Examines the dangers that parents fear for their children and offers advice on how to raise safe, independent children.
Skenazy has drawn from her column for the New York Sun to offer advice to parents like her. Well, not like her, but who think they might want to be, at least in some ways. She begins with the 14 free-range commandments, which include avoid experts, eat chocolate, be worldly, get braver, and listen to the kids. Then she provides an alphabetical review of every possible danger to children that she has heard of at least twice (once if it is really funny). Among them are death by stroller, Internet predators and other skeeves online, toilets, school shootings, lunch spoilage, teen sex, playing in the woods, and walking to school or the bus stop. Strangers with candy get a section all to themselves. Jossey-Bass in an imprint of Wiley. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
FREE RANGE KIDS has become a national movement, sparked by the incredible response to Lenore Skenazys piece about allowing her 9-year-old ride the subway alone in NYC. Parent groups argued about it, bloggers, blogged, spouses became uncivil with each other, and the media jumped all over it. A lot of parents today, Skenazy says, see no difference between letting their kids walk to school and letting them walk through a firing range. Any risk is seen as too much risk. But if you try to prevent every possible danger or difficult in your childs everyday life, that child never gets a chance to grow up. We parents have to realize that the greatest risk of all just might be trying to raise a child who never encounters choice or independence.
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