Tony Cesare: It's Time to Stop Being Helicopter Parents

I love summer.

Like McAdams loves Josling. Like a tornado loves a trailer park. Like my son loves missing the toilet.

I spend most of April staring longingly at my “summer bin” in the closet, waiting for the day Tom Skilling tells me the temperature will break 65 and I can break out my camouflage shorts and flip flops. By July I’m practically naked.

I plan backyard around the hottest hours of the day. Nothing will make you forget the chill of January like pulling weeds while the merciless heat wraps around like a steam phantom in a wool coat. I have staring contests with the squirrels that run along the telephone line waiting for me to duck in out of the heat so they can raid the bird feeder. Give it up varmints, IT’S SUMMER, I’m not going anywhere! I love running my hands across my forehead and slicking the sweat back across my hair until I look like Danny Zuko from Grease. Sometimes I’ll even break into a chorus of “Greased Lightning”. The kids think I’m nuts.

I love the sounds of summer. The thwack! thwack! of the sprinkler when the water slaps the fence, the wailing locusts, my teak wood chimes that sound like the intro to every Zamfir song, the laughter of kids playing in the street, the...

Wait, I don’t hear any kids playing in the street.

Where are the kids?

Kids on bikes, kids playing catch, an impromptu game of hop-scotch—I rarely see them. Occasionally I’ve seen some neighborhood urchins hastily assemble a lemonade stand and I’m always quick to empty my wallet and spend it all on warm Country Time in a Dixie cup. I’m not thirsty, I just feel an obligation to reward them for being outside. My purchases alone will be responsible for sending at least three of them to the Ivy League.

I know it’s been a scorcher of a summer but that’s no excuse. Summers were just as brutal in the 70s and that didn’t stop us. Heck, my Mom practically threw us out of the house in the morning. Long before “Fifty Shades of Gray” kept housewives occupied my Mom’s day revolved almost entirely around housework, so she would chuck a bowl of Cocoa Puffs down on the formica, tuck a peach into my pocket and hustled me out the door. “Go to the park! Go play ball! Go!” I went, and lived out my big league dreams on the rock-hard infield behind St. Thomas Church until the street lights came on, the universal signal to all kids to get your ass home for dinner.  

So now is the part where I write about how we need to go back to those halcyon days of summers past and encourage our kids to get out there and play outside, right?

Well, no. As I write this, my daughter is at a play date in a friend’s air-conditioned basement under the watchful eye of said friend’s Mom while my son is in the family room downstairs playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii—he’s really good.

The truth is, like a lot of parents, I’m nervous about my letting my kids play out of sight somewhere in the wilds of our neighborhood. Maybe it’s the Nancy Grace effect (whereby every stranger within 20 yards of your kids is Ed Gein) but I can’t help but imagine John Wayne Gacy is hiding behind every parked car in the neighborhood, dressed as Pennywise the Clown and just waiting for the baseball to bounce along the curb.

A few weeks ago at I lost sight of my daughter for about 10 minutes. I figured she was with Mom but when I spotted Mom across the street sans daughter an icy panic swept through the asphalt up my legs and straight into my chest. I was frantic. In an instant I had a vision of my wife and I inconsolable and broken, propped in front of the television cameras, pleading with some unseen monster to please let her come home, no questions asked. The neighbors helping pass out flyers, a fundraiser at the to help support the search effort, me and Nancy sobbing on one another’s shoulders…

Turns out she had ducked into a port-a-potty to pee—four feet away. 

The funny thing is I don’t think things are any more inherently dangerous now than they were back when we were kids. I think our attitudes have changed. When I was a kid bad things always happened to other people. Now, the 24-hour news cycle has convinced us all that bad things happen everywhere and YOU could be next. We’ve become helicopter parents, hovering over our spawn like cloud-sized guardian angels, ready at a moment’s request to strap the kids into the minivan for the trip to a friend’s house—across the street. I know, I’m guilty. I’m trying to change but it’s hard.

I blame Tim.

Tim was this older boy who lived a few houses away from me growing up in Norwood Park (not far from where Gacy lived I might add). Tim was different. He smoked cigarettes and yelled at the garage all the time. He wore parkas in summer and short sleeve shirts in the winter. Looking back he reminds me of Sid from Toy Story. One time some kids down the block were playing in his yard and Tim hit one of them in the face with a decorative frog statue from his Mom’s flowerbed and the police came. My parents told me never to play at Tim’s house but I would see him in his yard all the time, pacing around and kicking plants.

So how do I know Tim didn’t grow up and move next door to the park where my kids are playing unsupervised?

I don’t, I can’t. But I can’t keep hovering either. At some point you have to let go and let them grow up, to have a summer of their own.

So what’s my solution?

Simple. I bought a pool for the backyard. They can invite their friends over and I can keep a cooler full of beer on the deck to reach into while I keep an eye on them. It’s been great. I’ve introduced them to the timeless wonders of Marco Polo and they are content to stay close to the yard. Perfect.

Then again that water does look kind of cloudy, no telling what kind of bacteria might be growing in there...