Strollerderby : freedom

Police Called on 10-Year-Old Riding Train Alone

Miriam Axel-Lute — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

The nervous nellies strike again. This time a 10-year-old boy was riding on the Long Island Railroad to see his friend last Friday. His friend's family was going to pick him up at the station. He'd done the ride dozens of times before. LIRR has no policy about what age is too young to ride alone, but his mom had talked to them before his first ride, and they said 10 sounded fine.

But not to one hovering conductor, who not only called the police, but wouldn't talk to the boy's mother when he called her after being harassed. Mr. conductor then held up the train at the station the boy was traveling to and wouldn't let him leave with his friends' parents until the police came and basically told the guy he was overreacting and should chill.

The scary thing is, these days, one could just as easily believe the police taking the conductor's side and charging the parents with negligence or some such nonsense. I've heard of some very scary official reactions to children who were well-trained in safety precautions doing exactly what they were supposed to do with the full knowledge, but not immediate presence, of their parents.

This particular story was posted over at Free Range Kids, a site devoted to reclaiming kids' rights to move about freely in the world. Lenore Skenazy, the columnist who founded it, writes that at the same time as she was being depicted as a devil in the media for writing about the freedom she gave her son, individuals kept coming up to her and recounting what they'd been able to do as a kid and how much they'd valued it.

It's true for me: I walked alone to the bus stop starting at 6 or 7, school itself at 9, and wandered my block and then my neighborhood freely from around then too. And the world actually hasn't gotten anymore dangerous since then, at least not in any of the ways people cite when they say this is a bad idea. (Of course even when I was a teenager and my mother told me to take a bus to the mall, the people around her reacted as if she'd asked me to go panhandle outside a strip club. But sadly, that was probably at least as much to do with the class difference of who takes short-distance buses vs trains in NJ as with stranger paranoia.)

What about you? Are you more worried about what might happen to your kids (or you) if they are given their freedom, or if they aren't?

Photo by Spring Dew.

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Afghan Parents Keeping Girls Home from School

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:18:00 GMT

Seven years after the U.S. “liberated” Afghanistan from the brutal Taliban regime, many parents have decided to keep their daughters at home instead of sending them to school. They feel, understandably and tragically, that education is not worth the risk of physical violence.

After acid was thrown on a group of girls walking to school last month, school enrollments have declined sharply. In the province of Ghazni, where the acid attack occurred, 50 schools have closed and 15,000 students—mainly girls—have stopped going to school so far this year.

It’s heartbreaking that even though girls are now officially allowed to attend school for the first time in more than a decade, the Taliban and other militant groups remain so active that official policy is almost meaningless.

Photo: AP

Should We Let Our Kids Be "Free Range"?

Kelly Mills — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:32:00 GMT

You might recall the controversy that got kicked up by a New York Sun reporter's account of allowing her nine-year-old to ride the subway alone. She was both pilloried by people who compared her behavior to child abuse, and praised by people who want more freedom for their kids. In response to the whole thing, she started a blog called "Free Range Kids," to promote the idea that kids need the same independence and freedom previous generations enjoyed.

While this gets hyped as a battle between helicoptor parents and free range parents, it is true that many kids are not allowed to do the same things their parents did at the same age, like walk or bike to school or go to the park without an adult. And as the free range advocates point out, a good deal of this may just be due to the increased media attention on abductions and crime, while crime has actually dropped in most instances. I tend to fall more on the free range side, though putting theory into practice is always a different matter when my six-year-old is involved. What do you think: Are we basically stalking our kids out of their independence? Or are the risks of allowing solo activities not worth it?

Never Have Your Period AGAIN. Period.

Karen Murphy — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:06:00 GMT

Ask me this question on any other day of the month except today, and you'd likely get another answer, but today (guess what day this is for me? C'mon, guess!) if you asked me if I'd rather not ever see "Aunt Flo" again, I would say, "Yes, now give me that new birth control pill that eliminates a woman's period FOR-EVAH, and put some chocolate on it!"

NOW!!!

Okay, so this isn't exactly news, but it is. For awhile now, doctors have "allowed" women to just skip the placebo pills that stimulate a menstrual cycle and start again with a fresh month's pack, but the FDA has now approved a continual pill, called "Lybrel" (don't you love those purty made-up pharmaceutical names?),that pretty much eliminates menstruation entirely.

No word on expected incidences of pesky "unscheduled bleeding," or what potential havoc this could wreak in your system or how it could affect your future fertility or knowing if you actually do become pregnant so you can stop taking the darn things... Like I said, ask me today and I'm all for it, but calm down these hormones a bit and I'm thinking it might be good to think about this one and gather some facts before jumping on it.