Free Range Children

SUBHEAD: Utah just passed America’s first ‘Free-Range Parenting’ law fostering of child self-sufficiency.

By Dominique Mosbergen on 26 March 2018 for Huffington Post -
(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/utah-free-range-parenting-law_us_5ab8b3dce4b0decad04b91c7)


Image above: Older boy walking younger boy across road with no parental supervision. From original article.

[IB Publisher's note: Thank God somewhere children are going to be allowed to be children and discover some of the world on their own. How else can one become a responsible adult and learn how to deal with adversity and challenges. I say down with the Nanny State!]

Utah has legalized a controversial child-rearing method known as “free-range parenting” that encourages the fostering of self-sufficiency in children from a young age, which is believed to be the first legislation of its kind in the United States.

The so-called “free-range kids” bill was signed into law by Republian Gov. Gary Herbert on Friday after the state House and Senate voted unanimously to approve the legislation.

The new law, which will take effect on May 8, specifies that it is not a crime for parents to allow kids who display maturity and good judgment to do things like walk to school alone or play outside without supervision.

An age limit was not defined, but the bill’s sponsors said it was left “purposely open-ended so police and prosecutors can work on a case-by-case basis” if abuse or neglect is suspected, according to The Associated Press.

“If there are clear signs of abuse, obviously that is grounds for action, and in no way is excluded [from the law],” Rep. Brad Daw (R), the bill’s House sponsor, told the Salt Lake Tribune.

Draw said he was convinced to pursue the legislation after seeing cases in other states of parents being investigated or even arrested for allowing their kids to do things alone. A Maryland couple made headlines in 2015 after they were accused of neglect for letting their two children ― aged 10 and 6 ― walk home without adult supervision.

In 2014, a Florida mom was arrested on a felony child neglect charge for allowing her 7-year-old son to walk to a nearby park alone. (That charge was eventually dropped.)

Sen. Lincoln Filmore (R), the Utah bill’s chief sponsor, said he introduced the legislation to encourage more self-reliance among children.

“I feel strongly about the issue because we have become so over-the-top when ‘protecting’ children that we are refusing to let them learn the lessons of self-reliance and problem-solving that they will need to be successful as adults,” Filmore told Yahoo Lifestyle last week.

Advocates of free-range parenting have celebrated Utah’s new law.

“We live in a fear-infused culture in which we’ve lost perspective on safety,” Lenore Skenazy, who coined the term “free-range parenting” about a decade ago, told Yahoo Lifestyle. “Common activities like leaving a child in a car are often presented as though they pose enormous threats to our safety.”

“Yes, anything can happen. But I hate the idea that imagination becomes the basis of law,” she added.

Free-range parenting is a method not without critics, however.

Arkansas tried to pass a similar free-range kids bill last year but failed after receiving pushback from critics who said it was too dangerous to leave children unsupervised.

.

Climate Change and our children

SUBHEAD: How to help my daughter face Climate Change with an open heart.

By Chris Moore-Backman on 9 December 2017 for TruthOut-
(http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/42845-how-to-help-my-daughter-face-climate-change-with-an-open-heart)


Image above: A firefighter battles a wildfire as it burns along a hillside near homes in Santa Paula, California, on December 5, 2017. From original article.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
~Kahlil Gibran

When the wildfires were still raging in California, my 12-year-old daughter and I rode Amtrak north from Oakland to Sacramento. Nearing Berkeley, we caught our first glimpse of the gray-brown wall of smoke issuing in from Sonoma, Napa, Lake, Mendocino, Butte, and Solano counties.

After riding 10 or so miles further on, the illusion of the wall suddenly dissipated, and we found ourselves speeding along in a fog of fine ash, our train blanketed in its opaque haze.

Gazing into the smoke, my daughter seated beside me, I considered the stark difference our awareness of global warming created between my childhood and hers. And I felt a deep anxiety stir in my belly.

