Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Playground
  • Surfacing
  • Parks
  • Athletics
  • Aquatics
  • Play
Home
  • Playground
  • Surfacing
  • Parks
  • Athletics
  • Aquatics
  • Play
  • How Rubber is Changing Playground Equipment Technology
  • The Evolution of Playground Surfacing
  • Playground Turf
  • Playground Supervision: How Much Is Too Much?
  • Trends in Playground Design and Amenities
  • 6 Steps to Your Perfect Park and Playground

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. Play
  3. Parenting
  4. Who's Talking About Play?

Who's Talking About Play?

Parenting
December 18, 2013
Profile picture for user Playground Magazine
By Playground Magazine on
  • facebook-f
  • twitter
  • envelope
  • print
1382

Free-Range Kids

www.freerangekids.com

Lenore Skenazy

The blog, Free-Range Kids, is written by Lenore Skenazy, a syndicated columnist, who was dubbed “America’s Worst Mom” by the media for allowing her 9-year-old son to ride the subway in New York City alone in 2008. What started as an opportunity for a child to face a challenge and experience some independence resulted in a blog, a book, and a movement.

To defend what some thought were her radical ideas about parenting, Lenore wrote the book, Free-Range Kids: How To Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts With Worry). Her book and her blog take “an old-fashioned, common sense approach to parenting in these overprotective times.” Free-Range parenting promotes teaching children important safety information, such as “how to cross the street, how to ride a bike safely, how to talk to strangers but not go off with strangers.” The Free-Range philosophy believes that as children become more street smart, they can be given more freedom which helps them become more confident and self-reliant. Allowing children to make their own decisions and deal with some risk results in their learning responsibility.

The Free-Range Kids blog has become one of the central clearinghouse websites for airing concerns of media reports that demonstrate the trends of adults who overly protect children from perceived dangers. The blog attempts to show the big disconnect between the horrors on TV from the media and the reality of America today with actual statistics showing that crime against children is down in recent years.

Playborhood

www.playborhood.com

Mike Lanza

Since 2007, Mike Lanza, an ex-Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has posted to his blog, Playborhood, longing for the “Leave it to Beaver” days that seem to be lost forever. Concerned that unstructured free play has “virtually vanished from the lives of most children in America,” he is committed to voicing his concerns to build a community of parents who will become more aware of the problems and seek to implement the best solutions.

In April 2012, Mike published a book on this topic entitled Playborhood: Turn Your Neighborhood Into a Place for Play. It is aimed at parents who would like to give their children a life of neighborhood play, but who need some inspiration and ideas on how to make it happen. Realizing that he needs to win over the hearts and minds of parents, he is seeking to promote a “Playborhood Movement” that will empower parents to give children “a life of play and autonomy in their neighborhoods.”

Mike argues that the “ultra-structured, adult-mediated American childhood of today” is more than just a lack of fun for children. With the restriction of child-directed play and freedom to roam the neighborhoods, children lack opportunities “to develop social skills, leadership skills, and creativity.” Unlike many bloggers and authors who focus on describing this problem, Mike’s aim is to find solutions and to communicate them to parents.

Rethinking Childhood

www.rethinkingchildhood.com

Tim Gill

Tim Gill, a leading philosopher on childhood in the United Kingdom, launched the blog Rethinking Childhood in order to reach more people and engage more people in a conversation concerning “the changing nature of childhood.” As an author, speaker, consultant, and researcher, Tim believes that children have the potential to be “resilient, responsible, capable and creative” if they are allowed to “take risks, make mistakes, have everyday adventures and test themselves and their boundaries.”

Tim founded Rethinking Childhood in July 2011 because it was “simply the most effective way of sharing my work and engaging with others in the connected, digital world that so many of us now live in.” After 20 months of regular blogging, Tim noted in April 2013 that his top 4 posts had more views than the 5,000 copies of his book, No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society, which had been sold by that time.

A point of significance to Tim is the “importance of sound evidence.” He believes that “it’s so easy to slip into armchair nostalgia, lazy generalizations and dodgy assumptions when thinking about childhood and how it has changed. But if the debate about children’s everyday lives is to step outside the bar-room – as it must – then it has to square up to the facts.” Tim continues to advocate for “a new philosophy: one that truly embraces risk, uncertainty and real challenge – even real danger – as essential ingredients of a rounded childhood.”

Add new comment

About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Profile picture for user Playground Magazine
Playground Magazine
Published 9 years ago
Last updated 2 months ago
1382
2
min read
A- A+
  • facebook-f
  • twitter
  • envelope
  • print

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter

More About

Hide and Seek
Oct 22, 2019
Parenting

5 Fun Family Games

Brent Meadows
Kids playing in the water
Dec 03, 2019
Parenting

Tips for Summer Fun with Your Family

Lewis Robinson
Oct 01, 2004
Parenting

Involve the Kids Too

Playground Magazine
Great Outdoor Activities for Fathers and Sons
Sep 10, 2021
Parenting

Great Outdoor Activities for Fathers and Sons

PGP
Sleepover
Dec 08, 2017
Parenting

How to Survive a Sleepover

Mattress Online
grandmother giving granddaughter money
Feb 16, 2021
Parenting

Age Appropriate Financial Lessons for Kids

Noah Rue
Aug 15, 2016
Parenting

Congress Is Looking To Help Lower The Cost Of Healthy, Active Lifestyles

Phit Act
A family in the kitchen
Jul 23, 2019
Parenting

How to Make Military Family Moves Easier on Your Kids

Kacey Mya
Children using smartphones and tablets.
Jun 06, 2018
Parenting

Children & Social Media: Make the Best of It

Nicole Lewis
How Diverse Classrooms Lead to Productive Workforces
Aug 15, 2021
Parenting

How Diverse Classrooms Lead to Productive Workforces

Noah Rue
Nov 01, 2002
Parenting

Hands on Jonesboro

Playground Magazine
Encouraging your baby to self-feed at 10 to 12 months
Apr 06, 2021
Parenting

Encouraging your baby to self-feed at 10 to 12 months

Esmé Gelder

Parenting Professionals

There are currently no professionals listed here.
Home

Follow Us

Play and playground news and information since 2001

  • instagram
  • facebook-f
  • twitter
  • pinterest
  • linkedin

Company

  • Playground Magazine
  • Contributors
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe

Copyright © 2001 - 2023 Playground Professionals, LLC

Footer menu

  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions