Today’s parents are faced with the dilemma of when to protect, and when to let go

On a sunny Sunday in March, in the Bloomingdale’s department store in Manhattan, Lenore Skenazy said goodbye to her 9-year-old son and walked away.

Little Isaac had been begging for weeks to get a chance to find his way home by himself. So she gave him a transit pass, change for a pay phone, and let him try.

After taking the Lexington Avenue subway downtown, and transferring to the 34th Street crosstown bus, “My son got home,” Skenazy reported in her column in the New York Sun, “ecstatic with independence.”

Reaction from parents, both outrage and applause, swept Skenazy and her curly-haired boy onto television. On MSNBC, a caption read: “America’s Worst Mom?”

Skenazy’s provocation has become part of a widening conversation about whether parents who overprotect their children actually rob them of the chance to develop essential coping skills.

“How is it that those who mean only the best for their kids end up bringing out the worst in them?” asked Marano in a recent phone interview. “If you really want the best for your kids, you have to learn to back off and let them go.”

Marano tells a story about a couple in their 30s from the Midwest who came to visit an acquaintance in Los Angeles, bringing their toddler daughter.

“They asked the cab driver to stop off at the nearest Home Depot on the way to the hotel,” Marano said. “They ran in and bought a roll of, yes, bubble wrap.” In their hotel room, they used it to cover everything in the room, to protect their toddler daughter.

Her research has shown that kind of parenting is widespread, and can continue through high school, Marano said. “Rather than give your kid the skills and the ability to deal with her environment, you plaster over her environment –as if that’s going to happen in real life.”

In West Seneca, stay-at-home mother Gail Hoppe and her husband, Keith, are “real big people on balance,” Gail Hoppe said.

Raising five children, ages 2 to 10, she and her husband had a choice, Hoppe said. “You can be super, super authoritative and controlling, and want to make life perfect, and not let your children make mistakes,” she said. “Or you could be super permissive, and let them do whatever they want.”

Like many parents, the Hoppes aim for a middle ground. “We need to raise responsible kids, and the only way to do that is to give them responsibility,” she said. “If they’re not tested in that area, they’ll never get to where they need to be.”

Hoppe offers a small example. When her son wants to play at a neighbor’s house, a few doors down, they agree on what time he’ll be back, and out the door he goes.

“I don’t walk him down there. I don’t hold his hand, he’s 9 years old,” Hoppe said. “If he’s not back by the time we set, there’s a consequence; he can’t go the next time he asks or whatever.”

In “A Nation of Wimps,” Marano talks about “helicopter parents,” so-called for their practice of looming overhead as children make their way into college, always just a cell phone call away from rescue. There’s also references to “snowplow parents,” who see their role as identifying and smoothing out obstacles their children might face.

Maybe those parents have more time on their hands, Hoppe said. “I’m not a hoverer,” she said. “I don’t have time to hover, with five kids.”

Like many of today’s parents, Hoppe remembers growing up freely roaming her neighborhood out of her parents’ eyesight, burdened only with the admonition to be back by dinner time. “Be home when the streetlights are on,” Hoppe recalled.

But things have changed –if only in the minds of parents. Even in the age of cell phones, few parents indeed would allow their children to roam at will today, and Hoppe is no different.

That was then, Hoppe said, and “I really think risks have increased over the years.”

Like many West Seneca parents, Hoppe joined her children at the bus stop last month when there was a report of a strange man on their streets, she said. “It was on the news, that this child was almost abducted by this man who came up to the door,” Hoppe said. “And we’re all freaking out.”

It turned out to be a man looking for junk to recycle. “As a parent, you hear that stuff – yes, we stood at the bus stop with our kids those few days, until we knew that was kind of goofy.”

Safety statistics show children are 40 times more likely to be injured in a car accident than accosted by strangers, said Skenazy, the Sun columnist.

“We think it’s a very different world today than when we grew up, but it’s not, safety-wise,” said Skenazy, who communes with like-minded souls at www.FreeRangeKids.com. “So I think kids deserve the freedom we had. Look back on your childhood. Think of the fun you had, think of the freedom you had, and try to give that to your child.”

She’s not in favor of carelessness, just a sober analysis of possible danger, Skenazy said.

“I believe in the things that save you on sort of a regular basis, like a helmet and a seat belt,” she said, noting that she was saved by a seat belt in a childhood car accident. Taking precautions against the “one in 5 million chances,” like a sinkhole, or exploding water main, makes little sense, she said.