What happens to a child's psyche, I asked myself, as she gradually absorbs the knowledge that our planet is warming at a terrifying rate and to an unimaginably dangerous degree, then quietly observes the adults in her life, particularly those most responsible for caring for and protecting her, doing the very things that are causing the emergency?

What happens as she observes the mundane spectrum of everyday life in the United States amid climate chaos: as dad pulls the car up to the pump, as mom comes home from the airport after a business trip, as the family sits down to another meat and factory farm-based dinner, iPhones at the ready and the thermostat cranked to 70?

I turned my gaze from the smoke and looked again at the book in my lap, Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution, by climate scientist Peter Kalmus. The page I had been reading would eventually lead to here: "Few people respond to facts… While intellect certainly plays a role, it's a rather small one. Our dire ecological crisis calls us to go deeper."

---

In his famous meditation on children, Kahlil Gibran likens parents to the bows of the divine archer, from which children, like arrows, are sent forth into the mystery of their own souls and futures. The beloved bow, Gibran attests, sends the arrow swift and far, by bending to the archer's strength, while at the same time remaining stable.

Such flexible stability is what I long to achieve as a parent -- a certain rootedness and strength of purpose, mediated by gentleness. It's what I believe I need if I'm going to accompany my daughter as she learns to face the coming storms -- and fires -- with her eyes and heart open.

So it is that I'm gravitating toward the solace and instruction of other dads these days, the more humble and down-to-earth the better. Kalmus, father of two young sons, is one such dad.

"At first, we didn't know what we were doing. It was reasonable for us to start burning fossil fuels," Kalmus says early on in Being the Change. "However, now we do know what we're doing."

It's an exquisitely sane point of departure for the author's first book, which reads as an openhearted letter to anyone deeply concerned about global warming and at all cognizant of how quickly the climate change clock is ticking.  

Being the Change details Kalmus' process of bringing his daily life into alignment with his conscience -- a process that carries some very welcome side effects: namely, a carbon footprint weighing in at one-tenth the US average, greater happiness, and deepened connections with loved ones and life itself.

As a climate expert utterly in the know about humanity's devastating impact on the health of the biosphere (see Chapter 3), and with as clear a picture as can be had about where our civilization's carbon addiction is leading (see Chapter 4), Kalmus eventually proves no match for the cognitive dissonance he experiences because of his own outsized carbon footprint.

His chosen response is refreshingly straightforward: "If fossil fuels cause global warming, and I don't want global warming," he writes, "then I should reduce my fossil fuel use."

Although there's zero evidence that Gandhi ever wrote or uttered the most popular phrase attributed to him -- "Be the change you wish to see in the world" -- the sentiment is distinctly Gandhian. Finding congruence between our deepest convictions and our outward behavior, according to this adage, is the true measure of our genuine happiness, and of our contribution to the world. It's an old and simple idea:

 When it comes to social change, how we live our lives is of paramount importance. In India, Gandhi captured the heart of a massive social movement with his own rendering of this basic philosophy.
 
"Nobility of soul," he summarized in a letter to his cousin, "consists in realizing that you are yourself India. In your emancipation is the emancipation of India. All else is make believe."

What makes Being the Change important is not Kalmus' restatement of this age-old tenet, but his plainspoken description of putting it into concrete practice. He offers thorough, humbly stated guidance on establishing new daily practices which, step by step, can break a person free from the carbon-heavy status quo.

What's more, through his inspiring and often funny anecdotes about his homespun experiments aimed at paring down -- things like bicycling , growing food, meditating, embracing a vegetarian diet, and renouncing air travel -- Kalmus illustrates that overcoming our addiction to fossil fuels isn't a path of puritanical self-mortification.

Rather, low-energy living (low-energy being Kalmus' corrective for green, because of its insidious consumerist implications) can be a deeply satisfying adventure, calling for equal parts creativity and fun.

Boiled down, the path Kalmus advocates is based on two simple and, if we're open to them, life-changing premises.

