In defense of helicopter parenting

This morning I sent Avery off to church day camp on her bike, and then worried whether she had made it. Our church is a block away, I can see the steeple from my kitchen window. Avery is nine, she as been to the church back and forth by herself before, and still I worried. Maybe it is just paranoid pregnancy hormones? 39-weeks-and-dying-of-impatience nesting instincts?

Yesterday I sent them all off with their father to the county fair, and then I worried. He doesn’t always watch them as closely as I do. I don’t always watch them that closely. I was glad to see them go — told Tom that a few hours to myself was a very good use of one of his precious vacation days. Still, I worried. All those strangers, all those blinking, flashing, catchy carnival noises to distract them.

I walked to the church to make sure Avery had gotten there okay. You know, just in case. She was there, laughing and hopping around and not noticing me.

Sometimes I want to strangle them myself (metaphorically: like, I wish they came with an off button, or a least a volume control). But whenever I think of something bad happening, someone bad happening, I don’t know how we bear it. How do we let the out there? They’re so precious, so innocent, so fragile.

They’re also so, so loud. Maybe that’s how we bear it.

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BlogHer syndicated my Nine Lessons From an Electricity Fast post. I thought of a tenth lesson, and not just for symmetry’s sake. One thing I expected was that I would talk on the phone a lot, see people in person, be more social in real life, when my virtual world was cut off, but I didn’t. I indulged my hermit-lik tendencies even more. Maybe it was the heat, or the pregnancy, or having the kids around all the time, but I didn’t do any of the relationship building/real-life connectivityness that some say the internet has cost us — except with my immediate family, and since they’re the most important, maybe it did serve its purpose, but as far as women needing friends and all that stuff, I’m glad to be back online (though I haven’t been every active in recent weeks, and that is definitely an are-we-ever-going-to-have-this-baby?-I’m-going-to-be-the-first-women-in-the-history-of-the-world-to-be-dilated-to-3cm-for-a-year thing).