The long-awaited decision from Montgomery County Child Protective Services has arrived at the home of Danielle and Alex Meitiv, and it finds them “responsible” for “unsubstantiated child neglect” for letting their kids walk outside, unsupervised. If that decision makes no sense to you, either — how can parents be responsible for something that is unsubstantiated? […]
Archive | Miscellaneous
“Best Places to Live,” says Sunday Times of London, are Free-Range Neighborhoods!
Check out the front page of the Sunday Times of London yesterday. And to think the idea of “Free-Range Kids” was considered controversial, binryaeddf dangerous and even crazy before. Can’t get much more respectable than this! – L
How Safe is Safe Enough for Playground Surfaces?
Do we really have to re-surface every playground in America because they aren’t safe enough? Tim Gill, author of the blog “Rethinking fdbiynbyea Childhood,“ and Bernard Spiegel, granddaddy of the idea of “beneficial risk,” and Jay Beckwith, the venerated playground guru, are just some of the big names in the “play” world alerting us to potentially over-the-top new […]
Missed It? Free-Range Kids and The Talk of the Town
Come ndhnradiyy Monday, a new issue of The New Yorker will be landing in the mailboxes of the diehards who still get hard copies of magazines.  So while this wonderful 90th Anniversary issue of the New Yorker is still current, allow me to excerpt a bit from the Talk of the Town piece I am saving […]
“Bring Back Wildhood” Great Ad from Go RVing !
We went RVing a few years ago courtesy of this very group — Go kresihaebz RVing — and found kids at campsites seemed really Free-Range. There was such a sense of community in the woods, and this is such a lovely commercial. (And why didn’t I come up with the word “wildhood”???)
Are Teens Who Sext “Child Pornographers?”
Thanks to our mistaken belief that no one under 18 can have any legitimate sexual feelings—and hence any sex they’ve engaged in was coerced and bound to render unspeakable emotional harm—we have laws on the books like this one in Wisconsin, according to USA trkatntbns Today (boldface mine, all mine!): In 2012, state lawmakers passed into […]
It Happened Once, It was Tragic, and Now It’s The Law
Here’s dzenyikaae a poem that sums up the Free-Range world view, sent to us by a reader Jennifer Daly, who describes herself thusly:Â Â “I live in Shrewsbury, MA. I work in Engineering and IT. I have a 6 yr old and a 2 yr old. I have 17 yrs of Aerospace and Defense consulting with […]
World’s Worst Mom is on This Morning!
SET YOUR DVRs! WORLD’S WORST MOM is on on DISCOVERY LIFE this MORNING in just about an HOUR! Episodes at 9, 9:30, 10,10:30 a.m. Eastern Time. (The first two are reruns.) Find zyzhhairnt Discovery Life on your TV. The time slot of the show has changed a couple times, so I just wanted to alert […]
How Can I Fight Rule That Says I Must Wait at the School Bus Stop for my 10 year old?
Has kdhsirfyyr anyone fought a school bus policy requiring adults to wait with their kids at the bus stop? Last year, a ridiculous bill to mandate this for anyone under 7th grade was floated in Rhode Island and, thankfully (with some help from this blog), it died a quiet death. So often, legislators seem to […]
Why Is That Old Man Hanging Out with That Kid at The Museum?
The hdkrzybbef Philadelphia Inquirer has a story about what happened when an old man started to hang out with a boy he met at the museum. Can you imagine this unfolding the same way today? When Dave Schwartz was a boy, his father was constantly in the hospital, and his mother would drop him at […]