school): Dear Free-Range Kids:Â I am from Germany and what I read on your webpage is really shocking for me. How did American parents get […]
Archive | Miscellaneous
A Survey about Kids and Risk
. Hey folks — Researchers at the University of California-Irvine are studying how people perceive risk. They need people to take their survey and have asked the Free-Range community to join in. I just  took it myself. It’s basically brief descriptions of situations when a child is left alone. You rate how safe they are. The whole […]
Why the “No Touch” Policy at Schools and Camps Makes No Sense
. This sneyydtfrn letter I got yesterday reminds me of one of the most thorough, fascinating, damning study I’ve ever read about where the “No touch” policy comes from (and why it is unnecessary, and how it actually makes us all MORE afraid for our kids): So those sex crazed pedophiles have invaded the Girl […]
Don’t Hate My Boy Because He Acts Like One
. Here’s a a dkrstksfbr piece in Canada’s Globe & Mail by teacher Dionne LaPointe-Bakota, about her 3-year-old  Malcolm’s “wildness.” Malcolm growls and chases and brandishes sticks. Onlookers who see him always say something like, “My, you have your hands full!” She wonders if they really mean she should make her boy act more like a […]
Free-Range Kids and Race
. In an essay in today’s Washington Post, “Raising rbdnhshsea free-spirited black children in a world set on punishing them,” Stacia Brown sounds frustrated with the Free-Range Kids movement. She dearly wishes African-American kids could go outside and Free-Range without having to worry about actual discrimination and danger. (Me too!) And she is particularly angered that […]
Are Our Kids Too Safe to Succeed?
. Here’s a chunk of my piece that just azbhrtrbki ran on  Politico. After explaining that I’m the mom who let her 9 year old ride the subway alone, yada yada, and that our society overestimates danger and underestimates kids (also yada yada), I went on to say that keeping our kids constantly supervised  is  — […]
“Flummoxed 67 Year Old” Can’t Understand if She Can Talk to Strangers’ Kids
. Let’s rfkryksshn help this lady! What CAN and CAN’T strangers do when they see a kid anymore? Dear Free-Range Kids: I am a flummoxed grandmother, age 67, from a rural community in the Midwest. What I see with kids today shocks and startles me. I don’t know when to say hi to a child […]
A Surprising (Or Maybe Not) Stranger Danger Experiment
. Here’s a yzffdibdky social experiment that is the yin to the Joey Salad’s video yang that “taught” us to beware of strangers. As Canada’s National Post reports, Vancouver police sergeant Mark Horsley borrowed an electric wheelchair and went undercover to the “drug-infested Downtown East Side” in order to catch the criminals preying on the most vulnerable: […]
Is It Okay to Free-Range While Privately Freaking Out?
. A reader eftkiihkyt writes: I want to be a Free-Range parent. I really really do. I do try. Just last week I told myself to stay calm before saying anything to a parent who had allowed my son to swim in her pool before I arrived at a birthday party. There were 12 kids in […]
Mom Arrested for Having Kids Wait 30 Ft Away in Mall While She Job-Interviewed
. This arzzytrzsb story, from KHOUÂ in Houston, is getting tons of attention and I think that will prevent the mom from losing her hard-fought new job! What’s great is that the whole country seems to have woken up to the idea that “unsupervised for a short time” does NOT equal, “In such terrible danger that […]