Parenting Styles

If you read the blogs and news stories that I gravitate towards, there is a lot of talk about parenting styles lately. There are helicopter parents, free range kids and a whole slew of middle ground. Each group of course has many of followers and countless others who think any way other than their way is an absurd method of parenting. I am not big on labels. I find they do more harm than good and never account for the majority of "followers" who take things with a large grain of salt. That being said, I am going to label my parenting style as lazy. And I really mean that in the best way. Not lazy in the "boy do I feel at ease and relaxed" at the end of the day because it takes two glasses of wine for me to really feel like that and rarely do I ever stay awake long enough to have one. No, rather lazy in terms of constantly engaging my children in play and activities. I am by no means cool and loose enough to be a free range parent despite the fact that a lot of my childhood fits the bill of being free range. I require too much structure for that. I remember feeling stressed at the lack of structure when I was a kid, that hasn't gotten better as I became an adult in charge of small people. However I also am not up in my kids face all the time. I believe in getting dirty,

you, over there, digging in dirt and sand while I sit here and watch you. No, no, I see how cool your backhoe is, you must be having a wonderful time playing with it.

I hear your squeals of frustration, but I am going to give you a chance to work it out before I offer to help.

I of course play "cars for sale" a lot with Otto and build towers and race tracks, but he also just plays by himself for a large part of the time we are at home. I cook, clean, putz around and am generally available for comment, but not directly involved in his play. Part of it is because I think it is important to know how to entertain yourself and partly because, oh my god and girl can only play big rigs for so long!! I just don't have the endurance to make up fun games all day long. We play, we have a blast, we read tons of books, but when I am working on something, it is time to occupy yourself.