But parents as a group seem incapable of making rational safety decisions based on information about relative risk, said Skenazy. Partly because of a media focused on terrible but rare crimes against children, parents are “scared to death,” she said, and “When you’re scared, you can’t process.”

“The once-in-a-while stories, these wild, weird, gory graphic risks, like a kid being eaten alive by a bear or being taken off their bike –those risks are so vivid that they sort of loom large in their consciousness,” said Skenazy, “and they paralyze a lot of people.”

Because if parents really wanted to do all they could to protect their children from avoidable risk, Skenazy argued, why would they let children set foot in an automobile? Vehicle crashes are by far the leading cause of death for children, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Parents “don’t think about the everyday risks, and that allows them to live their lives,” Skenazy said. “If you were really preparing for every eventuality, you would never get in a car.”

When Joanna Torreano was getting ready to see her son Jason travel, she had more to worry about than an automobile accident.

He was getting on a plane and going to South Africa. He was determined to help children in a homeless shelter in a poor neighborhood where people are sometimes killed for their possessions.

He had grown up in Lockport, an only son to her and her husband Paul. Torreano remembered how they had to insist he remain in the karate class he was first enrolled in at 8 or 9 years old.

“We made a rule that he had to give it a month,” said Torreano, a teacher in the Niagara- Wheatfield School District. “The first day, he hated it. Second day, he hated it. By the time a month came –he loved it.”

They were at peace with the idea that Jason might not succeed, because they were secure in the belief that the experience would teach him another sort of lesson.

“If Jason was in a situation where we knew he would fail, we let that failure happen,” Torreano said. “Because we wanted him to figure out what he had to do about it, to improve the situation.”

The Torreanos knew they could always help their son if they were within arm’s reach. But they were planning for when he was out of their parenting range, she said. “In our eyes, you can’t protect them from everything,” said Torreano, “and if they fail, they develop tools to get out of it.”

So when Jason told his parents he was going to South Africa, they supported him. They said, “If that’s what you want to do.”

When he got there he called them, saying, “My gosh you can’t believe how bad it is here.” They told him the same thing they did at the karate studio. Give it a month.

They were some of the hardest words a parent could utter. People would ask her, “How could you let your son do that? Aren’t you afraid he’s going to get stabbed? Aren’t you afraid this, aren’t you afraid that?”

She just smiled and kept walking. “People will frighten you out of anything,” she said.

Of course she was afraid, she said. But she needed to be brave, for her son to have the chance to be brave.

“I couldn’t let him know I was afraid. I didn’t want him to be afraid,” she said. “I needed to be strong for Jason.”

He went back to South Africa twice more, finally returning home on March 30.

After one of his returns, Jason told her about the time he learned he was targeted for a knifepoint mugging, for his laptop computer. He dealt with the risk by recruiting a group of youths to travel with him whenever he carried the device.

“Jason had a solution to that, and I think it was because we taught him to think,” she said.

If his mother had surrendered to fear and begged him to come home, how could he ever have been shaped by that experience?

“I think that’s what we need to give kids: the skills and the confidence to solve their own problems,” Torreano said. “Because Mommy and Daddy are not always going to be there to hold your hand. You’ve got to figure it out for yourself.”

Source: Buffalo News, United States
http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/349675.html

I wrote a glowing review of the new Grand Theft Auto game in the Chronicle today. Like most of my video game coverage, the writing is aimed in large part for people who don’t play. I figured out a long time ago that there are a lot more non-gamer parents and grandparents reading the print edition of the Chronicle than 18-year-olds or even people my age.

I loved the game, and have long believed that the GTA series is grossly misunderstood and demonized by people who don’t understand it. It reminds me of the people who said that listening to Elvis would make us all sex addicts and that Dungeons & Dragons was going to make me a serial killer. Still waiting for that to happen …

When I started writing about video games in 2002, I felt like there was no one else in the mainstream media that felt the way I did. But now I can recommend a lot of places where parents can get video game coverage that doesn’t seem like it’s written in a foreign language and isn’t run by some right-wing religious nuts who just want to ban games that they haven’t played.

Here are some of my favorites …

Whattheyplay.com: Started by two guys who helped start the video game site 1UP.com, Whattheyplay is the only parenting site I know that was founded and is run by gamers. They stick to just the facts, clinically listing the specific sex, violence and other content in video games. They also run a lot of features to help demystify games for non-gamer parents — such as advice on how to get hard-to-find consoles like the Wii. Here’s an article I wrote about them.

