Yeah, it's really different these days. At age 7, I had free reign of the neighborhood. Played in the woods, damming the creek and catching crayfish. Playing in

Yeah, it's really different these days. At age 7, I had free reign of the neighborhood. Played in the woods, damming the creek and catching crayfish. Playing in the attic of an abandoned barn. Flying a kite on a November day, and most of these activities alone. As for school and grades, we were told that if we got all As and Bs on a high school report card, we'd get to go out to dinner to a restaurant of our choice. My mom literally told her four teenage sons: "You can do whatever you want, just don't get anyone pregnant or land in jail." So my grades sucked and I went to a 3rd-rate college. But what I learned was that if I wanted something, whether it was new Marantz stereo or an career in engineering, I could make a plan, work through it on my own and achieve it. I don't bother waiting for someone else to fix my problems or provide me with what I want. I washed dishes in a restaurant to earn money for the stereo, and worked my way though college. In spite of this self-reliant upbringing, I'd say I am more guilty than not of helicopter parenting my own kids. My thought process was that today's employment environment is different from the one I grew up in. Grads today face a much more global pool of competition for work, both from immigration and displacement of work. I'd watched a generation of manufacturing, call center, and engineering jobs go off shore, and read about how the families that had depended on them suffered. So we worked closely with our kids, helping them to get their assignments done and turned in on time, running forgotten assignments to school, attending every back to school night and teacher conference, checking on their progress online, all so they could get good grades and attend a respected school in a discipline that can not be off-shored. I used to tell them they should be dentists... I'd say that the balance in parenting needs to land somewhere in between my style and my parents', and regrettably, I won't get another shot at it.