How 'free range' should a kid be?

A good topic for anthropological study would be the complex social interactions and psychological profiles of humans at playgrounds. Not the kids, obviously. The parents.

Based on my own extensive studies spanning nearly four years now — my kid will be 4 next month — I feel I am a good candidate to write up some of these findings.

There are the smartphone parents, seated at the perimeter, clicking "like" on the Facebook pictures of other people's kids. All parents belong to this group at some point. Historians have yet to explain how it was actually possible to even be a parent in the dark days before the advent of smartphones. But I do not mean just any dad who checks Twitter while his kid goes down the slide (guilty); I'm talking about the parents who don't even look up. That is definitely a thing.

There are the surly parents. They want their kids to burn off some energy, sure, but they don't have to be happy about it. I am sure I've been guilty of this from time to time, too. But the other day I went to a park where there was one other dad, and I gave him a nod and he literally grunted and turned away. OK, buddy. I have enough friends, too.

There are the nervous parents. When you are a parent of a 2-year-old, going to the playground is a highly interactive experience. Your kid wants to go down a slide? You have to go down, too. You're trailing behind constantly, catching falls. This is the way it's supposed to be. Then the kid gets a little older, and the parent's job at the playground becomes a lot less, well, intensive.

And then there are the absent parents. Where is that kid's parents? Is anyone even watching him? I've seen a few of those in my many hours of research — though maybe the parents were around, it's not always easy to tell. But I'll tell you this: I never did feel moved to call the cops.

In a few cases around the country that have gotten a lot of attention, someone did. A mom who worked at McDonald's was arrested in July when she let her child play at a park during her shift. Last year, a mother of two was arrested in Port St. Lucie, Fla., when she let her 7-year-old son walk to a park alone to play. And already this year, a Maryland family is under investigation for practicing what is now called "free-range parenting" and letting their kids walk about a mile to play in a park.

"Free-range parenting." It's meant to be the opposite of nervous helicopter parenting. Give your kids some space to range, teach them some independence.

It's easy to say, as many do, that "free-range kids" used to be known as "kids" and that something has gone wrong when kids are excessively hemmed in and limited for basically no reason. (Look up the statistics on child abductions. They are vanishingly rare.) But it's also hard to quite know exactly when and how to ratchet up a child's independence.

A Facebook friend of mine invoked a poetic parenting phrase from her childhood: "Go play, have fun, be home by streetlight." That has a nice sound.

Then again, her kid is not even 2. What does she know?

My kid is not yet 4. What do I know? Not much, really. To be honest, last weekend at the park I felt a small pang of sadness when I saw that, this year, he's going to be able to climb up to the top by himself, no parental escort needed.

I think there's a conversation to be had here. Parents, let's talk about this. Do you let your kids play in the park by themselves? If so, how old? How do you decide how "free range" your kids should be?

Email me at rmentzer@gannett.com, send me a tweet or leave me a voicemail. I'll collect some perspectives for a future column.

Robert Mentzer is engagement editor for Gannett Central Wisconsin Media. Contact: rmentzer@gannett.com, 715-845-0604; on Twitter: @robertmentzer.