Commonsensemedia.org: I don’t agree with everything they do, but their core mission — educating parents about games and other kid-oriented media — is extremely important. Politicians and anti-game activists should stop trying to criminalize video games and treat them like other forms of art. Common Sense seems to get that and advocates for parents with a minimum of judgement.

N’Gai Croal’s video game blog: I don’t usually plug the competition, but the fact is that maybe 10 percent of my job involves writing about games, and I’ll never do it as comprehensively or successfully as this Newsweek writer/blogger. N’Gai Croal’s blog Level Up has become an important bridge between the mainstream media and hard-core gamers, writing intelligently and concisely about important issues. He’s also a very entertaining writer. Whether you play games or have kids who do, bookmark his site.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, USA
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=29&entry_id=26113

Coming of age in the wired world is entirely different from what you knew

Sexual experimentation has always been a part of adolescence, but in previous years it was confided to games of Spin the Bottle or Seven Minutes in Heaven. However, thanks to the Internet and the development of recent technology like camera phones, a new generation of teens are experimenting with sexuality in a whole new way.

Their first forays into sexuality no longer occur on a small scale within a circle of peers, but on a very large one, such as on MySpace and Facebook. From racy pictures posted on these online social networks to sexy photos being sent on camera phones, teens are making their first sexual decisions with an audience of thousands.

Even Disney star Miley Cyrus has received a barrage of press lately for photos that have surfaced on the web which feature her in flirtatious poses. (…) How can parents monitor this new wave of sexual experimentation and keep their kids safe from online predators or other serious consequences?

Talk to your teens

What seems like innocent fun to your teenager is actually potentially dangerous. Not only do online predators surf the web for vulnerable teens, but racy photos can serve to harm your teenager’s reputation. Many teenage girls see sexy photos as something harmless and totally innocent — after all, most of them have no intention of carrying out sexual acts with anyone in the audience. However, by displaying pictures such as these they are opening themselves up for attack and potentially putting themselves at risk, not just from strangers, but from people in their own peer groups who might not understand the pictures are just for show.

Realize there truly is a generation gap

Teenagers develop much more quickly from a physical standpoint than they do from a mental standpoint. In fact, the frontal cortex (which is the part of the brain responsible for judgment and decision-making) doesn’t completely develop until after adolescence. Therefore, teenagers are awash with burgeoning hormones and newly developed bodies, but they do not yet have all of the mental tools that adults have to regulate decision making.

This isn’t to say that teenagers are not smart and capable beings, but they do not have the life experience and brain development that adults have. This makes them more likely to make impulsive or rash decisions. But in the past, these decisions weren’t on display on the Internet for thousands to access. However, now that the Internet is part of almost every American teenager’s life, we need to find ways to address this new trend of adolescent sexual experience. The Internet is not going away any time soon, and neither is MySpace or the iPhone, so adults have to find ways to bridge this generation gap and warn teens about the dangers and responsibilities associated with this new technology.

Acknowledge their maturity

One of the biggest mistakes parents can make is not letting their teenagers have some form of freedom and right to self-expression. Although they are not adults yet, they still need some room to grow and make their own mistakes. It can be extremely helpful for parents to talk about this issue with their teens and play out the potential consequences. Acknowledge how much fun it is to flirt and how exciting it feels to realize others find you attractive. But if you send off a sexy picture to a friend, what would happen if they send it on to 30 others? What would be the reaction? How would he or she feel? Help guide them through the decision making process and lend them your own frontal lobe function without the judgement.

We can monitor our teens’ behavior to make sure they are behaving safely, but after a certain point, they still need a little bit of breathing room. By keeping the communication lines open and letting them know that they can always come to you with questions and concerns, you can help your teen safely monitor the new trend of growing up online.

Even though the platform is new, teenagers still face many of the same battles and life lessons that we did during our own teenage years. From questions about sex, body image and self-expression, teenagers today are still looking for the same acceptance that we were. Let’s help guide them through this process with patience and a watchful eye.

Source: MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24356473/

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should get careful cardiac evaluation and monitoring – including an electrocardiogram (ECG) – before treatment with stimulant drugs, a new American Heart Association statement recommends.

The scientific statement on Cardiovascular Monitoring of Children and Adolescents with Heart Disease Receiving Stimulant Drugs is published online in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

In 1999, concerns over potential cardiovascular effects of psychotropic drugs, especially tricyclic antidepressants, but including stimulants, prompted an American Heart Association Scientific Statement: Cardiovascular Monitoring of Children and Adolescents Receiving Psychotropic Drugs. However, no specific cardiovascular monitoring was recommended for the use of stimulant medications. Warnings from the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about stimulant medications and public concern for the safety of using them have prompted the current statement.

