Free Range freak-out!

On the way to work this morning, I finally had a few minutes to myself and turned on my favorite morning station, hoping to rock out to something mindless like "Ice, Ice Baby." Instead, I hear the show host going on and on about "Free Range Parenting."

OK, I consider myself a fairly educated mommy when it comes to all these different philosophies. I've read "The Happiest Baby on the Block" and weighed the pros and cons of Ferberizing my baby.

But FREE RANGE PARENTING!?!?! WTH?

Apparently we all were raised free range, before it had a term - and before cable news networks started running commercials warning you that your kid's soccer coach is a pedophile.

So I read up on this new "movement" and was appal ed to find stories like the mom who left her kid at Bloomingdale's in NYC and let him find his way home!

Now, I don't consider myself to be an uptight mom by any means. I allow the 3-second-rule (though I just read that I might as well had let my kids ride the subway alone!), we observe almost daily "naked time," during which Mitchell can run around like a maniac, yelling, "Look, I'm a naked ape!," and I even let him play on the back patio alone - door and windows open and me talking to him every few minutes. Heck, the kid even has his own knife and likes to help cook.

I hope to allow my children to enjoy some of the fleeting joys we did as kids. I've already introduced the hula-hoop, we collect bugs and we even potty-talk in the car. But I think I have to sit out this new round of "parenting."