Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry.

Looking at this beguiling face, you’d never guess this woman is responsible for turning my sweet, innocent daughter into a wild and crazy gypsy.

Yes, thanks to Lenore Skenazy, this hyper-hovering helicopter parent (moi) is about to (queasily) participate in my child’s Happy Birthday Nostril-Piercing Adventure.

Without Lenore Skenazy (did I mention she’s also known as ‘The Worst Mom in America?’) and her new book: “Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry”, I would have concocted a Top Ten Reasons Never To Go Near Your Nose with a Needle, starting with “It will explode” and ending with “It will fall off.”

Then, because this Worst Mom in America, is actually a pal of mine who kindly quotes me in her savvy Ad Age column, I was privileged to receive her new book well before all the Mom-buzz started. I actually got my Purelle-parched hands (Swine Flu) on it just as women’s clubs throughout the Bay Area were bubbling about Lenore’s common sense child raising stance.

Here’s what Lenore has to say:

When I wrote a column for The New York Sun on “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Take The Subway Alone,” I figured I’d get a few e-mails pro and con.

Two days later I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, FoxNews and all manner of talk radio with a new title under my smiling face: “America’s Worst Mom?”

Yes, that’s what it took for me to learn just what a hot-button this is — this issue of whether good parents ever let their kids out of their sight. But even as the anchors were having a field day with the story, many of the cameramen and make up people were pulling me aside to say that THEY had been allowed to get around by themselves as kids– and boy were they glad. They relished the memories!

Had the world really become so much more dangerous in just one generation?Yes — in most people’s estimation. But no — not according to the evidence.

In all her writing, Skenazy sees herself not as a pundit, but as a normal, curious, often amused but just as often fed-up, middle-aged mom out to get the facts. Her observations can be heard on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” she has written for Mad Magazine, and she edits the “What Next?” humor contest in the magazine The Week. She also spent several years as an on-air (younger, cuter) Andy Rooney, first at CNBC and then at the Food Channel.

A second book, “Who’s the Blonde That Married What’s-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip of the Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know…But Can’t Remember Right Now”
( www.whostheblondebook.com ) is being published by Penguin in June.

Guru’s Note: I am already a whizkid at the Who’s the Blonde book — and I challenge anybody to try to top me. I’m thinking of playing it on Twitter. Wanna tweet with me?