A mom's most difficult task

I'm driving slowly down a residential street in the family's red sedan while my 7-year-old, on the sidewalk, cuts a parallel path on her little red scooter. Window open for communication, I am ground control, she's Orbiter 1.

People milling about on the sidewalk look at me suspiciously until Orbiter 1 yells:

"Mommy! Stop!"

She sets the scooter down, looks both ways and walks over to the idling car, smiling her big jack-o-lantern smile. I get a sugar-sweet smooch on the cheek.

This slow-speed chase was her idea. The plan: She would scooter home from after-school care, and I would follow in the car. If she needed help, she could holler. I was happy to go along, because at least she didn't ask to scooter home by herself. That would have gotten a firm no, and she then would persist: "When can I? How old do I have to be?"

And I would wonder, yet again, what the answer to that question should be.

How old should a child be to ride or walk home from school by himself? Cross streets by herself? Ride his bike around the block?

I need answers. A number, a reference chart, something solid. "How old should a child be to cross streets by herself?" I type into Google. I get 1,680,000 hits.

Every time I have to let go a little, I get a small, sick pang in the heart. But she needs the gift of trust and independence. I try giving little freedoms, such as dropping her off at the door of the dance studio and retrieving her afterward. With that small, sick feeling, I watch those restless legs in their pink tights disappear inside before I drive off, full of guilt.

She must know what these moments cost me; I'm often rewarded with a dimpled smile, a reassuring hug or a kiss.

There have been times when I've wished for a clingy kid instead of a recklessly independent, runs-off-in-the-store kind of kid. I let her ride from corner to corner in front of the house, but she is a boundary-tester. She wants to ride down the alley to her friend's house. She wants to ride her bike around the block. For a 7-year-old, Around The Block has the powerful, alluring mystique of Over The Rainbow.

I Google "How old should a child be to ride their bike around the block?" 1,500,000 hits.

My husband is fond of repeating a certain tiresome in-the-olden-days story. It goes something like this:

"When I was a kid, my brothers and I would ride our bikes all over town. We'd take the bus to Minneapolis by ourselves ..." yada-yada-blah-blah-blah.

Then I get to retell my own threadbare tale:

"When I was growing up in Detroit, I often walked several blocks to and from school. The Tigers won the pennant during the 1967 riots, and us kids rode our bikes all over the neighborhood to celebrate ..." yada-yada-blah-blah-blah.

It's a different world today, I remind him. Somehow, the lurid underbelly of life seems more lurid now. Still, we sometimes have to quash that screaming red fear and let them expand their orbit. A little.

During one cold April rain, she wanted to go out back and stomp in the puddles. In just her T-shirt, skort and rain boots. She waited expectantly for my answer. Dire warnings about getting soaked and catching pneumonia ran through my head -- my mom's voice. Then my own stream of free-floating fears.

I let her go out. She passed from sight, but I could hear her happily chattering away as she splashed under the steady, frigid drizzle. I fetched a warm towel.

"You're the best mom in the world to let her do that," my husband said, as we watched her slop to the door, drenched.

How does a mom learn to let go?

Through 4,010,000 little hits to the heart.

Susan M. Barbieri • 612-673-4782