An alternative to paranoia regarding the safety of your children: Free Range Kids

Remember the woman who was criticized for allowing her highly competent 9-year old boy find his way home on the Manhattan subway? Her name is Lenore Skenazy. She's a syndicated columnist and she's not retreating a single inch. She has created a website called Free Range Kids. In April, 2009, she published a book called Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. Here's how she sums up the widespread American problem:

Somehow, a whole lot of parents are just convinced that nothing outside the home is safe. At the same time, they’re also convinced that their children are helpless to fend for themselves. While most of these parents walked to school as kids, or hiked the woods — or even took public transportation — they can’t imagine their own offspring doing the same thing. They have lost confidence in everything: Their neighborhood. Their kids. And their own ability to teach their children how to get by in the world.

Lenore reminds us to consider our own "dangerous" childhoods when thinking of extending your own child's leash--and she has drawn hundreds of lively comments. What is general solution?

We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less. This site dedicated to sane parenting . . .

I started this site for anyone who thinks that kids need a little more freedom and would like to connect to people who feel the same way. We are not daredevils. We believe in life jackets and bike helmets and air bags. But we also believe in independence. Children, like chickens, deserve a life outside the cage. The overprotected life is stunting and stifling, not to mention boring for all concerned. So here’s to Free Range Kids, raised by Free Range Parents willing to take some heat. I hope this web site encourages us all to think outside the house.

This is a well-considered site with lots of ideas for tempering our paranoia about child abductions and sexual predators. Here are a few additional Free Range Children stories that I recommend from Lenore's site:

The end of the Super-Mom Era.

How cell phones can stunt your children's emotional growth.

Here's another article detailing the subway adventure. And here's Lenore's three-minute video describing her approach.

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Atheist billboards spring up in St. Louis.

The "Religion" section the local newspaper (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch) has reported that a new billboard has sprung up smack dab in politically and religiously conservative west St. Louis County:

"Imagine no religion," it reads in a medieval-looking font, framed in a colorful stained-glass window pattern. The small billboard, on a strip of Manchester Road crowded with retail outlets, also gives the Web address for its sponsor, the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation.
The Post-Dispatch article includes an interview with the founder of FFRF, Annie Laurie Gaylor. She was asked about the inspirational aspects of religion:

What about the message behind the Beatitudes that Christ delivered in the Sermon on the Mount? The meek shall inherit the earth, blessed are the peacemakers, etc.

"I have a lot of objections to the Beatitudes which encourage meekness, docility and not changing this world," Gaylor said. "That's a good message for rulers to give to those who they rule over."

The stated purpose of FFRF is to promote:

the separation of state and church. Its purposes, as stated in its bylaws, are to promote the constitutional principle of separation of state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

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The Right is wrong

My 10 year old daughter came home from school last week, and while she sat with me eating her after-school snack asked me; “Is President Obama a racist?” she said. “No, honey, where’d you hear that?” I said. “Well, [so and so] said that in class to me today and I just wanted to know,” she said. “Did the person tell you where they had heard such a thing, honey?” I asked. “Yeah, [their] grandpa said it,” my daughter replied. “He heard it on TV.” My daughter and I had a discussion on what is racism, its source in ignorance, and how it’s just plain wrong. We also talked about the TV and radio shows which spread intolerance and bigotry for profit and political gain. My daughter’s eyes glazed over a little, and I said; “Thanks for letting me know what’s up with you! Go play with your friends!” Well, I never thought it could happen but, there is obviously no lowest depth of putrid vile chicanery that the far right wing racists will go to block anything that President Obama is up to keep his promise of change in America. Now they’re indoctrinating racism into 10 year old school children.

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Madison’s View On Appropriate Power

This quote is from the Federalist Papers, number 41 to be exact. I lifted this paragraph as it bears, I think, directly on the current political climate. I think Madison is more sanguine about the average American than many today may be. But I think his view is worth noting.

It cannot have escaped those who have attended with candor to the arguments employed against the extensive powers of the government, that the authors of them have very little considered how far these powers were necessary means of attaining a necessary end. They have chosen rather to dwell on the inconveniences which must be unavoidably blended with all political advantages; and on the possible abuses which must be incident to every power or trust, of which a beneficial use can be made. This method of handling the subject cannot impose on the good sense of the people of America. It may display the subtlety of the writer; it may open a boundless field for rhetoric and declamation; it may inflame the passions of the unthinking, and may confirm the prejudices of the misthinking: but cool and candid people will at once reflect, that the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them; that the choice must always be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least of the GREATER, not the PERFECT, good; and that in every political institution, a power to advance the public happiness involves a discretion which may be misapplied and abused. They will see, therefore, that in all cases where power is to be conferred, the point first to be decided is, whether such a power be necessary to the public good; as the next will be, in case of an affirmative decision, to guard as effectually as possible against a perversion of the power to the public detriment.

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Buchanan To The Defense…of Hitler

Some people seem to dissolve into their worst attributes over time. There is a seige mentality that develops, it seems, and from within the bastions and barricades the fever dreams of the misunderstood and disillusioned take root and grow into horrible, twisted things. I don't care much for people who are constantly running around trying to scare the rest of us with apocalyptic prognostications. The sky is falling, yes it is, and there's nothing we can do about it. Who can hold up the sky or keep the stars from falling? Not me and it would appear a waste of what life might be left to spend my time fretting over it and ruining other people's day telling them to not enjoy themselves because the impending catastrophe is of such significance that to ignore it in any way is to cheapen all human history. Having a good time in the face of Doom is being, somehow, rude to the awesome relevance of said Doom. Everyone needs a hobby. Conspiracy theorists have found the X-Box of their desires within the serpentine confines of a world delimited by the constant back-stabbing one-up-manship of imagined black ops, coups, assassinations, and creeping ideological subversion. I wish them good times playing with their toys. But occasionally they decide to rewrite history to justify their paranoia and depending on what it is they're trying to sell by doing so, I get a bit less tolerant.

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