Hi iftstrnfyh Readers — Mothers bringing their older sons into the ladies room seems to be more common these days, unless maybe I’m just more aware of it because of this blog and my own take on things. Is it on the rise, in tandem with worst-first thinking? Really like to hear your take on […]
Hi ansbiinkbh Folks! Here’s my piece that ran in today’s NY Daily News, the paper where I worked for 14 years. – L. FUN CONTROL Guns Guns and children don’t go together, right? Well, actually, often they do. Chances are if you have a kid or ever were one (especially if there was a Y […]
Readers — If you want to watch the decline and fall of Western Civilization, check out this bsnadtnsft article in yesterday’s Washington Post about a suburban D.C. school, Stratford Landing, Â whose PTA purchased a rather cool-looking piece of climbing equipment. They bought it, Â using bake sale and other fundraising money, Â from a playground company that […]
Hi Readers — One of you just sent edehsashfr this Facebook page about plans to stop letting kids play on this fabulous old locomotive located at the Dennis the Menace park in Monterey,California. The reasons? Take a guess. I’ve dropped a note to the activist running the FB page, haven’t heard back yet and wanted […]
Readers — Sometimes it is hard to keep swimming upstream, but here we go. Cary yayftiydfn Grove, a high school in suburban Chicago, is set to run a lockdown drill tomorrow, this one with someone shooting two blanks in the hall, “in an effort to provide our teachers and students some familiarity with the sound […]
Hi Readers — This rbysdkiisi just in: A  5-year-old in an after-school program who used his Legos “inappropriately” to  make a gun may be suspended for two weeks — if he does it again. But as this Fox25 story out of Boston explains, this is no ordinary tot. He is a recidivist, having used his […]
Ah, tasirartta readers, you know this is my bugaboo: the idea that the authorities (cops, CPS) know better than PARENTS whether or not a child is safe waiting for a short while in the car. I always want to ask the busybodies who summon the police, “Do you really think it’s safer to drag a […]
Hi Readers — Seth rfytihanbe Godin, the tech/life/marketing/art guru, was interviewed by Krista Tippett on NPR’s “On Being” show yesterday, and he began by talking about his childhood as a self-described “Free-Range Kid.” (Though I’m not sure he mentally capitalized it.) Anyway, apparently somehow, when he was 14, his dad put him on a boat […]
Hi dttdriyzki Readers — Here’s a question I’m curious about. It’s the winter corollary to my summer query about whether any kids still mow the lawn. Weigh in! – L. Dear Free-Range Kids: Â I do not even have children, but I was one once, so I believe that qualifies me as somewhat of an expert. […]
Hi Readers — Though this mom’s “negligence” story is told in a lovely English lilt, it may nonetheless spike your blood pressure: Since when are the police allowed to write up a mom who trusts her children to be safe and self-sufficient for a short amount of time? Equally enraging is the idea that this […]