The first is that burning fossil fuel causes harm. According to Kalmus, this harm will last for around 100,000 years -- 10 million years if we count reduced biodiversity (and why shouldn't we?). The reason he has taken what to many people looks like radical steps to avoid burning fossil fuel is that he doesn't like causing harm.

This connection is obvious intellectually, but most people, and society, have not taken this in deeply enough to change their actions to any significant degree. Kalmus, the dad, however, feels this connection in his gut.

 "Burning fossil fuels should be unacceptable socially," he says, "the way physical assault is unacceptable. The harm it does is less immediate, but just as real." Who could argue that future generations -- likely our own children and grandchildren -- as they suffer the consequences of our negligence, will see this as plainly as we see the immorality of chattel slavery today.

The second basic premise of Being the Change is that burning less fossil fuel makes for a happier life. Despite every message to the contrary trumpeted by our consumption-driven society, this appears to be the normal experience of those following similar paths, not the exception.

On these two premises rests a path of radical personal transformation with deep implications for the collective. 

"Using less energy at the global scale would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and serve as a bridge to a future without fossil fuels," Kalmus says. "Using less energy in our individual lives," he further (and to my mind most importantly) asserts, "would equip us with the mindset, skills, and the systems we'll need in this post-fossil-fuel world."

---

Returning my gaze to the smoke, it occurred to me: As soon as the wildfires ran their deadly course, clean up, then construction, would immediately follow. The set would be quickly and efficiently reconstructed according to the same basic blueprint used before. And the reconstruction would undoubtedly be touted as evidence of inspiring community-resiliency, and probably of a certain American spirit, rugged and purportedly unique to us.

It occurred to me also, holding Being the Change in my hands on that smoke-immersed train with my beloved child beside me, that Peter Kalmus has provided us with a different blueprint, and he's shown through his own experimentation that we have the capacity to choose it, and to use it. On the cusp of climate catastrophe, we are neither choiceless nor powerless.

At bottom, I read Being the Change as the testament of a father trying to do right by his kids -- a testament that leaves me with a much different set of questions about the psychic wellness of our children.

In the face of the climate emergency, what would it do to their psyches to see us, their parents and other adult caregivers, pouring our hearts into the work of personal and societal transformation, on behalf of people we will never meet?

On behalf of all other living beings, the rivers and trees and soil?

What if our children saw us respond to this crisis with maturity, sanity, and integrity? With the flexible stability of Gibran's bow? What would it do to them, for them, if we came into resonance with our own souls?

.

Collective Wisdom

SUBHEAD: Collective wisdom of those who raise animals and food is lost because it's not being passed down from parent to child.

By Joan Conrow on 8 January 2013 for Kauai Eclectic  -
(http://kauaieclectic.blogspot.com/2013/01/musings-collective-wisdom.html)


Image above: Don Zasada, right, and his 4-year-old son, Micah, head for the house after a round of chores. From (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mediagiraffe/5001291387/).

Venus and a crescent moon made fleeting appearances on this cloudy, damp day when the dogs and I were accompanied on our walk, as we sometimes are, by a solitary shama thrush. Hopping and flitting, it led the way, always careful to remain about 15 feet ahead, until it eventually flew off, leaving us with a song. Was it escorting us through its territory, or simply being interactive, the way shama often are in the garden?

I've reconciled myself to the fact that there are some things I will probably never know.

Still, I did learn two interesting bits of information recently. One came from a neighbor, who told me if you're raising pigs, you always want to have two, because solo pigs have a tendency to become picky eaters. But if you have a pair, they get jealous, which makes them greedy, so they eat heartily and “come more nice,” she explained. “That's how my mother taught me and it's true.”

And I wondered what will happen to us, as a society, especially a society that has recently started speaking in earnest about topics like sustainability and food self-sufficiency, when the collective wisdom of people like my neighbor, who have spent a lifetime raising animals and food, is lost. Because it's not being passed down, as it traditionally has been, from parent to child.

As Farmer Jerry often tells me, “We've lost an entire generation of farmers.”

