First steps

“Don’t cry, don’t cry. Breathe...smile...wave.” That was my internal dialogue this morning on the porch, dear readers, as I watched both girls leave to WALK TO SCHOOL ALONE. I was not at all prepared for this. I knew #1, being in fourth grade, would be able to walk the quarter mile to and from school by herself, in fact, she did so yesterday, asking me at pick up, “Can you drive #2 and LM home, and I’ll meet you there?” But when the principal answered my inquiry as to whether #1 would be able to walk #2 home in the affirmative, I was blown away. I also realized that even I am not immune to helicopter parenting.

Helicopter parenting, where parents “hover” over their children, helping in every aspect of their lives, is a modern phenomenon so pervasive; it has rendered our children essentially helpless when not with their parents. I have seen its affects on my own children, who although intelligent, I now realize, have been ridiculously sheltered. I thought I was immune to this shit. I don’t do #1’s homework, LM isn’t wearing a life jacket in the 18 inch deep kiddie pool (yes, people actually do that), but when #1 asked, over the summer, if she could walk to and from school this year alone my first, internal, reaction was, “Have you lost your damn mind???”

I blame the media, with their messages of doom and danger, making us think pedophiles lurk around every corner waiting to snatch our children away the minute we dare to take our eyes off of them. It’s part of the alarmist nature of modern parenting where only the power of our own worry can prevent the unthinkable from happening, from swine flu (that never really amounted to much, but I was at my CVS at 5:30 in the morning with the kids regardless) to head injuries (remember that baby helmet?).

Realizing what a choke-hold I had on my girls’ burgeoning independence, I tried my best to back off a bit this summer. They started walking the dog together in the evening, following the same route they take to school. They began ordering their own food at the pool snack stand, and going to the bathroom, without me, on our field trips. Baby steps.

But nothing could prepare me for the sight of my girls walking away, laden with backpacks and lunchboxes, happily chatting away like actual, real people who exist apart from me. That’s the crux of it, dear readers. These little people were, literally, a part of my body, or attached to it, then completely dependent upon my care for so long, how can it not be difficult to see them as their own separate entities? Modern life gives us the luxury of not, you know, sending our kids to lose appendages in the local mill at the ripe old age of four, but at some point we need to cut the cord, even if every talking head on the TV and parenting rag offers me nothing but advice to the contrary. I know in my bones it’s right.

But it still didn’t stop me from grabbing Little Man’s Diego binoculars from the car and watching them for as long as I could.