I've always tried hard not to be a helicopter parent, and many times I've failed miserably. Viewing parenthood essentially as a very poorly paid bodyguard gig protecting an illiterate, moody, and incontinent third-world tyrant, I've often found myself compelled to step into my child's social environment to help negotiate truces, appropriate a fair distribution of Snackimal wealth, and help to avoid blunt trauma — or perhaps even death — by playground merry-go-round.

However, the day comes when you finally feel confident enough to give your children a little extra leeway. You clearly remember being given the freedom to roam the neighborhood with your friends back when you were given the obligatory “strangers with candy” speech and sent happily on your way with a swift kick to the ass.

My mind immediately went to where it shouldn't be: to a wild dingo chewing on my son's limb somewhere not too far away, perhaps on Mechanic Street.

It seemed like a safer time back then. Everyone ate gluten and loved it. Nobody you knew could die from eating peanut butter. Hell, back then even Michael Jackson wasn't a middle-aged white pedophile yet, but still an attractive, black teenager. Your parents had no idea where the hell you were, only that at some point you'd return when you got hungry or cold enough. If you had the misfortune of being hit by a semi-truck, it was assumed that somebody would have the good sense to look your folks up in the phone book and call them.  

Armed with this knowledge, my friend, Marcellina, and I decided to try the whole long-leash concept. Her daughter and my son are eccentric little friends who were dying to explore the block on their own between our two houses. Like secret service agents in yoga pants, Marcellina and I decided to update each other via text on the status of Vasco Pajama and Marco Poloshirt. Being neighbors, it was an easy job to manage the kids, assuming they didn't decide to wander into anyone's backyard to drink lawn fertilizer, impale themselves on a rusty nail in an abandoned well, or get mauled by the Labradoodle at Box 13.

Approximately 30 successful minutes into this exercise, Marcellina calls me on the phone. "Do you see them?" she asks.

"Nope," I say. "What do you think, should we yell for them?"

Calling our children's names with increased frequency and volume up and down the street I could sense that both of our trains of thought were going directly to every parent’s worst fear without as much as a cautionary slowdown through, let alone a stop at, "Reasonable Adult Station." I recalled a conversation about stranger danger with my son only a couple of years previously:

"So imagine a stranger offers you candy, or wants to show you a kitten in their car. What do you say?" I had asked.

"Yes!" my son answered enthusiastically, without even the slightest bit of hesitation.

Mortified, I tried again.

"Think now. A complete stranger, whom you do not know, offers you candy or a pet or something you like. What do you say to the bad stranger?"

After some thought my son offered hopefully, "Yes, please?"

I took the car for a slow ride around the block, yelling out the window as if I was calling a wayward pet. By the time I turned the corner back up our block, I could tell Marcellina was beginning to panic. She was looking more and more like Meryl Streep in A Cry in the Dark, and my mind immediately went to where it shouldn't be: to a wild dingo chewing on my son's limb somewhere not too far away, perhaps on Mechanic Street.

"Are you worried yet?" Marcellina asks, clearly a little worried. I agree that I am. I'm also wondering if she and I could take down a dingo if it came to a confrontation. While she went off to what I assume was to either call her husband or to load her .458 magnum Winchester, I decided to do one more cruise around the block. As I turned onto Route 1, a text came in from another friend who lives at the very end of our street. It stated cheerfully, "The kids are here, would you like me to send them home in about 20 minutes?"

With this message came a rush of relief, both for myself and for Marcellina, whom I immediately called to report the news. And the funny thing is, although my nonviolent parenting ethics can make even Gandhi look like a simple thug in a wife-beater shirt, the only thing I could think about at that very moment was to slowly feed my child bit by bit to an Australian wild dog until he promised he would never, ever, scare me like that again.

When I found him, smiling and proud, holding a bouquet of basil and a half dozen fresh eggs from the chickens he and his little friend had been playing with after their (let's be honest here) highly successful four-block walk up the street, I could do no more than choke up and tell him that he had made me very, very frightened and to never ever do that again.

"But I told you we were going for a walk. We stayed on our street. We looked both ways when we crossed the streets and we walked all the way," he told me.

Clearly shaken when I announced that I had almost called the police, his embarrassment and shame seemed to be punishment enough. And what am I punishing him for, exactly? His actions, or for my irrational fear and lack of specific boundary-setting? That the biggest likely danger for my child doing what he did was his mother losing her s—t, turning into Joan Crawford, and spanking the living crap out of him in front of the neighbors amidst a flurry of chicken feathers and basil is an irony not lost on me. It turns out that by setting too many boundaries on acceptable risk as a parent, I was less free. And without clear boundaries to their freedom, the kids had set their own.

Gandhi once said, “Boundaries are to protect life, not limit pleasure.” Well, no, he didn’t actually say that. Actually, I don’t know who said that. But it’s a good saying and I’m going to have it tattooed onto my arm as soon as I turn in the keys to the helicopter.

Anneli Skaar is a graphic designer living and working Camden who spends a significant amount of her time trying to establish a functional balance between single motherhood, career and sanity.

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