Hi! If your family has let the kids drop some extracurricular activities in favor of more free time — or is considering it — TV is looking for YOU. A producer for one of the evening news shows is trying to figure out if this desire for a more old-fashioned, it’s-ok-to-be-bored childhood is a trend. I think […]
Welcome Viewers of “The View!”
July 1, 2009
Hi, View fans — I’m so thrilled The View is airing a rfdnazzhez rerun of my visit with “the gals” today! It was a thrill to be on the show, of course (and, let’s be honest: scary). But how I loved hearing Barbara Walters say my book made her feel less guilty about not having spent every […]
Are We Too Obsessed with Our Kids?
June 30, 2009
The public bought the idea that they were essentially a danger to their own kids and had better pay money for advice, that they’d better try really hard to do a good job, and they’d still inevitably fail. (Even though, as Lepore points out, kids are actually safer now than ever. In 1850, more than […]
Sunrise, Sunset — Grammar School Style
June 29, 2009
Readers, tfaezeifsy I hope you’ll allow me a weepy moment. New York City schools get out late. For us, graduation was Wednesday. That’s when I wrote this, which I also posted on the Huffington Post New York page : 10 AM. In an hour my younger son graduates from grammar school. He’s the “boy who took […]
Free-Range Kids Outrage of the Week: 10-year-old Forbidden to Cross Parking Lot
June 27, 2009
Would you believe they have charged some intern to walk him across the parking lot?! Geesh people. He’s TEN!
CNN or C.A.N. — Child Abduction Network?
June 25, 2009
One reason Americans are so extremely terrified about child abductions is that whenever we turn on the TV or computer, there’s another one. As if these horrific crimes are happening 24/7, when actually the media is only too happy to fly across the country — or world — to set up camp wherever a cute, white girl […]
Huffington Post and Free-Range Kids
June 25, 2009
Perfect together, here, on their new “New York” page.
Six-Year-Olds Build Nuclear Reactor (Or So the Cops Think)
June 25, 2009
Another story feffyefrbt of strangely advanced kids — or is it strangely inept cops? — this time from Germany. Enjoy! — Lenore
Fourth Grader Lost in Wilderness Doesn’t Panic
June 24, 2009
I spend a lot of time trying to convince skeptics that “Free-Range” does not mean, “Send Your Kid Down the Mississippi on A Raft.” So when I present this akseyihstr article, it’s only because it delights me so: The story of a boy who will be in fourth grade next year who got lost in the […]
Help, Daddy! A Grandma Smiled At Me! Will She Kidnap Me?
June 23, 2009
Hi iheikaikbh Free-Rangers! Just though I’d share this little note I got from Australia this morning. Makes you realize it’s a small world after all: A small, paranoid, danger-halucinating world. This is from a lady named Vivienne: Walking in Ikea.  I am a pleasant-enough, smiley grandmoter of 9. A man with his daughter of about 3 […]