By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 2 minutes

To Fight Depression, Kids Need to Run Around, UNSUPERVISED

At last, it's not just us saying this! A study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that "Physical activity can help alleviate depressive symptoms in...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 2 minutes

Flaco the Flying Metaphor!

Just one month ago, Flaco the owl was sprung from New York's Central Park Zoo. Until then the Eurasian Eagle Owl had lived a very safe and sleepy life in, basically,...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 3 minutes

Library Warns “Police May Be Called” on Kids Under 15

It's hard to read, due to the glare, but this sign in a Corpus Christi, TX, library states: "Police may be called if a child under 15 is not accompanied...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 3 minutes

The Childhoods of Geniuses

In a piece about how stone-cold geniuses like Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, and physicist John von Neumann spent their childhoods (hint: lots of free time, and homeschooling, often also by geniuses),...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 3 minutes

Why I’m Not Excited By That “Overprotected Kids Die Younger” Study

A very long study of about 1,000 British and Brazilian Boomers looked at whether their upbringing impacted their longevity. Among other things, the researchers found that folks who'd grown up...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 5 minutes

Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills Update

Let Grow's goal is to make it easy, normal and legal to give kids some old-fashioned independence. When it comes to that "legal" part, we help states pass Reasonable Childhood...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 2 minutes

Erika Christakis: In Defense of Sleepovers

Erika Christakis, early childhood expert and author of The Importance of Being Little, NAILS IT in her Atlantic essay on sleepovers. Noting that sleepovers have gone from age-old activity to yet another thing...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 3 minutes

What Do Parents in The Happiest Country in the World Do that We Don’t?

Just loved this snappy piece on the CNBC website, "I'm a psychology expert in Finland, the No. 1 happiest country in the world -- here are 3 things we never...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 4 minutes

Talking to Strangers

What a fantastic study: Research just published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that when people are prompted to talk to a stranger, surprising things happen: They start...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 1 minute

Well, Golllly! “Free-Range Parenting is NOT Crazy”

Take a look at this lovely little clip, below, from FoxNews last week. While the caption on screen says, "Critics Warn of Parenting Style's Possible Consequences," that's not the direction...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 3 minutes

The Sorrow and the Fear: Athena Strand’s Murder, and Us

Sorrow and anger rage in our hearts. A child has been murdered. Athena Strand, 7, was abducted and murdered last week in her Texas town of Paradise. (The irony hurts,...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 3 minutes

Thoughts on the Mom Handcuffed for Having Son, 8, Walk Half a Mile Home

Perhaps you have already heard about Heather Wallace, a Texas mom of three, arrested for having her son walk home half a mile after he was bothering his younger brothers...