I Can Only Be Free Range If You Are Too

Remember the MOMifesto? You can read it here so go for it, but I might end up alienating you in the way I probably alienated a lot of other people I know and maybe even ones I don't. That happens when a girl gets all uppity and mouthy-like. Oh well.

I've been thinking about that bitch session essay a lot over the last few days. I've been thinking about it because maybe I've been breaking my own code lately; I mean, the girls are all entwined in jump rope class and soccer after all and I even signed them up for a week of soccer camp. (The Giant Four Year Old, alas, is still getting his extracurricular kicks at the grocery store and in the Mobile Discovery Unit which also serves as my car.)

I've been thinking about it mostly after reading this article and all the opinionated opinions surrounding it and even the author's own rebuttal. Lenore's essay inspired more of the Mom on Mom pissing matches we are notoriously famous for, more of the Woman on Woman brawls that bring us down time and time again. (Fret not: I've resigned myself now to these "I really respect you, but you're totally fucking wrong and crazy and stupid and you are doing damage to your children" fights and I even find them halfway humorous so I won't get all ranty about it.)

The real juicy meat of this Helicopter Mom vs. Free Range Kid debate is not so much the ire it arouses, it's more about the way it can get a girl thinking. Especially if you're one like me. You know the kind: the loudmouth who proclaimed her angst with the kind of mothering that is less about mothering but more about running the business that is Mother. I said it before, and I'll say it again: my kids will never be my "job" and I don't and won't feel guilty about having interests and desires and conversations and needs and plans that don't always include them. But would I let my nine year old ride the subway alone? Who knows? We barely have buses in this small town and my kids think a taxi is like the coolest ride ever. Her kid and mine? Completely different worlds, completely different experiences.

But I do know this: Helicopter Mom I am not. I do not negotiate friendships or fights. I have never requested a teacher. I do not linger at any practice unless I am required to be there. I love drop-off parties and drop-off play dates and drop-offs of any kind. Yet, I don't think my kids are totally Free Range either. Granted, they are wee ones in the scope of things and I'd probably be arrested if I "freed" them as much as I might like to at times, but this whole hoohah is making me feel a little uncool. Because..well, I'm not hovering per se... I'm sort of hot-air ballooning above them. I don't have (nor want) the navigational skills those Heli-moms have to land squarely in any spot they choose whenever they choose but I'm up there nonetheless. And it makes me feel a tad hypocritical, all half-in, half-out the way I appear to be: wanting to go where the wind takes me but white-knuckling the tether to Earth.

I have to remind myself that just as my kids can't learn how to handle a bossy, bitchy friend if I whip out the Mom card at each infraction, they can't learn how to cross the street by themselves if I insist on holding their hand every time. Right? So eight year old B has walked to school since second grade with a pal, all of four blocks and without a cell phone (like some her friends). The Giant Four Year Old roams the 'hood now, at least in the perimeter I allow (a square block, no crossing streets). And while I know they won't be pro soccer players, I am also pretty sure they won't be pro jump ropers either so clearly I am not "training" them for anything other than you know, growing up.

But there's a playground half way between here and school and I've only once allowed B and her friend to scooter there alone, and I did it under protest. Which irritates and sort of shames me.

When I was 8, almost 9, I rode my bike at least a mile each way to the beach club my parents belonged to. I snapped my towel in the rat-trap and zoomed off for the day, without sunscreen (or more importantly, anyone to apply it) and without - gasp - a helmet. I probably didn't even know my own phone number. But herein lies the rub: there were A LOT of us back then riding our bikes to some place or some event for the day. We were the numbers that added up to the safety that our own mothers relied on. If you wiped out on your bike, the fastest kid would book to the closest house to find the closest available mom to take care of it. And we did wipe out. And we did encounter creeps. But we never got seriously hurt, not ever, because we were a posse (that sometimes included kids we didn't even like) that our moms made us walk/ride/play with. It was safety in freakin' numbers.

I can send my kids into the backyard to play (because I do believe their own imaginations with grass and pebbles is better than about anything I can pay for), but it's a lot less fun if there aren't some other hoodlums to imagine with. I can let them go down the street to the park, but it's a lot less safe if they don't have a buddy to go with.

If it was safe enough for us then shouldn't it be safe enough for her now? Be safe enough for your kids? The only bigger threat in the world today (besides, you know, terrorism, global warming, George Bush) is probably the fact that there are more and bigger cars on the road (you gotta get those kids to their activities somehow). Stranger danger? Not so much; most kids abducted are taken by someone they know. So what, pray tell, am I, are we so afraid of?

I can only be Free Range if you are too.

The more kids that are pulled off the street from playing and riding bikes and starting ball games, the more dangerous the street is for the kids who are left there to play and ride bikes and start ball games.

Tomorrow if the sun is out, I'll let some more air into the balloon, because, if I am using this metaphor correctly, that might be the thing I need to bust through this irrational fear. But I'm also going to need you. I'm gonna need you to strap on your kids' helmets and let 'em ride. I'm gonna need you to just let 'em go even it's down the block. I'm gonna need you to let them traipse across your neighbors' yards to get to the house where the Sardines game is being played. And I'm gonna need you to shout with me from your own perch in the clouds (where maybe you hover too), I'm gonna to need you to shout really loud so that they can all hear us, "You go! You just go!"

They'll come back! And if we're lucky, they'll also grow up and move out and get to write snarky, bossy blogs like this.