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Free-Range Kids, How To Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts With Worry) (2009)

by Lenore Skenazy(Favorite Author)

3.92 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Middle Grade & Children's

publisher

Jossey-Bass

review 1: I really enjoyed this one, despite the rampant use of parentheses and sometimes overly informal style. I had considered myself a pretty hands-off, low-anxiety parent, but reading this made me feel even more confident in my decisions. I found the statistics particularly fascinating and reassuring, and thought that Skenazy's premise (that some tragedies are so very statistically unlikely that there's essentially no way to control for them) was very interesting. There were some good concrete suggestions about how to allow your kids more freedom and responsibility without also calling down the wrath of other parents (most of the time) that I plan to use as Kate gets older.Skenazy's tongue-in-cheek writing style can feel awfully condemnatory at times, and she does cross the lin... moree into sounding judgmental and making you feel ridiculous several times throughout the book. Although I agreed with her on most of the issues, there were a few topics that got my self-righteous ire up - but on the whole, I enjoyed and learned from the book enough to make it worth it for me. And, after all, the whole point of the book is that we should be raising our kids to be tough, resilient thinkers who can handle whatever life throws their way - so maybe I ought to work on being less sensitive myself! ;-)
review 2: We're raising a generation of kids that are told every little thing they do must be 'with adult supervision.' Then age 18 comes too quickly, they're tossed into 'legal adulthood' but still have no idea how to do anything for themselves. We're training our kids to feel like delicate little pieces of china up thru age 17. No wonder the college years are so emotionally difficult for so many. Failure just paralyzes them- they're not being taught the value of failure, of finding their own competence. This author writes a consciousness-raising book. I'm on the last 1/3 of this book, and highly recommend it! less

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