Studies have shown that stimulant medications like those used to treat ADHD can increase heart rate and blood pressure. These side effects are insignificant for most children with ADHD; however, they’re an important consideration for children who have a heart condition. Certain heart conditions increase the risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD), which occurs when the heart rhythm becomes erratic and doesn’t pump blood through the body.

Vetter also said doctors should evaluate children and adolescents already taking these medications if they were not evaluated when they started the treatment.

If heart problems are suspected after the evaluation, children should be referred to a pediatric cardiologist. Once stimulant treatment begins, children should have their heart health monitored periodically, with a blood pressure check within one to three months, then again at routine follow-ups every six to 12 months.

“Children can have undiagnosed heart conditions without showing symptoms,” Vetter said. “Furthermore, a child’s body changes constantly, with some conditions not appearing until adolescence.”

If the initial ECG was taken before age 12 years, it may be useful to do a repeat ECG after the child is over age 12 years, the statement says.

Widespread use of ECGs to detect heart abnormalities, including screenings for competitive athletes, is not routinely recommended by the American Heart Association. However, the writing group found using ECG screening in this specific population of children prescribed ADHD medication is medically indicated and reasonably priced. That said, however, lack of an ECG shouldn’t mean that kids who need ADHD treatment can’t get it.

“While we feel that an ECG is reasonable and helpful as a tool to identify children with cardiac conditions that can lead to SCD, if, in the view of their physician, a child requires immediate treatment with stimulant medications, this recommendation is not meant to keep them from getting that treatment,” said Vetter, who added that some children may not have access to a pediatric cardiologist who can evaluate an ECG or perform a cardiology consultation.

In 2003, an estimated 2.5 million children took medication for ADHD. Surveys indicate that ADHD affects an estimated 4 percent to 12 percent of all school-aged children in the United States, and it appears more common in children with heart conditions. Studies report that, depending on the specific cardiac condition, 33 percent to 42 percent of pediatric cardiac patients have ADHD, Vetter said. The number of undiagnosed children with heart conditions is unknown as routine heart screening is not performed, but Vetter said that a recent pilot study she presented at the American Heart Association’s 2007 Scientific Session indicated that up to 2 percent of healthy school aged children had potentially serious undiagnosed cardiac conditions identified by an ECG.

Data from the FDA showed that between 1999 and 2004, 19 children taking ADHD medications died suddenly and 26 children experienced cardiovascular events such as strokes, cardiac arrests and heart palpitations. Since February 2007, the FDA has required all manufacturers of drug products approved for ADHD treatment to develop Medication Guidelines to alert patients to possible cardiovascular risks.

Future studies are necessary to assess the true risk of SCD in association with stimulant drugs in children and adolescents with and without heart disease, Vetter said. However, studying SCD associated with drugs is difficult because the government’s reporting system is voluntary, which means local data on these types of deaths isn’t always reported nationally.

A registry of SCD events is necessary for further investigating this issue, the writing committee said. Such a registry would allow for a more accurate understanding of SCD, including the true incidence of it and the potential effectiveness of universal ECG testing and pre-participation screening questionnaires.

The statement writing committee said its recommendations are not intended to limit the appropriate use of stimulants in children with ADHD.

“Our intention is to provide the physician with some tools to help identify heart conditions in children with ADHD, and help them make decisions about the use of stimulant medications and the follow-up of children who take them,” Vetter said. “The goal is to allow treatment of ADHD, while attempting to lower the cardiac risk of these products in susceptible children.”

Source: EurekAlert, DC
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/aha-cwa041808.php

A 13-year-old schoolgirl in southern Austria celebrated the start of her spring break with a bottle of schnapps.

She ended up in intensive care.

In other countries across Europe, adolescents are making similar headlines for drinking themselves into a stupor, often passing out in the process.

And they’re getting younger: A June 2006 European Union-commissioned report says nearly all 15-to 16-year-old European students have had alcohol at some point in their lives and, on average, now start when they’re just 12 1/2 years old.

The data comes from a 2003 survey by the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs.

More than one in six have “binged” - had five or more drinks on a single occasion - three or more times in the last month, said the report by the London-based Institute of Alcohol Studies. It excluded EU newcomers Bulgaria and Romania.

