Hi hsnizyffhf Readers — I wholeheartedly endorse this note! Dear Free-Range Kids:Â Recently I started watching hours of “Law and Order SVU” (streaming live on Netflix for graduate students wanting to procrastinate!) and it’s really quite absurd to watch after a year of following your blog. The episodes where there is a child abduction or attempted […]
Tag Archives | fear
Men as Babysitters: What’s So Scary?
Hi Readers! Over at Lisa Belkin’s Motherlode at the NY Times, there’s a really frank sftzfyieff and nicely written piece by a woman who came to the exact opposite conclusion I did. She was mulling whether or not to hire a male babysitter for her child. On the one hand, the young man she interviewed […]
Halloween Follow-Up — by YOU
Hi Readers! I’ve been behind in my emails and just found this cool idea. Comes from a gal named Catherine. Let’s do it! Dear dbrrzsnank Free-Range Kids:Â How about a post-Halloween column where you challenge your readers to scan their local news and post ANY violent incidents that happened at Halloween? I just scanned my local […]
How Predator Panic Spreads Around the World
Hi Readers! As you may recall, I was recently in Australia, where I was sort of surprised to hear how much their culture mirrors ours in terms of fear. The Aussies seem to be a bit less frantic — props to them — but there were still enough, “What harrezaayb about predators?” to make me […]
Amazing Halloween Horror Story!
Hi Readers — Read it and creep: Â This kfzeyatits fantastic article from The American Spectator is about how Manchester, New Hampshire, imposed a law, on the books for decades, making Halloween officially the Sunday afternoon BEFORE Oct. 31. The law was, of course, in reaction to all the usual Halloween fears — razors, poison, torture […]
How Do You Tell A Total Helicopter to Back Off?
Okay, dszykztnyi Readers. Let’s help this mom out! Dear Free-Range Kids:  Finding this blog several years ago validated my desire to back off and let my kids be kids. At that time, I was mostly associating with “helicopter parents” and feeling inadequate for not wanting to micromanage my children’s every waking moment. And yet, one helicopter […]
Not Completely Relevant But: How Many Australian Politicians Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb?
Hi Readers! The answer is, apparently: None! It is too dangerous! At least, that’s what the Department of Health and Safety says, according to this khzikkeztz article. The issue surfaced during a Senate estimates hearing when Liberal Eric Abetz told upper house colleagues he was prevented recently from changing a light bulb in his electorate office. […]
A Nice Note from An Aussie (About Serial Killers)
Hey bkiiizhnhe Readers — This was an extremely nice reaction to my talk at the Sydney Opera House yesterday, so how could I resist posting it? Tomorrow I’ll be at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne (free!). Â And after that…back to America! Dear Lenore: I loved what you had to say about how news was once […]
Hooray for Australian Media! (And Especially The Sydney Morning Herald)
Hi Readers! The Australian media have been very keen on the Free-Range Kids story. I’ve done more than a dozen TV, radio and print interviews so far, Â but it wasn’t until this morning, when I was on a drive-time radio talk show, that I finally heard the words: “Oh, I could never let my child […]
Stuffed Animal Blown Up by Bomb Squad
Greetings, Readers, from the land of the free, home of the — YIKES! akftdaeyeb A stuffed animal! Perhaps you’ve heard this story: Yesterday, a stuffed-animal about 2 feet high standing near a school caused imaginations to go wild in Orlando (where you’d never, ever expect to see a large, fake animal). It was a pony-shaped […]