Hey Kids! Get Away From That Playground!!

The headline on this USA Today story sums it up: Playgrounds: They’re safer but still can be dangerous.
As opposed to — what? Anything can be dangerous.  Nothing can be 100% safe. Yesterday a man walking through Central Park got hit by a falling branch and now he’s in a coma. Should we cordon off Central Park? [...]

A Funny Video about Online Predators? Yup!

So I just  read yet another article about how to protect your child from all the perverts sliming around on social media, like MySpace and Facebook.
Hooey.
I’m all for protecting kids from crime and creeps, but the advice had it wrong. Both the Crimes Against Children Research Center and Harvard’s  Berkman Center for Internet and Society  [...]

Going Free-Range…After an Abduction

Hi Readers: Here’s a note of transformation from a mom of five who is going Free-Range after three decades of fear. Her oldest is 32, youngest is 10.
Thank you, thank you. I went from “You have got to be kidding — she let her kid take the subway?” to “This makes so much sense and [...]

Insane Overprotection at Day Care!

At the risk of wasting my, “What is this world coming to?” quota for life (I think we’re only issued about 7 million), WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO? Look at this article in Tuesday’s Washington Post. It’s about a brand new device, normally used to secure NUCLEAR REACTORS now being used to secure a…pre-school.
The [...]

Take the Free-Range Challenge! (It’s Almost Pathetically Easy)

Hey Free-Rangers!
Here’s a cool idea I got from the gal who runs the blog  Mommy Wizdom. She said: Why not post a  Free-Range Challenge and have folks write in to say how it went?
Sounds good to me! So here’s Free-Range Challenge #1,  based on a comment that just came into this site. A reader wrote:
I live in [...]

Bike Riding Dad Shot in the Name of “Safety”

If you needed more proof that our society is a little wacky when it comes to kids and safety, get a load of this: A North Carolina off-duty fireman SHOT A DAD RIDING HIS BIKE WITH HIS THREE-YEAR-OLD IN A BIKE SEAT because the fireman thought the road was too busy for this kind of [...]

More Outrage! English Schools Ban Ties For Fear of Choking

English school boys are suddenly being forced to switch from old-fashioned ties to clip-ons. What overactive overprotective notion is behind this development, sent in by reader Gregory Sutter? The BBC explains:  
In May the Schoolwear Association, the trade body for the school uniform industry, said 10 schools a week in the UK were switching, because of [...]

Outrage of the Week: “Marshmallow Safety Tips”

Gotta thank Amy Bronee, host of the show Real Parenting on C-FAX in Canada for alerting me to this story in the National Post:

Minding your marshmallows
Katherine Dedyna, Canwest News Service  Published: Friday, July 24, 2009
There’s no such thing as being too careful when it comes to kids and camping – even for hyper-vigilant parents. But peril can [...]

Pedophiles, Witches & Kids

Sometimes, when I try to explain how frenzied we have become about the real but extremely rare crime of childhood abduction, I compare our era to that of 1692 Salem. There was no way — back then, back there — to convince the average person: Don’t you see you’re being swept up on a wave [...]

Why I Rolled My Eyes On FoxNews Today

Now I know how Al Gore felt.
 Well, at least about playing to TV.
Remember how he was caught rolling his eyes during one of the Presidential debates, and that sealed his fate – for some folks, anyway – as a hopelessly smug know-it-all?
I rolled my eyes on TV today, too. Wish I hadn’t, because I don’t [...]