In contrast to the United States or Canada, where even adults are often asked to prove their age when buying beer and other alcoholic drinks, laws in Europe are more lax and the drinking age generally hovers around 16 or 18.

Supermarkets sell alcohol and, unlike in the U.S., bottles and cans are seldom stashed away in areas that are off-limits to underage customers. Carding is uncommon.

In Austria - where binge drinking is known as “Komatrinken,” or “coma drinking” - a new law prohibits the sale of alcohol to anyone under either 16 or 18, depending on the region, and requires cashiers and establishments to card customers if they have any doubt about their age. Failure to do so can result in fines of up to $5,610 and loss of a liquor licence.

“When it comes to coma drinking among young people, we’re dealing with a phenomenon that needs to be battled to the best of our abilities,” Economics Minister Martin Bartenstein said.

Authorities and experts alike acknowledge the issue isn’t going away.

The WHO estimates there are 76.3 million people with alcohol use disorders worldwide.

The experts warn that some barely pubescent juveniles are starting to reach for the bottle sooner.

“We’ve seen a whole series of new trends over the past five to 10 years,” said Michael Musalek, director of the Anton Proksch Institute, a renowned Austrian detox center that claims to be Europe’s largest.

“For one, the age of alcohol beginners keeps declining. Today, 11-, 12-, 13-year-olds are already drinking - some on a regular basis,” he said.

Hospital officials notice the same trend.

At Vienna’s General Hospital, up to three teens are admitted each weekend after drinking escapades escalate, often leaving them so intoxicated they become unconscious, pediatrician Zsolt Szepfalusi said. More cases are common during special events, such as the city’s annual Danube Island Fest in the summer, he said.

“The numbers aren’t really up - but we’re seeing a decrease in age,” Szepfalusi said. “Some of our patients are as young as 12.”

It’s not just a big-city problem. Robert Birnbacher, head of pediatrics at a public hospital in the southern Austrian town of Villach, said his clinic sees about one to two cases of young “coma drinkers” every weekend.

“The patients are getting younger and there are more girls among them,” he said.

Vladimir Poznyak, coordinator of the team working on the management of substance abuse in the World Health Organization’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, confirmed a general decline in age for initial contact with alcohol worldwide.

“It’s definitely happening and reflects general cultural changes,” Poznyak said.

The risks of starting to drink early include developing a dependence on alcohol and hampering brain development, he said.

In Germany, where beer is a big part of local culture, authorities are calling on adults to counsel their children to put off their first experiences with alcohol.

In October, the government’s “drug czar,” Sabine Baetzing, said every fourth teenager gets drunk off five or more alcoholic drinks at least once a month. The number of teenagers who ended up hospitalized with alcohol poisoning doubled from 9,500 in 2000 to 19,400 in 2005, she said.

But one expert, while welcoming action to fight alcohol abuse among Austria’s young, cautions against blowing the problem out of proportion.

Alfred Uhl, senior scientist at the Vienna-based Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Addiction Research, said alcohol consumption in Austria peaked around 1970 and has declined ever since - despite the fact that prices have nose-dived. He warned that hospital statistics may be misleading because alcohol-related diagnoses were made less frequently in the past than they are now.

“Generally speaking, Europe’s youngsters are growing up faster than they used to and in countries such as Austria where alcohol is a part of the going out culture, it would be strange if they didn’t consume alcohol as well,” he said.

On the streets of the Austrian capital, teenagers dispute they drink heavily - but acknowledge alcohol has a presence in their lives.

“I started when I was 15 and like beer and tequila,” said 16-year-old Patrick Settinger, smoking a cigarette on his way home from school.

Source: The Canadian Press, Austria
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5g3fB9g7BnwevWxz-erjPnU3VdYGQ

Children are more than twice as likely to be injured falling out of bed as they are tumbling out of a tree, figures have revealed.

Seven years ago the chances were about equal. But as the lives of “the Xbox generation” have become dominated by sedentary activities, the likelihood of them having an outdoor accident has plummeted.

The statistics from accident and emergency departments in England demonstrate just how differently youngsters play these days.

In 2006/07 - the latest year for which data is available - 1,067 children under 15 needed medical assistance for tree falls. In 1999/00 the figure was 1,823.

Meanwhile, the number of youngsters under 15 admitted to A&E after bed falls in 2006/07 was 2,531, up from 2,226 in 1999/2000.

The figures lend weight to the Government’s campaign to get more children away from computer games and into the great outdoors.

