Lady Helps Boy Down from Tree, School Accuses Her of “Trespassing”

Dear Readers: This one just proves what monkeys we become when we refuse to use our brains (or tails). A 5-year-old boy in England climbed up a tree at the end of recess. Fine. But rather than helping — or even ordering — him down, the teachers followed their “health and safety” guidelines…and left him [...]

Hats Off (Per Usual) To The Onion!

Thank you, Onion, for your invaluable perspective: Increasing Number of Parents Opting to Have Children School-Homed.

Start Your Week Off Right!

Hi Readers — This just in. Read it and grin. — L. Dear Free-Range Kids: My 9-year-old son and I went to a little strip mall yesterday. It has five stores. Joey needed a haircut and I needed thank you cards and wine. I sent him with money to get his hair cut while I hit [...]

Excuse Me? You Need a “Family Locator” To Track Your Tween at the Mall?

Hi Readers — Well, here it is. The ad that a bunch of you alerted me to this week. It shows a mom and daughter in a mall, near an escalator. The mom is letting her daughter shop “on her own” for the first time.  (“On her own” turns out to mean with two friends, [...]

Lessons from The Baby-sitters Club

Hi Folks! Here’s a lovely essay by The Wall Street Journal’s Laura Vanderkam about, well, the cultural significance of The Baby-sitters Club. Yes, I know how ridiculous (or at least American Studies for Dummies) that sounds. And yet — you don’t sell 176 million copies of any series without making some kind of impression on [...]

Why Is This Radical? A Town Debates LETTING Kids Ride Their Bikes to School

Hi Readers! This is an encouraging story (from boston.com), in that Arlington, MA., a town outside of Boston, is pushing to get more kids biking to school.  But the fact that this initiative is CONTROVERSIAL is enough to make you bang your head against a bike horn. (Or vice versa.) Here’s a bit of the [...]

New Technology May Allow Future Kids to PLAY OUTSIDE

Hi Readers! Afternoon fun (yes, ’tis a joke), thanks to brilliant Brian Briggs at bbspot.com: Motion Control Advances Mean Future Generations Could Play Outside by Brian Briggs Recent advances in motion controller technology as exhibited by Sony’s PlayStation Move and Microsoft’s Project Natal reveal a future where newer generations of gamers could play things like [...]

Help! How Can Mom Explain She is Raising Independent (Not Neglected) Kids?

Hi Readers! This mom needs some great ideas in how to deal with friends, neighbors — and PASTOR — who equate “Free-Range” with NEGLECT. Let’s give her some strategies! — Lenore Dear Free-Range Kids: My nine-year-old, eight-year-old and five-year-old have been walking to school alone for a couple of months now. The walk is about [...]

Ho Ho HOA! A Happy Kids ‘n Homeowners Story!

Hi Readers! Here’s a nice story for a Sunday. Enjoy! Dear Free-Range Kids: Due to a recent bankruptcy and divorce my four children (ages 6-14) and I moved from our home of 10 years (great neighborhood) into a small group of very upscale townhomes. We are renting. I didn’t see much evidence of children around the [...]

Killer Kids: Blame the Parents?

Hi Readers — This note came in response to my ParentDish column, “New Study: Parents Stink.” Sometimes I am just, well, blown away by the logical leaps people take: “I am a mother of a 26 year old man and a 13 year old boy. I give my 13 year old as much freedom as [...]