Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry

In this day and age of hyper scheduled, over stressed kids, this book offers the recipe for raising happy and productive kids! Chock full of advice and stories of kids who made their parents crazy and ended up successful adults, you'll find reassurance on every page. This couldn't have come at a better time. I have a (nearly) 6 year old and it makes me remember that even though times have changed, I can still give him the freedom to be a happy, healthy, creative and crazy/wonderful kid!

I really enjoyed the sense of humor in this book--it makes it a quick, fun read. But the real point of reading it is to get hit with a big dose of common sense about child safety. Some things that we worry about as parents--such as making sure our kids are wearing seat belts--really ARE worth worrying about. And others--such as evil child-poisoning neighbors on Halloween--are just myths, and when we buy into those myths, we deprive our children of a lot of the value of childhood. With the training of a reporter and the sensibility of a Mom, Lenore Skenazy helps us ferret out the difference, instead of reacting to every possible threat with a knee-jerk protective response that does more harm than good. I'm giving away so many copies of this book to Moms I know!

This is seriously one of the best parenting books I have read. Not only do I love Lenore Skenazy's writing style - so very down to earth - her advice is right on the mark. She doesn't dictate what you have to do, but offers some very practical wisdom on what dangers are real and which are overblown. Her ideas are well-researched (documentation in the back of the book), her examples are on-the-mark - sometimes sad and many times hilarious, and she demonstrates a real empathy for parents. We can all get overwhelmed by the abundance of advice for parents. Lenore urges us to take a step back, use our common sense, and do what's best for our own children.

I've been reading Lenore's blog for a few months now, and I enjoy it, so I mean it as a compliment when I say that her book is WAY better than her blog. I really enjoyed the combination of light-hearted quips and anecdotes together with serious, thought-provoking information and opinions. Opinions that are backed up by real data, not the urban legends everyone likes to cite. Did you know that there are no documented cases of kids being given poisoned candy by a stranger on Halloween? I didn't. Lenore debunks lots of "known dangers," and she does it in a readable, entertaining fashion. This is a parenting book I'm going to recommend to my friends, and one of the very few that I won't be selling to the used book store. This one will be proudly displayed on my bookshelf to be loaned out to people who need it, and re-read by me when I need a reminder not to be sucked in by the paranoid parenting that's taken over our society. Thanks, Lenore!

Before you install a Lo Jack system in your child's backpack- read this book! The world is not the scary place that the evening news would like us to believe. This book will debunk the myths that have been widely accepted as truths. For example, strangers passing out poisoned Halloween candy- how many documented cases have there been? zero. Check it out on snopes. Do you wish your kids could play capture the flag on summer nights with the neighborhood kids like we did? They can! Trust your instincts. You know your children better than anyone. They don't need 24/7 supervision. They need you to teach them how to be safe and then trust them to do it. Lenore Skenazy should be hailed as the liberator of children from the oppression of paranoia.