dad's view

Jeff Shelby is a full-time author and a stay-at-home Dad. Jeff's mystery novels, Wicked Break and Killer Swell, have both appeared on the Los Angeles Times and Denver Post best-seller lists. He also serves as a writer/reviewer on the book site, MyShelf.com.

Stay Where I Can See You

December 17, 2008

I was in the middle of getting dinner ready recently and my daughter asked if she could go play outside.

"Sure, in the backyard," I said.

"I wanna go out in the front yard. So I can ride my scooter," she replied.

"Okay. Hang on five minutes and I’ll be done here and we can go out," I told her.

She put on a pouty face as impatient five year olds are apt to do occasionally and asked "Why can't I go out front by myself?"

Good question.

When I was her age, my mother would send me out after breakfast with the knowledge that I'd return home when I get hungry for lunch. Then I'd take off again for a few hours and come home when it started getting dark. I would play baseball in the street with neighborhood kids, play basketball in the driveway of a friend down the block, ride my all over the place and explore down into the vast canyons we lived on. When I got my first real bike – I think it was third grade – I was more excited about being able to ride to the liquor store with friends to buy soda and baseball cards than about actually having the bike. I just Googled the distance from my old home to that liquor store and it was almost two miles, across two busy intersections.

The notion of letting my daughter wander off anywhere without my eye or that of another trusted adult's on her is laughable. We don't let her play in the front yard unless one of us is outside with her. When we're at the park or the swimming pool, she is never anywhere that I can't see her. The thought of her being outside for a couple of minutes by herself, much less a couple of hours, is frightening. The neighborhood we live in now is probably even safer than the neighborhood I grew up in. There is a stay at home parent in nearly every home, we know each of them at the very least by sight and the town we live in was cited by USA Today two years ago as one of the top ten safest and overall best places to raise children.

So why am I so paranoid?

I shouldn't say I. I should say my generation. I can't think of a single friend or acquaintance who is comfortable sending their child outside without supervision. I know of no one who sends their child out in the morning, unaware of what they will be doing and confident that they will return home for dinner. And I certainly don't know any parent who would be willing to let their kid go hang out in a liquor store parking lot, trading baseball cards and talking to the owner of the store.

My best friend purposely bought a large sized property and has invested a healthy amount of money turning his backyard into one giant park. He's got a swimming pool, a tennis and basketball court, a mammoth play structure and wide swaths of grass and concrete for his sons to beat up one another on. There's no need for them to go elsewhere. They can send their kids and their friends out back and relax.

I know that I didn't have some traumatizing experience that has caused me to veer to such a cautious parenting route and none of my friends experienced anything that has caused them to parent differently than their parents. But somewhere along the line, the culture shifted and "Be home for dinner" changed to "Stay where I can see you."

And it's not just about visibility, either. We are cautious about everything and everyone near our kids. Hugs, waves, smiles. When directed at our kids, they are immediately looked at with at least a bit of suspicion. I know that because I've been on the other end of that suspicion. There are more than a few parents in our neighborhood and in my daughter's schools who have given me a long look because I've said to hello to their son or daughter, a child who I've met while volunteering in my daughter's class unbeknownst to them. It's unnerving for me, but to be fair, I'm sure I've done the same thing when an unfamiliar parent has said hello to my daughter.

I can't put my figure on exactly how or why it's happened, but if I had to point a finger, I'd point it at the media. The television show America's Most Wanted arrived in 1988, the year I was a high school senior. For all the good it's done – and it’s done a LOT of good – it also, I think, inspired a lot of fear. As news magazines multiplied on television and cable platforms expanded, my generation of would-be parents became all too familiar with stories of missing and abused children and it has filtered into the way we parent. I'm not sure the world is any more dangerous than it was when I was a kid, but I do think we're more aware of what dangers lurk and those dangers have become embedded in our daily thoughts and no matter how much we might like to banish them, they stay there.

I wish it was different. I wish I could send my daughter out front with her scooter and tell her that it's okay to speak to anyone that says hello to her. I do, because there would be so much less to explain to her in the coming years. But I'm not willing to be the parent that takes that chance. As much as I'd like to be, I'm not. For better or for worse, because of things real or imagined, I'll continue to be a cautious parent.

I'll be out front with her.