I am not as free-range as I’d like, but mainly that is because my oldest has Asperger’s, so he needs more supervision since he doesn’t understand social cues, and physical boundaries. It’s gotten better, but it’s still not always the best idea to let him play unsupervised.

Now that we have 4 kids I’m more laid back, but as someone said above I know my kids, and their limits so depending on the situation I may be a helicopter parent, or I may be sitting poolside.

I know in my own childhood I was riding my bike, crossing a busy road (cars would go 35-40 mph) and spending all day at the pool in our neighborhood with only minor supervision by age 8. I wish I could do the same for my kids, but there are some limits I have to have in place based on their ages, and personalities.

In the last three years, 4 young children have died at public pools here in my home town, and since the last one, all the public pools require parents to be within arms reach of under 4′s.

Ironically, I’m witnessing this daily at my son’s swim lessons. YES, swim lessons. The moms stand at the edge of the pool, the 2.5 ft. deep pool where there are group swim lessons. They are there to fix goggles, and bark orders at the college aged instructors.

Meanwhile I sit back, at the back of the bunch and catch up on my e-mails, read a magazine, or perhaps even Tweet a little on Twitter.

I almost want to smack some of these people sometimes, because I watch the kids and the parents are making these kids whiney cry babies. There I said it.

Generally, I’m a sitter. I grab a chair in each area and camp out with my book while the kids do what they do. However, when it is 90 degrees, it has nothing to do with hovering and everything to do with not dying of heat stroke while they swim. So while I and the other parents might be standing in the water but not really playing, it just might be that it is too hot to bake on the deck anymore.

I recently did stay at a party with my second grader for the first time in years…but in my defense he had been in the ER with a concussion 2 days before and it was a party at the batting cages )

We went to the pool today for the first time this year. It wasn’t that crowded but I cracked up at the parents who were there. One women even took her six-year-old to the bathroom. Which is within sight of every single inch of the private pool in our development and has two stalls. Really…you can’t let your first grader pee on her own? With maybe 10 people at the entire pool, all of whom were moms with kids.

I firmly believe in letting children have their space to play, have conflict and learn from it. They need to push and be pushed, to take and have things taken, to fall and scrape their knees and elbows. It builds character.

In fact as I type this both of my girls are out back playing in their sandbox and on the swing set, right next to *gasp* the woods where all sorts of ‘dangerous’ animals may be lurking….never mind the ‘woods’ are no more than an extremely thinned out lot.

It is so nice to know that I am not alone in my loathing of the helicopter parenting style