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Here our regular and guest bloggers share their opinions, insights, dilemmas and advice on a wide range of topics and issues around free range kids. Read what they have to say and, to join in the conversation, post a comment.
Vicious cycle
A five year-old is instructed to get off his bike on the Weymouth promenade. Over-zealous byelaw enforcement, or due application of the law on a juvenile cycling menace? And exactly, what is the law…?
The ingredients for free range kids
A recent report shows girls don’t like PE much, whilst an expert health body has just recommended walking and cycling to school to be active. Two birds, one stone? Al Goulding thinks so…
Natural born thrillers
Children have seen the area in which they can play in shrink by 90% in a generation, and more children are hospitalised falling out of bed than out of trees.
Peak pedal
In 15 days, just shy of 1000 schools generated over 890,000 bike and scooter journeys to school. If we can do it for 3 weeks, we can do it all year.
Big Pedal, huge difference
It's two days to go until the end of the Big Pedal, Sustrans' mammoth national bike event and over 725,000 journeys have been generated.
Mother knows best?
Is the responsibility for how children view issues like travel, the environment and health increasingly laid at mums' feet?
Should children be given driving lessons?
The BBC is reporting on a call for the government to encourage young people to learn driving skills before they are old enough to hold a licence.
Snow wreaks havoc. Really?
While news headlines shout about the havoc caused by the snow, Marianne Mannello of Play Wales rejoices that it can have a positive effect on our communities.
Girls just want to have fun
Blogger Al Goulding is amazed that 58% of girls now cycle outside of school time compared to only 17% before.
Children are seen but not heard
More often than not, we don’t take into consideration the opinions of children when we think about our streets, neighbourhoods and estates. In fact, we usually attribute many of the problems in these spaces to the kids themselves.
The gift children really want
Marianne Manello from Play Wales explains why allowing and supporting children to play out with friends independently is one of the most important gifts we can give them this Christmas.
Buying a bike for Christmas?
Our blogger, Emily, a secondary school pupil, gives her expert advice about what parents and kids should look for when buying a new bike for Christmas. She knows from personal experience that a well chosen bike will get lots of use!
Parenting from the heart
A recent study from Denmark has shown that cycling to and from school daily can significantly improve heart health – the first time medical evidence has been cited to show that exercise in children is directly linked to lower rates of cardiovascular disease in later life.
Material girls and boys
What’s the latest UK financial scandal? Cash for questions? MPs expenses? Not at all, it’s happening near you, in the neighbours’ houses… maybe even your own. The shocking headlines are that British parents are literally buying their children’s goodwill with material goods, so a new UN report tells us.
Childhood only happens once
There are many reasons why we see so few children out and about these days. Increased traffic and the way our built environment tends to be legislated and designed to suit adults' needs, and not those of children, are two obvious examples.
Free range fun on a balance bike
When buying our son a new bike, we agreed a balance bike would be best. A trike seemed too babyish for my very grown up two-year-old, yet pedals too challenging. ‘Won’t it just confuse him?’ said my old-school parents, producing a set of stabilisers.
Residents reclaim their roads
The two most commonly cited non-traffic related reasons for parents not wanting their kids to play outside are dog mess and fly tipping. This is a common problem - many of our residential areas are blighted by these prolific forms of anti-social behaviour.
School run to stand still
No one likes the school run. The school run is rush hour's runt sibling, inseparable, irritating. If there was no school run, rush hour would be celebrated as exactly that, a national good-humoured charge to work..
A bicycle made for two?
When Ghulam Murtza went for a quick cycle with his two-year-old in Burton, the last thing he probably expected was a £200 fine.
I predict a riot
Sustrans just turned 34. Like all of us at a certain age, we start saying things like “don’t the police look young?”, “why did God create Justin Bieber?”, and “kids watch too much TV, they don’t play outside anymore”. Then we actually checked and it seems kids don’t get outside much anymore, certainly not on their own…
Public spaces for people
I remember the journey to school as plain fun – an adventure at the start of every day. My trip to school was a fifteen minute walk during which my imagination ran wild as I climbed freezing alpine passes, crossed precarious swinging rope bridges, negotiated booby traps, forged raging rivers, and avoided hungry cannibals.
This summer
This summer, I will probably go camping in our caravan with my mum, dad and my dog Tess and my sister Issy. She is 16 and lives in France but she is here for the summer working before she starts college in France. But she won’t be able to bring her bike, so she will have to use my grandma’s.
Still on the bike then?
It's hard to know what people think when they see me cycling with my son, Isaac, two. Mounted on his seat safely between me and the handlebars, you can hear him whooping with joy as we whizz down the road, long before you see us.
We need to get out more
Oh dear. It seems that our little people are barely allowed outside their garden now, when we used to be able to roam 840m on average, several streets, and any number of adventures and scraped knees away from our homes.