Then there is new information, which is disseminated but not heeded, like the little tidbit I gleaned from Dolan Eversole, a UH Sea Grant coastal hazards specialist, in his remarks at last Friday's special Council meeting on the decision to put the concrete Path along Wailua Beach.

He had been asked, by Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura, how global warming might affect the risk of erosion at Wailua Beach, and he replied that scientists aren't yet certain exactly how that will play out, especially in Hawaii. Still, published scientific studies do show that for each 1 foot of sea level rise, we might reasonably anticipate 100 feet of erosion horizontally, or inland.

“So if we're expecting 1 foot of sea level rise by 2050, we might generally expect 100 feet of [shoreline] position change,” Dolan said.

As I've traveled around the windward side in recent days, gone to various beaches, driven through Wailua, I've thought often of how dramatically this coastline will be altered by erosion extending in 100 feet. Because despite what the deniers say, sea level rise is already under way. It's happening now. What we don't know yet is how high, and how fast.

Each new scientific report seems to move up the date, and the collective wisdom of scientists I interviewed for a Honolulu Weekly article is that the changes likely will accelerate once the cumulative impacts come into play. They're only now starting to assess the synergistic effects of climate change, and work that data into their models.

Ironically, some of the scientists and state planning director Jesse Souki lauded Kauai County for its shoreline setback bill, which they viewed as a sensible, pragmatic, even pioneering approach to climate change by ensuring that structures aren't built too close to the coast.

Except, it turns out, a $1.9 million stretch of concrete path along the already eroding Wailua Beach. Which we are apparently proceeding with not because it makes sense, or enjoys widespread public support, but because it will cost too much to back out now.

So when I hear people talking about how the Wailua section of the Path — indeed, the entire Path — will be enjoyed by people for generations to come, and that our “leaders” will be congratulated for their foresight and vision in ringing the coast with concrete, I just kind of shake my head and laugh.
.

Resilience and our children

SUBHEAD: For too many children, life is a series of dulled experiences that have had the life and risk sucked right out of them.

By Annie Lussenburg on 20 November 2012 for Resilience.org -
(http://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-11-15/resilience-why-so-many-parents-today-are-getting-it-wrong)


Image above: Still photo of a scene from 1983 movie "A Christmas Story". In the 1940's just going to school each day was an adventure. From (http://blog.moviefone.com/2010/12/14/a-christmas-story-where-are-they-now/).

I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve read about the importance of developing resilience.  It’s mentioned all over the web and for good reason, as it's a critical coping mechanism.  Most of those articles however, are directed at developing resilience within the adult population.  Seldom do we talk about how parents can and should create resilience in children, particularly when there are many parents out there who are doing the exact opposite of what’s required. 

Now before I go further, there are many situations where children are having to learn the hard realities of life far more quickly than either they, or their parents, or anyone else for that matter, might like.  That’s of course, directly due to the economic reality in many parts of the United States and Europe.

Up here however, in Canada and in the more wealthy parts of the US, parents are often unknowingly destroying their child’s ability to develop resilience, simply because most people have no idea of how inner resilience really develops.

Is it learned?  Is it something you can teach?  Can you sit with your children pointing to a book and explain ‘resilience’ as if it was like learning to use the potty or teaching your child how to share with friends?  Does it come from trying to learn a skill over and over again until they can do it in their sleep?

No, it doesn’t come from any of those.  Resilience is not a skill in the traditional sense.  It’s an integral part of being.  It results from how you are brought up and the more you are exposed to situations that produce it, the more you will develop.  Yes, you can improve your inner resilience but it comes from experience and only experience can teach it.

Isn’t it ironic then, that just at the time when we need our children to develop resilience the most, all the experiences that produce it are coming under assault?

So what are those assaults and how are they impacting our developing children in a way that might ultimately affect our very ability to survive as a species?  Well the assaults come under names that we might not even recognize.  Try ‘Self esteem’ and ‘Safety’ and all the words out there that are designed to make us feel good without doing anything remotely out of our comfort zone.