Ministers are giving councils £235million over three years to develop up to 3,500 play areas.

Unfortunately, when Children’s Secretary Ed Balls and Culture Secretary Andy Burnham tried to swing on ropes in a London park at the strategy’s launch earlier this month, they ended up colliding in a twisted mess of limbs.

Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at the University of Kent, and author of Paranoid Parenting, said: “One of the things I have noticed is that trees seem to attract less children than in the past.

“Parents and family members would have encouraged their children to climb trees years ago but now they’re becoming no-go areas.

“It’s important to remember that climbing trees and having the odd accident is part of a wonderful childhood experience. It teaches us how to manage risk and how to handle ourselves in unexpected circumstances.”

He added, however, that promoting play strategies in parks is the wrong kind of focus.

“A lot of kids want to work out for themselves how they want to play.”

A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said: “Climbing trees allows kids to get out and about, be active, experience the world around them and interact with nature.

“We’ve got nothing against climbing trees, it can be a great way of kids learning to deal with risks.

“We have asked ourselves whether it’s better to break a wrist falling from a tree than developing Repetitive Strain Injury from playing computer games.”

The number of children under 15 arriving at A&E after falls from playground equipment has risen slightly from 6,581 in 1999/2000 to 6,617 in 2006/07, according to the Hospital Episode Statistics.

But the rise in accidents could be due to a growing number of parents installing apparatus such as climbing frames, slides and trampolines in their back gardens.

Source: Daily Mail, UK
http://tinyurl.com/5hq6ph

Each weekday, come rain or shine, a group of children, ages 3 to 6, walk into a forest outside Frankfurt to sing songs, build fires and roll in the mud. To relax, they kick back in a giant “sofa” made of tree stumps and twigs.

The birthplace of kindergarten is returning to its roots. While schools and parents elsewhere push young children to read, write and surf the Internet earlier in order to prepare for an increasingly cutthroat global economy, some little Germans are taking a less traveled path — deep into the woods.

Germany has about 700 Waldkindergärten, or “forest kindergartens,” in which children spend their days outdoors year-round. Blackboards surrender to the Black Forest. Erasers give way to pine cones. Hall passes aren’t required, but bug repellent is a good idea.

Trees are a temptation — and sometimes worse. Recently, “I had to rescue a girl” who had climbed too high, says Margit Kluge, a teacher at Idstein’s forest kindergarten. Last year, a big tree “fell right before our noses.”

The schools are a throwback to Friedrich Fröbel, the German educator who opened the world’s first kindergarten, or “children’s garden,” more than 150 years ago. Mr. Fröbel counseled that young children should play in nature, cordoned off from too many numbers and letters.

They are also a modern-day snapshot of environmentally conscious and consumption-wary Germany, where the Green Party polls more than 10% and stores are closed on Sundays.

Only a fraction of German children attend Waldkindergärten, but their numbers have been rising since local parent groups began setting up these programs in the mid-1990s, following the lead of a Danish community. Similar schools exist in smaller numbers in Scandinavia, Switzerland and Austria. The concept is sparking interest far afield — even in the U.S., whose first Waldkindergarten opened in Portland, Ore., last fall.

“The computer arrives early enough,” adds Norbert Huppertz, a specialist in child development at the Freiburg University of Education and a Waldkindergärten booster in Germany.

Academic studies of such schools are in their infancy. Some European researchers believe Waldkindergärten kids exercise their imaginations more than their brick-and-mortar peers do and are better at concentrating and communicating. Despite dangers, from insects particularly, the children appear to get sick less often in these fresh-air settings. Studies also suggest their writing skills are less developed, though, and that they are less adept than other children at distinguishing colors, forms and sizes.

In the rolling countryside of Idstein on a recent rainy morning, parents dropped off their children at a muddy parking lot a bit after 8 as the temperature hovered around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

Inspecting a Worm

Some of the children, wrapped in thick winter clothing, stooped over to inspect a worm. Then the five girls and four boys trudged into the neighboring woods with their two teachers before pausing to hold hands in a circle. “Good morning, sun, even though we can’t see you today,” said the 51-year-old Ms. Kluge, as the children joined in song and then acted out a play involving rabbits.

They hiked a few hundred feet into the forest before settling down to jump in puddles, examine a hibernating lizard and paint Easter eggs. A girl named Maxi went off to whittle a branch with a hunting knife. Another made “chocolate-vanilla-strawberry-herbal pudding” by stirring mud with a twig.

