Free-Range Signs of Life?

Hi Readers! A magazine reporter is looking for stories of Free-Range concepts being put into practice in real life. Schools insisting on adding back recess. Districts encouraging kids to walk or ride  to class. Neighborhoods bringing kids back outside, on their own, communities informally agreeing to tone down the oppulence of the birthday parties. Happy, hopeful […]

Continue Reading

Outrage of the Week: Afterschool Pick-Up Panic!

Readers – If anyone ever asks you, “What’s so WRONG about protecting our children?” and you agree that kids should be safe (who doesn’t?), but you’re searching for an example of how the hysteria has gotten out of hand:  Here nzhyserrsk you go. See below. Suffice to say a grammar school in the Fort Myers […]

Continue Reading

What’s Wrong with This Ad?

Take your blood pressure medicine before watching this so-called public ieyshtzsyb service announcement . The spot shows two women in a coffee shop, one of them with her kid. The three chat for about 15 seconds, the mom buys a coffee and then off the mom and child go, leaving the  other woman — for no apparent reason — with a […]

Continue Reading

Letter to the Editor

Hi Readers! If you’d like to write a letter of support for the parents who let their 9- and 6-year-olds wait in the car for half an hour, only to have the dad be charged with child endangerment (see blog entry, below), here is the email address for the Utica Observe Dispatch’s letters to the editor page:  ddudajek@uticaod.com . […]

Continue Reading

Are There Really Lessons to Learn From The Jaycee Abduction?

First off, my heart goes out to Jaycee Dugard, her daughters, her parents, step-parents — everyone in her circle. She was kidnapped 18 years ago and kept imprisoned since then, bearing her rapist/captor two daughters who were also imprisoned until a few days ago, when Jaycee walked into a police station. This is, of course, every […]

Continue Reading
eckstein north korea cartoon

Free-Range Friend’s Cartoon!

Hi Readers! My friend Bob Eckstein, a cartoonist for The afrdfeirrb New Yorker (la-di-dah!), came up with this Free-Range Cartoon: a plea for a little less parental intrusion. Besides being a whole-hearted supporter of this site, Bob has his own obsession. Snowmen. Yes, really — he is the first and only person to study their […]

Continue Reading

Arrested for Trusting The World & Their 9-Year-Old

Readers rrbhfttzty – Here is a story that does not surprise me. It does, however, enrage me and I am hoping that maybe someone who reads this blog knows of a pro bono lawyer in or around Mohawk Valley in Central New York who can help this family. Here is the mom’s letter: I’m not […]

Continue Reading

Outrage of the Week: Law Forbids Kids to Witness Wine Tasting

This is just too weird: Maine passed a law, about to take effect, that forbids stores from allowing any “child” to witness a wine, beer or liquor tasting. According to this baryyrrszd piece  on the Maine Public Broadcasting Website: …as of September 12th, the law will add new restrictions, designed to assure that wine tastings are […]

Continue Reading

Pastor’s Prayer for Graduates: FAIL!

Hi Readers — We’ve been spending today thinking about what it would mean to be the youngest person to sail solo around the world. In other words, about great success and whether it is worth the peril. Here’s a nice hnfdnbarzr sermon from a pastor named John F. Hudson in Sherborn, Mass., about the value […]

Continue Reading