I Might Be a Helicopter Mom… Vroooom!

My response was like many who saw the headline – “Parents Investigated for Neglect for Allowing Kids to Walk Home Alone.” I was appalled, even a bit indignant. How dare they. Investigating parents for allowing their 10 and 6-year-olds the freedom to walk home from the park alone was beyond comprehension, surely a mock headline in a fake news story for a pretend world that we couldn’t possibly live in. “What is this world coming to?” I asked nobody in particular, shaking my head at the news story that made its way onto the nightly news broadcast. “This is just getting ridiculous,” I said again, my husband no longer really paying attention. I then asked myself a question: Would I allow my kids to walk home alone?

Um, yeah, probably not.

There you have it, folks. I’m a walking contradiction; I want parents to have the right to practice free-range parenting, but I fully admit that I’m not on the boat. I may not even be in the marina. We don’t have a subway in Kansas City, but I can guarantee you that I wouldn’t hand my eight-year-old a token and tell him to jump on it alone if we did.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t live in fear that my children will be abducted. Those stories, which are every parent’s worst nightmare, are headline news for a reason. They are not common. No, I don’t let my boys play alone in the front yard, but it’s not because I believe that they are at great risk of a predator approaching while I’m unloading the dishwasher and oblivious to their activity outside. I don’t let them play in the front yard because, despite being told a thousand and one times, they still don’t bother to check for cars before running into the street after a rolling soccer ball. I can’t yet trust that their two-second attention spans are capable of protecting them when their thoughts are primarily focused on the next goal, rather than street safety.

I’m definitely not a free-range parent, but I respect the ones who are. I remember my parents dropping me and my siblings off at the mall and picking us up hours later without a clue where we were, what we did, or how many blue-colored slushies we were eating for lunch. Hours. They also dropped us off at the entrance gate of the County Fair and picked us up at the end of their workday, their only instructions to stay together and share the money given to us to make it through the day. I fully admit that, although raised that way, there are strange little synapses in my brain that fire off whenever I think about letting my kids do the very things that I’m adamant every parent should be allowed to let their kids do.

I Might Be a Helicopter Mom ... Vroooom!Am I helicopter mom? No way. Well, OK, maybe. I just don’t know. Helicopter blades rotate wildly and loudly; I like to think of myself more of a hoverer. Maybe I’m a Hovercraft Mom. Hang Glider Gal? I don’t want to hold the protective reins so tightly that my boys struggle to get loose, but I don’t want to let down my guard and fail to protect them when they need me. The line isn’t a bright one and, luckily, I’m still at the stage where my boys are little enough that they want me to be with them all the time. That will change someday; they will ask to walk to friends’ houses alone, be dropped off with friends at the park or movies, and will want the independence that I claim to want them to have (oh, how easy it is to claim something that is not yet an issue).

The truth is, at the end of the day, I know my personality. My parenting style doesn’t stem so much from external factors as from my internal voice — the voice that makes me type out itineraries for family vacations and organize my pantry according to snack accessibility. Type-A? You betcha, that’s me. I fully admit that I’m wired a bit too tightly, not just about my kids, but about life. I know this about myself, however, so the labels don’t bother me. I know that I’ll probably be the mom who holds onto the reins a bit too tightly, letting them loose only when my boys start to squirm and struggle against the hold. I’ll be the mom who asks her 18-year-old if he knows the bus routes on campus as I hand him a color-coded map and roll of quarters “just in case.”

Maybe we should drop the labels and just parent the best way we know how. Like the mom who gave her children the freedom to walk home alone from the park, I’ll parent my kids in a way that fits with our family, our style of parenting, and my tightly-wound personality. And, if one of my boys ever think that I’m hovering a bit too low, I hope that we have the type of relationship where he’s comfortable asking me to back off and give him a little space. I like to think that, when that time comes, I’ll respect his request… and then go hover over his brother.

tiffanyk
Tiffany spends her days trying to act like she’s organized. Behind the scenes, she’s usually practicing yoga breathing to curb the panic over throwing too many figurative balls in the air. She’s a lawyer, freelance writer, published author and, most importantly, a mom to two hilarious, creative, and spunky little boys – seven-year-old Max, and five-year-old Finn. Realizing years ago that writing allows her to find the humor in almost any situation, Tiffany writes whenever the opportunity allows and can often be found on the second floor of her favorite coffee shop pounding on her laptop after consuming her weight in vanilla lattes. Tiffany has been a regular contributing writer to local magazines, including M Magazine, 435, and North Magazine, and achieved a lifelong dream of becoming a published author with the 2013 release of her first novel, “Six Weeks in Petrograd.” Tiffany and her husband, Alan, can be found around Parkville trying to corral their two crazy boys and an equally crazy pound puppy named Maddie Lou. You can learn about her current novel (and her second novel in the works) at www.tiffanykilloren.com or drop by her Tiffany W. Killoren, Writer page on Facebook.