As you are reading this, chances are I am on my way to Chattanooga to see the boys. Well, at least one of them, maybe. The oldest is happy to be working the holiday weekend. Pvt. Letbetter is taking a short leave with friends in L.A. So, the youngest is, by default, stuck with Dad. This is what happens when children are raised to be independent; they grow up and go do their own thing with their own friends. Maybe they’ll send pictures, if they happen to think about it, but chances are we’ll have to prod them just to make sure they’re still safe. While I’ll miss having the other two around, this is ultimately a good thing. They are exercising their independence and it would be inappropriate to attempt to prevent that.

I never have understood this whole trend toward helicopter parenting; hovering over one’s offspring as though the umbilical cord was still attached. Loving one’s children does not require smothering them with so much of your attention that they become unable to sufficiently function without you. As much as we love our children, we need a break from them and I’m quite sure they welcome not seeing our faces for a few minutes. We want to be accessible when they have a legitimate need for assistance, such as kissing a boo-boo after they’ve face-planted the sidewalk (just as soon as we stop giggling about how funny it looked). We don’t want to shadow them to the point they lose their identity in our desires.

One of the larger playgrounds we frequent with Kat’s little ones is the perfect place for them to run and play without us needing to eyeball them the entire time. They run, they play, they make new friends, and when they’re sufficiently exhausted they come find us. We then tell them to go and play thirty minutes more because we don’t want them getting a second wind on the ride home. This is not just an exercise in independence, this is an exercise in wearing the children out so they’ll fall asleep without two hours of argument. We love going there.