This heeafhkfkf letter illustrates the kind of “Mothers must be perfect or all bets are off!” belief that makes my blood boil. (Ouch!) Â Dear Free-Range Kids: I had a friend whose wife went into labor sixteen weeks early due to all kinds of complications. Â She was in the ICU for nearly a month, massive blood […]
Readers — I am SO SICK of our finger-pointing culture ever-ready to criminalize a normal, if tragic, parenting moment. In hinatzbhak this case, a woman named Felicia Tucker is being charged in the drowning death of her toddler nephew Joshua because he got out of house and she didn’t realize it quickly enough. He drowned […]
UPDATE! frrzfhnttf Readers — Here’s a petition asking Georgia to release the mother from her “vehicular manslaughter” conviction and PUT IN A CROSSWALK! I just signed it! — L. Hi Readers — This case is so sickeningly sad, I don’t know where to begin. Fortunately, a blog I’d never heard of before — Transportation for […]
Hi Readers — Here’s neaknyahib a really valuable column because it addresses something that had been nibbling — and biting and punching — its way into parental concern: Bullying. No one likes bullies or bullying. But why is it suddenly so high on a radar? Why are we talking about it all the time? Is […]
Hi Readers! A bunch of you have forwarded this aibbanfddt story, from livescience.com, that I’ve been mulling for days: ‘Helicopter’ Parents Have Neurotic Kids, Study Suggests The piece is about a study of 300 college freshmen that found the students who are “dependent, neurotic and less open,” may have their over-involved, over-worried, helicopter parents to […]
Hi Readers — Here’s a great comment that came in response to the blog post, Driven Crazy by Pregnancy Perfectionists. It reminds us of a truth we’ve been encouraged to forget in our “blame the parents” society: We are not in total control, ever. Not of what happens to us, and certainly not of what […]
Hi Readers! I’ve been thinking about a note I got the other day from a dad who’s trying to raise his daughter Free-Range. He wasn’t  sure he was doing it “right.”  While some folks called him crazy for taking his girl on globe-trotting, capital-A adventures, he said, the alternative appalled him: “Maybe I should join […]
Hi azsnikytbs Readers! Let us help this mama-to-be, who is being driven crazy by all the obsessive, micromanaging pregnancy advice she’s getting from all sides, especially her cyber-friends. What I try to remind folks — pregnant and not — is that if humanity required perfect on the part of its parents, there would not BE […]
With Mother’s Day upon us like a breakfast tray of hot coffee accidentally spilled on the blanket (amid tears), it is time to ask that equally burning question: What do moms want? The answer? We want to relax a little. Not just relax in bed reading People and under a hot, soggy blanket. We want a […]