At snack time, the children sat on logs and munched on carrots and nuts while Ms. Kluge told them about the life cycle of toads. A boy named Ben wanted to know whether a North American visitor accompanying them was “a cowboy or an Indian.” A bit before 1 p.m., after jumping in more puddles, playing around a makeshift tepee and singing another song involving the Easter bunny, the children emerged from the woods grinning and caked in mud to be picked up by their waiting parents.

“It’s peaceful here, not like inside a room,” said Ms. Kluge, who has headed the Waldkindergarten since it opened five years ago.

The children rarely venture into a trailer in the forest that’s used as a shelter in extreme weather. Ms. Kluge says no child has ever asked for a toy. The children improvise instead with what the woods have to offer. And there haven’t been any bad accidents beyond the occasional scrapes and bruises.

Not everyone has a feel-good experience. Frankfurt resident Donna Parssinen sent her son to a Waldkindergarten last year but says he got Lyme disease from ticks. It resulted in meningitis that temporarily paralyzed half his face. “I still like the idea” of Waldkindergärten, says Ms. Parssinen, “but once is enough.” Her son now attends a four-walled kindergarten.

Still, many German indoor kindergartens take children to nearby forests once a week to tramp around. A spokesman for Germany’s Ministry for Family Affairs said it welcomes the arrival of Waldkindergärten, which typically receive local government subsidies similar to those of state-run kindergartens.

Iwao Uehara, a professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture, says he has been trying to set up such a school in Japan, but the project is struggling. Until there’s evidence that Waldkindergärten graduates end up attending “famous universities,” it’s going to be a tough sell, he says.

In Portland, though, Marsha Johnson launched Mother Earth kindergarten last fall to combat what she calls “early academic fatigue syndrome….We have 5-year-olds who are tired of going to school.” The 14 children spend four hours a day at the privately run school playing in a state park forest.

How to Handle a Saw

Among the nature-based activities, children learn how to handle a real saw. “A plastic saw is no good,” says Ms. Johnson. “You might as well give them a plastic life.” The worst that has happened thus far to the children is the occasional bee sting, she says.

Mimi Howard, a director at the Education Commission of the States, which advises states on policy from Denver, says some U.S. teachers feel pressure “to push academics earlier and earlier.” The federal No Child Left Behind law introduced standardized testing for reading and writing by third grade, but some studies recommend more “open-ended learning experiences” for young children. “We’re in the debate phase,” she says.

In Fife, Scotland, Cathy Bache recently took matters into her own hands and founded a private nursery school. About 20 children explore the local forests, “saw logs, make fires when cold and look at fungi,” she explains. Ms. Bache admits the children fall out of trees “quite often” — but that she doesn’t let them climb higher than 6 feet, the cutoff point for her insurance policy.

Source: Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120813155330311577.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

(…) As a sexuality educator for almost 20 years, I was disappointed to read that after observing a three-hour program about sexuality for teenagers and parents, Mr. Winerip felt that the prospect for having an open dialogue about sex was “pretty much devoid of hope.”

I applaud all opportunities for parents to talk with their children, but parents should begin to talk about sexuality long before the teenage years.

Teaching our children early on how to assess risks in any number of areas helps them become thoughtful, safe and responsible adults. We want them to know our values as parents. This does not happen in one conversation, but rather in many conversations as our children grow.

In a given day, parents have a wealth of opportunities to share their values in casual conversations. Teenagers need parents who learn to be comfortable using these teachable moments to share their values, which takes practice.

Despite what teenagers say, studies show that teenagers want their parents to share their values about sexuality with them. Furthermore, teenagers whose parents have overcome their discomfort delay having sexual intercourse. (…)

Source: New York Times, United States
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/opinion/l13parenting.html?ref=opinion

The internet offers a world of possibilities for children — but adults need to manage the risks, say Matt Warman and Claudine Beaumont

It has not been a good few days for the internet: a succession of recent reports and surveys has warned of the dangers the web poses to children, and parents could be forgiven for cancelling their broadband subscriptions and dumping the family computer.

In Britain, a government-backed report got the ball rolling, calling for a new code of conduct for social networking sites. This was swiftly followed by detailed research which found that more than a quarter of eight-to-11-year-olds with internet access had circumvented ineffectual age restrictions to join social networking sites aimed at older people.

The British Home Office published a 73-page report that makes a series of recommendations about the steps social networking sites and websites need to take, in order to improve child safety online, including providing links that advertise phone numbers for the emergency services.

