Hi Readers — With summer in full gear, let me request you all to teach your children to swim. Free-Range Kids believes in safety and resourcefulness and swimming lessons! — L. Dear Free-Range Kids: My family has been spending most of our time at our local swim club. I’m happy to say it is a Free-Range parent’s dream: five acres of land and multiple pools. Kids running freely with their friends while parents can have conversations and enjoy the adult swims. The swim club is still pretty old school but I’ve noticed some changes. They took out the diving boards…
Author: lskenazy
Folks — Here’s a story that manages to encapsulate exactly why “stranger danger” is such a stupid — no, HARMFUL — concept to preach. On Saturday afternoon, a little girl named Jackie was reported missing in a state park in Rhode Island. As The Westerly Sun reported: At 3:50 p.m., Charlestown police received a report of a child missing at the 3,100-acre campground. The child, a 7-year-old girl from Connecticut named Jackie with shoulder-length blonde hair, had been last seen wearing a tie-dyed bathing suit and pink Croc clogs, riding her bicycle. The bike was found on the park’s yellow-dot…
Hi Readers! Here’s a letter about a homemade camp started by two moms that just may inspire you the same way THEY got inspired last year, thanks to ideas being spread by Mike Lanza of Playborhood. (Here’s a cool post by him of how he turned his front yard into a neighborhood hangout.) If you start a camp, let us know! L. Dear Free-Range Kids: I wanted to let you know that you, Mike Lanza, and the Camp Iris Way creators inspired me and a fellow mom, Karen Hoffman, to start out own neighborhood camp. The first annual “Montara Street…
Hey Readers — Here’s a really wacky story from Iowa. An elementary school principal, Terry Eisenbarth, was investigated for “whapping” kids as part of their birthday celebrations at school — that is, hitting the kids lightly with a super-padded paddle. Sounds like one of those things that just becomes a goofy tradition, but in our abuse-crazed culture, I’m sure you can guess what happened next: Even though only the kids who WANTED a whapping got one, two families objected to the practice as if the principal was practicing bondage and discipline (in plain sight of the other kids, and teachers,…
Folks — I am loving your responses to the post below this one, which was about all the expensive things a parenting magazine says you need for a lemonade stand. (And the fact that the mag also calls it a “family lemonade stand,” as if kids can’t possibly be trusted to do anything on their own. ) So feel free to peruse them. Here’s one that made me cheer: Dear Free-Range Kids: This post inspired the perfect kind of summer-fun afternoon for my girls, ages 8 and 7 and 4. And as a side-benefit, it also put an end to…
Hi Folks — We all know that magazines exist to sell things, but this example seems particularly outrageous: A parenting magazine lists all the things your kids need to run a lemonade stand — from name brand ice cube trays to an actual, store-bought stand, to a juicer to squeeze the lemons (has no one heard of hands? Or lemonade mix?) — and the total is pushing $300. If you want the breakdown of all the costs, here it is! – L (and don’t diss me for vlogging! I am trying to embrace all sorts of new things!)[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rUoKz7HvPg?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
Hi Folks! This note was posted by a high school student commenting on the story of the school that allowed two students to fry Ferrari red because they weren’t carrying a doctor’s prescription for non-prescription sunblock. But maybe that school loses to this one, in the sticklers department. — L. Dear Free-Range Kids: This reminds me of a ‘chemical spill’ my school had a couple months back. Keep in mind this is a high school, with around 800 14-18 year olds walking the halls. We were told to evacuate because of a ‘chemical spill’ in one of the science labs…
Hi Readers! I just learned that the United States Post Office will not allow you to ship anything with a lithium battery — like, say, an iPad — overseas: Lithium batteries are included in many popular electronic devices such as iPads, Kindles, smartphones, cameras and other electronic devices. The batteries can explode or catch fire in certain conditions during overseas transport. This change is required by the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU), both of which currently prohibit lithium batteries in mail shipments that are carried on international commercial air transportation. USPS…
Hi Readers — This story is just so wild, I had to put it here and ask YOU to parse it. Long and short of it: Someone knocked on the door of a Phoenix, AZ home during the afternoon, when a 14-year-old boy was babysitting his three younger siblings. He didn’t recognize the woman so he didn’t answer the door. Soon after, the teen heard a bang on the door, rushed his siblings upstairs and got a handgun from his parent’s bedroom. When he got to the top of the stairs, he saw a man breaking through the front door…
Readers — In today’s New York Times there’s an article about a new type of food product: a pouch parents can give their kids to suck, rather than making them go through all the rigamarole of, you know, eating food from a plate. Or even a bun. Or even chewing. Putting aside my feelings about the product, I was shocked to read the inventor’s explanation for why a feeding tube…er, sorry, pouch…is suddenly necessary for kids: Mr. Grimmer believes the pouch’s popularity can be attributed to the emergence of a new way of relating to our children. He calls it…