You see, resilience comes out of a struggle.  That’s it, there’s no other way to get it. Take the wrong bus and end up at the wrong stop will build you resilience but only if you aren’t able to place a rescue call for someone to pick you up.  Failing math and having to try harder: There’s a good one.  Having to go to another soccer game and try again because the last time you mucked up and everyone is mad at you.  Realizing that a course or activity you thought you'd enjoy is just terrible but sticking with it anyway, even though you're sometimes miserable.

All the things that we generally think of as negative experiences to be shied away from, are actually integral to being able to actively navigate the world as the adult and deal with the bumps of life.  And that is the world as it is now, not the potentially more difficult one on the horizon.

And just as the world is getting harder with austerity measures becoming de rigueur and overwhelmed budgets, we’re parenting children in a way that ensures children will have a harder and harder time navigating that future.  All the experiences that create resilience are being wiped away.

And it starts so young. Take the wonderful toys on display this Christmas and look at how they offer us a stunning example.  There’s the Fisher Price ‘Smart Cycle.’  Get all the experience of riding your bike without the experience!  No wind in your hair.  No thrill of taking the corner too fast.  No wobble when you move the handlebars too severely.  No need for all those worries when your bike is firmly hooked up to the TV.   Same for the Fisher Price “Fun 2 Learn Smart Fit Park.”  Who knew you didn’t have to go outside and get a tad bit frosty to have some fun this winter?

Safe, secure and coddled might sound good but it denies children the very coping mechanisms that will make the difference to them as adults.

Babies are coddled and carried about long after they actively outgrow their bounds and want to explore.  Moms and dads come running the moment they squawk because they’ve been brainwashed to believe that meeting their children’s needs means never allowing the minimum of discomfort to develop.

Yet it’s that momentary discomfort and struggle that leads to real resilience and ironically, even pleasure.  In ‘Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment*,’ Dr Gregory Berns explains that satisfaction is more about the struggle than the achievement itself. In other words, it’s more about the journey and not the arrival.  The human brain needs new experiences that are challenging.

How many times have you heard that children should not be allowed to talk to strangers even though the librarian is a stranger, as is the bus driver?  How many children are not allowed to play at the playground without mom or dad in tow, following along behind?  How many young children are not allowed to navigate the yard alone?  Even the older ones are frequently not allowed on a city bus or not allowed to walk to soccer practice.

For far too many children these days, life is a series of dulled experiences.  Experiences that have literally had the very life and inherent risk sucked right out of them.

So for all those children whose real experiences are reduced to an empty shell, I implore parents to understand their children’s real needs and take on board the real importance of struggle.  Try to resist stepping in to sweep away all your children’s problems as you’re simply not doing them any favours in the long run.

Children, especially little ones, will look to you to see how you deal with things that affect them.  Show fear of the world and they will too. Show undue upset at a minor bonk on their head or the fact that their friend has suddenly ditched them to play with someone else is, to give them the idea that such setbacks are overwhelming and deserve great attention, dissection and angst.  By all means discuss what happened but do so in a way, that allows them to develop resilience in the face of a negative event and that’s by not focussing on it or giving it undue attention.

The best way to discuss an event without giving it that undue attention, is to open the natural doors of communication and talk about it whilst focused on something else.  Try sorting the laundry basket together or sweeping the floor.  Talking to your children whilst engaged in another task is the way parents have offered support to their children for millennia.

Ask yourself why it’s so much easier for people to talk to teenagers in the car?   It’s because you’re focused on the act of driving and that’s far less intimidating to anyone who wants to open up about something bothering them.  To chat whilst doing something alongside your child, is to create an environment that transcends minor difficulties and offers support in a natural way that helps children learn to bounce back from disappointments.

My father used to have a saying.  "All of us will, at one point or other go in to the jungle." It's a period of difficulty that often defines life.  Some of us unfortunately get lost and fail to make it out at all.  Some will come out on their hands and knees and some will come out with the monkeys carrying the coconuts.  Whatever you do and however much you protect your child, they will at one point, enter that jungle. Let’s give them the skills to at least come out, coconuts notwithstanding.