So, what steps can parents take to ensure their children’s online safety, when the internet appears to be little more than a lawless playground?

Those with younger children, not yet tempted by the forbidden fruit of Facebook or Bebo will also know that such inquisitive urges are just around the corner, and wonder how best to prepare their children for it.

Here are our top five tips for keeping children safe online, as well as our guide to the best websites for young children:

1: Be realistic

There are dangers online just as there are in real life. Make sure you know where children are going online, just as you would make sure you know who they’re playing with. Ask what websites they’re visiting and what their appeal is.

Make sure the computer is in a public place, such as the living room or kitchen, so you can see what’s going on. This will reduce the temptation for young people to shut the door on the pleasures of the real world, too.

2: Use parental controls or protective software

Almost all internet browsers now have effective parental controls built in, which can be easily tweaked to filter the kind of sites children can access. Don’t ask your children to help set it up — employ a competent friend or IT professional if it’s beyond your expertise.

There are also several commercial options: for instance, Cyberpatrol.com offers you the chance to limit time and type of web access, and an awful lot more besides; McAfee and Norton make equivalent versions, too, but be aware that the walled garden approach can always be circumvented by using another computer, so education about the rules and responsibilities of internet use needs to go hand-in-hand with such software solutions.

3: Protect your child’s online identity

Adults should know by now that signing up to a website usually involves a choice about how much personal data you want to give out, and how much you want to make public.

Try to explain to your children, too, that they can use pseudonyms, and that they shouldn’t ever tell strangers they meet online too much about themselves.

4: Remember that there is real danger out there

There’s been a huge amount of media coverage of a small number of incidents of young people being ‘groomed’ online by people who have subsequently ended up in prison.

Much of the internet offers anonymity, which makes this kind of criminal activity easier to perpetrate.

If you think that something really is amiss, talk first to your children, but don’t dismiss as harmless behaviour online that would be really suspicious in person.

5: Try to get the most out of technology

Remember that prohibition simply won’t work. Your children will use computers, even if it’s at school or at friends’ houses.

If you understand what’s worthwhile for your child, what’s harmful and how to balance risks, both you and your child will be able to get a lot more out of the web.

Best websites for young children

The internet is a useful educational tool for children of all ages, and when used properly, can provide a safe environment for creative play, as these sites show:

Club Penguin: a virtual world aimed at children aged between six and 14, where youngsters can play games and interact with other ‘penguins’.

Adventure Rock: a site from Children’s BBC that encourages youngsters to explore a long-forgotten island.

Moshi Monsters: adopt and care for a virtual pet monster.

Imbee: make trading cards, a personal blog and create interest groups for like-minded children.

Lola’s Land: launching on April 22, and aimed at slightly older girls, this social-networking site is based on the Lola Love character created by author Lisa Clark.

> Alternatively, you could try an internet browser designed specifically for children.

KidZui (www.kidzui.com ) restricts children’s online experience to half a million websites approved by teachers and parents.

It combines elements of social-networking and personalisation with educational information and fun games. Although US-centric in its focus, it’s worth taking a look at.

Source: Irish Independent, Ireland
http://tinyurl.com/64zn85

A proposal to restrict the sale of violent video games in Massachusetts has caused famed horror author Stephen King (…), who admits he is no fan of video games, to speak out against what he refers to as the government’s surrogate parenting.

“According to the proposed bill, violent video games are pornographic and have no redeeming social merit,” he wrote in an Entertainment Weekly column. “What makes me crazy is when politicians take it upon themselves to play surrogate parents. The results of that are usually disastrous. Not to mention undemocratic.”

Designated HB 1423, the state legislation would limit the sale of violent video games to anyone under the age of 18. “Which means, by the way, that a 17-year-old who can get in to see Hostel: Part II would be forbidden by law from buying (or renting, one supposes) the violent but less graphic Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” King pointed out. “If there’s violence to be had, the kids are gonna find a way to get it.”

Instead of a state-mandated restriction on violent game sales–many of which have been found to be unconstitutional in the past–King suggested that parents make an effort to take a more active role in raising their children as video games are not the only readily available source of violence in America.

“There’s a lot more to America’s culture of violence than Resident Evil 4,” he explained. “Parents need to have the guts to forbid material they find objectionable…and then explain why it’s being forbidden. They also need to monitor their children’s lives in the pop culture–which means a lot more than seeing what games they’re renting down the street.”

Source: Shacknews
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52090