Tag Archives | too safe to succeed

pearls before swine on file

All Hail Pearls Before Swine and Stephan Pastis!

Stephan Pastis, forgive me for reprinting this here, but we are so on your side! And you are on ours! Here’s the link to Stephan’s reirayaran Facebook page, and his website, and — heck — his Twitter feed. And his road tour calendar! And for those who can’t read the strip because it’s too small on […]

Continue Reading
Is there a way to get kids back outside, making their own fun, unsupervised, unstructured, untrophied?

That Gigantic New York Times Piece about Free Play

In yhhhnsfhbi Silicon Valley, a dad named Mike Lanza wanted to create for his three sons the same kind of Free-Range childhood he’d enjoyed as a kid back in Pittsburgh in the ’70s: Time with buddies, having adventures, riding bikes and goofing around.  . Since this is the 21st century and childhood is so much […]

Continue Reading
Girls -- stand back! There's a fire!

Whose Idea Was it That Children are Fragile and Stupid?

Readers — Over and over I keep realizing how grateful kids are when we lean OUT of their lives a little and let them show us how competent they really are. I love this letter! – L.  Dear Free-Range Kids: I stumbled on your site when a backpacking guide friend asked me what approach she […]

Continue Reading

Nancy Nord on Common Sense and Imaginary Dangers

The other day I had lunch with Nancy Nord, a former commissioner at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Joining us was one of my personal heroes, Philip Howard. Here’s what Nancy wrote on her blog, Conversations with Consumers, a forum that doggedly points out the difference (and distance) between safety and paranoia. As a gal […]

Continue Reading