It was the year of Pokemon panic — any toy that gets kids outside must be dangerous — and the year we saw an academic study of bounce house temperatures, "something that no one had really examined in the published literature," according to one of the researchers. Imagine that. But in all, it was a particularly great year for busybodies.

A video went viral of a man screaming at a woman who had the gall to pop into the gas station while her kid waited in the car, and so did a video of parents who got their food at a buffet while their baby waited at the table. How dare they?! Cops told a mom to leave a football game because onlookers thought her baby looked cold, and another mom's kids were ordered to undergo a physical because she let them wait in the car while she got coffee at Starbucks. And a friend of mine, Julie Gunlock, ended up defending herself after an FBI agent chewed her out for running into the store to get a rotisserie chicken while her boys — ages 9, 7 and 5 — waited in the car. She certainly is public enemy No. 1.

And then there were these stories:

The 10 Least Free-Range Moments of 2016

—The police chief in New Albany, Ohio, helpfully revealed the age that kids are old enough to start going outside on their own: 16. "I think that's the threshold where you see children getting a little bit more freedom."

—Local TV news in Fargo, North Dakota, reported that a mom "felt scared" at the grocery because she kept running into the same couple in several aisles. "And when I went to the checkout, they were right there," she said. Yep.

—Kids at The Learning Collaborative, a preschool in a disadvantaged neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina, are not allowed to play on their new swings because the grass and dirt underneath are "too dangerous." First the school must raise $1,100 to replace the grass with 6-inch-deep mulch.

—The Beaverton, Oregon, library will not allow children under 10 on the premises unless they are within a caregiver's line of sight at all times. If an "adult/responsible caregiver cannot be located within 5 minutes, library staff will call the Beaverton Police Department."

—A 14-year-old Iowa girl, "Nancy Doe," took two racy pictures of herself — one in a sports bra and boy shorts, one braless but with her hair covering her breasts — and texted them to a boy. A few weeks later, she was accused of "sexual exploitation of a minor" — herself.

—The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised all women who are not on birth control not to drink any alcohol until they reach menopause. Explained Princeton sociologist Elizabeth Mitchell Armstrong, "The idea is that any woman of reproductive age should be treated as potentially pregnant at all times."

—Rhode Island legislators introduced a bill that would ban recess in temperatures below 32 degrees.

—A mom who was six months pregnant in Lexington County, Kentucky, was arrested for letting her kids wait in the air-conditioned car for three to five minutes while she ran an errand. Lee Foster, a sheriff in South Carolina, agreed that it was dangerous. He said that a parent simply stepping out of the car is one thing, but "if someone has abandoned a child, even for a short time, that's another matter." The errand qualified as abandonment, and the mom spent the night in jail.

—A dying wheelchair-bound sex offender with Alzheimer's disease must move out of the Boynton Beach, Florida, hospice he's in because it is too close to a preschool.

—Nine hundred middle-school students in Grand Island, Nebraska, were evacuated when a staff member noticed an unfamiliar box in the band room. The state's bomb squad was summoned to open it and discovered it held what some would indeed consider a threat to the community's well-being: an accordion.

Lenore Skenazy is author of the book and blog "Free-Range Kids" and a keynote speaker at conferences, companies and schools. Her TV show, "World's Worst Mom," airs on Discovery Life. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy ([email protected]) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.