Let Grow’s annual Think for Yourself Essay Contest asks high school students intriguing questions about the role of free speech and open-mindedness in their everyday lives, including: *When did you speak up — or not — knowing your view might be unpopular? *Was there a time you could have taken offense […]
To “future-proof” is to design a piece of software, or a subway, or almost anything else expensive and important, with an eye toward the future. You try to build in flexibility for whatever is coming ahead. For instance, when I was a kid, my grandfather still had a giant radio console with an empty square […]
For over a decade I’ve been thinking about how we got so scared for our kids — and how our kids got so scared of seemingly normal childhood activities. Enter John Piacentini, a Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA where he runs an entire program — CARES — dedicated to identifying and reversing anxiety in kids. […]
“Stranger Danger” gets it SO WRONG that even the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is asking adults to stop teaching it to kids — or believing it themselves. Over at Let Grow today I discuss the enduring legacy of the evil stranger trope and what to teach kids instead. And as I point […]
…turn a budding interest into an adult-led activity. It’s as simple as that. Over at Let Grow, we’ve got some more observations of what turns on a child’s curiosity and the modern way to accidentally turn it off. Click here to read Part 1 of How to Nurture Kids’ Curiosity.
Talk about a perfect analogy. Today at Let Grow, we discuss what happens when kids are raised, according to society’s demands, with adults who never let them fall or fail. And then shoo them off to adulthood. The author, Vanessa Elias, has several sound ideas for how to make the home a little more like […]
Yet another guy screamed at a mom for letting her kid wait in the car while she ran in to get a gallon of milk – but with a twist: He was a carjacker who’d just stolen her car. The second he noticed the kid in the back seat he sped back to the parking […]
Strange but true, as I write over at Let Grow: The students were evacuated to the football field as Hazmat teams rushed to the scene. The local prosecutor was alerted, so were the police. Responders entered the building and investigated room by room. What calamity beset Haddon Township High School in New Jersey’s Camden County […]
If you check out this thread that’s been burning up Twitter, you will read a story almost as long as the 6-hour ordeal the dad describes, which began when his daughter wanted some baked beans and the father, John Roderick — a.k.a. “Bean Dad” — told her to open a can and heat some up. […]
Let’s hope that 2021 is the year several states pass Reasonable Childhood Independence / Free-Range Parenting bills, as Utah did in 2018. Right now, it’s looking good in Idaho, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas and possibly Nebraska. This year in Colorado a Democrat and a Republican co-sponsored a Reasonable Childhood Independence bill. The two women were […]
