Tell me if this sounds familiar from your own childhood summers: “In the morning I’d fill my bowl with Frosted Flakes and stare at the tiger, wondering what he had in store for his day, while my mom chatted on the phone with the neighbors, standing near the wall where the cord allowed her just three feet of walking room. She’d yell after me as I bounded outside to find my neighbor friends: ‘Stay where I can find you!’ She meant somewhere in the neighborhood — at least four streets and maybe 30 houses worth of territory.”

It sounds pretty great… and very different from how kids spend their summers nowadays. Well, Alexandra Frost makes a great argument for bringing some of that 90s energy back to parenting.

Kelly Faircloth, Executive Editor