*Satisfaction:  The Science of Finding True Fulfillment. New York, USA: Henry Holt & Company.  Chapter 7.

.

Gay Penguin Parenting

SUBHEAD: A gay penguin pair adopt an egg to raise as their own. And this is not so unusual. By Stephen Messenger on 22 May 2012 for TreeHugger - (http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/same-sex-penguin-couple-allowed-adopt-egg.html) Image above: A pair of penguins kissing at Cotswold Wildlife Park. From (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penguincotswoldwildlifepark.jpg). By all accounts, Inca and Rayas are just like any other Humboldt penguin couple -- loyal, affectionate, and family oriented -- but until recently, the same-sex pair's literal love nest seemed bound to be empty.

Last winter, the two male birds housed at the Madrid Zoo's Faunia Park made headlines in Spain by entering into a rare, but not unheard of, 'gay' penguin relationship. So, when the breeding season approached and an amorous spirit spread among their peers, Inca and Rayas worked together to prepare for the arrival of an offspring, apparently unaware of the nuts and bolts of reproduction.

But as the other preening penguin couples around them began to lay eggs and share in the duties of incubation, keepers say Inca and Rayas seemed a bit sullen and confused by their empty nest:

"They love each other as if they were male and female, courting each other the same," one zoo staffer told a Spanish news outlet. "But what they want is what they lack: to raise a chick."

Faced with this rather heartbreaking scene, last month zookeepers hatched a plan to help Inca and Rayas have a hatchling of their own. As it turns out, one of the zoo's breeding females had laid two eggs this season, one of which would have likely been abandoned -- so the keepers decided to offer it to the hapless penguin pair.

Keepers say that at first Inca and Rayas looked a bit nervous to suddenly be with child, but it didn't take long for them to welcome their new arrival with open wings, doting upon the adopted egg like any good expecting parents would.

"Inca (who's assumed the more motherly role) has yet to leave the nest. This is his first egg and he doesn't want to drop it," says their keeper. "He doesn't move even while we offer the best fish in the world."

Zoo staff expect the egg, so happily adopted by Inca and Rayas, to hatch within a week -- bringing with it renewed hopes of survival for their threatened species, and a reminder that the fruits of love most often grow sweetest when given a chance to grow.

---

Gay Penguins are not Gay Kyle Munkittrick on 6 June 2012 for Pop Bioethics - (http://www.popbioethics.com/2009/06/gay-penguins-are-not-gay/) [IB editor's note: This article used the same Wikipedia graphic to illustrate "gay" penguins three years earlier.]

At least not the way the internet has made it out to be. The Humbolt penguins at the German zoo, Bremerhaven, that have been “male-male” mating bonding and have been raising donor chicks are being portrayed as “gay” birds. The whole obsession with penguins is something I relate to – I used to doodle “Super Penguin” comics in my elementary school notebook – and this news is particularly funny after the breathless endorcement of March of the Penguins was given by conservative groups as a defence of marriage.

Describing the penguins as “gay” isn’t very accurate because, a) in general most penguins are “monogomous” meaning they’ll pair off with a single partner per mating season, but will often have a new partner the next year and b) if Foucault taught us nothing else, that sexuality is constructed so much so that homosexuality was, in a sense, invented at the turn of the century, it seems ridiculous to describe a species with season-to-season pair bonding with the word “gay.” Gay has too many implications socially and has been misappropriated in scientific work far too often.

What the gay penguin story has shown, however, is that same-sex bonding and mating behavior exists among this breed of penguin. More important, same-sex pairs can successfully raise a healthy chick when provided an egg. Of course, the correlation to humans is an easy one to draw, but I don’t think it is useful for the political debate of same-sex adoption. Gay adoption is ethical and should be allowed because the current arguments against it don’t hold water, not because a couple of penguins in a zoo hinted that it might not be as “unnatural” as antagonists claim.

.