ArcaMax

Once again, readers, I. MUST. RANT. Why? I ... just heard from a mom trying to get two other families to let their kids play with her kids in her yard for an hour a week. Unsupervised.

AN HOUR A WEEK. She lives on a quiet street in quiet suburb in a quiet state. Classic single-family homes. Zero traffic. Other parent (who has stood and watched three previous playdates) says, "OK ... but only in the backyard!" He worries that in the FRONT yard, "something" could happen to his kid, "and if it did, I would kill myself."

His actual words.

This kind of florid fantasizing AND self-flagellation is NOT NORMAL! It may feel that way because we hear it all the time now, but it is the product of a sick culture wiring parents to not only catastrophize but to literally not be able to see REALITY: A bunch of kids playing together on a front lawn -- not even down the street! -- isn't 100% safe, true, but it is safer than almost any childhood activity since the dawn of time. It is, in fact, SUPER SAFE.

If that is not "safe enough," the parent must be dreaming of life on some other planet, where there are no cars, no adults, no crime, no pavement, no pebbles, no dogs, no banana peels and really just no life. If his kid was the ONLY CHILD IN THE UNIVERSE and was wearing a tracker and a hardhat and kneepads, MAYBE they would be SAFE ENOUGH for that single hour of free play the mom was proposing.

Thinking that thinking that way is normal is why we have to press the reset button on our parenting culture. It's as sick as believing all people are out to get you, or all food is poisonous. It's looking at a patch of grass and seeing a pit of fire the kid will quite possibly fall into, and where dad will follow because he DESERVES it.

That's nuts!

And common!

"I could never live with myself" is why parents spend so much time helping and hovering. It's why a mom wrote to my Facebook group last week to say, "My 7-year-old wants to walk two blocks to the bus stop in our small town where we know people ON those two blocks. Does this make sense?"

YES IT DOES! Pleeeeeease let him go! It is like asking, "Is it OK for my son to use a fork, considering he could accidentally stick it in his eye?"

I am so sorry that so many parents are so wracked with self-doubt when deciding to let their kids do ANYTHING other than sit on the couch, perhaps seat-belted to the cushions so they don't slide off and hit their head on the corner of the coffee table.

What I'm trying to say (and now I'll stop) is that what passes for "caring" or even "helicopter" parenting today is actually a psychological illness that has become so common people just think it's innate.

It's not. It's NEW. Our parents -- or at least our grandparents -- didn't go straight down this DOOM/DEATH/ALL MY FAULT/NOT WORTH EVER TAKING MY EYES OFF MY KID path every time their kids left the house.

The cure? Same one the shrinks use for obsessive-compulsive disorder: exposure therapy. That dad needs to spend an hour SOMEPLACE ELSE.

When he comes back and sees his kid is actually FINE for an hour on her own -- even on the FRONT LAWN -- it becomes impossible to keep imagining her dead from a game of tag.

This exposure therapy -- FOR OUR ENTIRE CULTURE -- can't happen soon enough.

And if it works, maybe the dad will let the kid play for TWO hours a week. Oh, happy day! (Or happy two hours. It's a start.)

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Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a contributing writer at Reason.com, and author of "Has the World Gone Skenazy?" To learn more about Lenore Skenazy (Lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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