Pants-Free Parenting: Structure vs. unstructured play, a parent’s quandary

I recently made the decision to let my daughter play outside alone. Our backyard is adjacent to the kitchen and is pretty secluded with trees, a thick hedge and the wall of our neighbor's garage. I explained to her the rules: no talking to strangers, no venturing into anyone else's' yard, don't go in the alley.

She nodded and very seriously said, 'A 4-year-old knows the right thing.” Maybe I'm foolish, but I believe her.

So, I let her play back there while the baby naps and I cook dinner or sit on the back steps and read a book. She likes to putter around, burying pine needles for the fairies, who (she tells me) come only at night to dig up the needles and use them as wands.

When I watch her in her own little world, I'm reminded of the TS Eliot poem, 'Dry Salvages” where he writes, 'For most of us, there is only the unattended/ Moment, the moment in and out of time …” I think of parenting, not only as providing protection and safe haven, but as providing these unattended moments. Her little distractions, lost in streams of sunlight and raw winds of early spring. She digs and makes mud pies. She claims she's found gold under the porch and begs me to come look, it's a plastic milk carton. The carton must have been lost in the winter, but now it is found and spun into gold by her imagination. I bet that carton spent all winter bemoaning his fate and now, he's sure it's all worth it. What other carton gets to be gold in a little girl's eyes?

I'm torn by this decision to just let her play, even as I look away. News stories warn me of her imminent kidnapping, but statistics tell me that's all silly. Concerned friends tell me about the dangers of her venturing into the alley, but I know the risks of her being injured from a routine drive to the grocery store are far greater.

And then there is the cry of structured activity. Right before I wrote this, I was staring at my calendar, inputting dates for holidays, visits, vacations. Then there is princess camp and some of her friends are doing a science camp. There are two opposing factions at war in me. One says she needs the opportunities provided by structured time. But the other side reminds me of Eliot and tells me that she needs the chance to have moments unobserved, unscheduled, unattended.

Someone, I forget who, said that the best way to create a writer is to let a child get bored. That's when their imaginations run free. So much of the best parts of my life were spent trying to sweep the dirt floor of a lean-to I made out of logs behind my parent's house. But I didn't get into half of the colleges I applied to. I'm a writer in Iowa. I am some people's version of what they don't want their children to be.

Like base jumping, parenting is a calculated risk. But of course, unlike base jumping, those risks are hard to quantify. With base jumping, there is one death for every 1 in every 2,300 jumps. With parenting, how can you calculate the risk of taking them on vacation? Will they not get into their first choice of school if you don't keep them in soccer? Or maybe their second choice was better, because there they met their soul mate? How do you calculate what a good life looks like? How do you decide that for someone who could grow up and tell you that you were all wrong?

Today, I've had a migraine. So, my kids have spent the day drinking juice, jumping on the couch, playing with the iPad and watching TV. It hasn't been a great day. I'm not proud of it. But I'm trying not to worry about it too much. What will this one day mean in the bigger picture of their lives? Maybe nothing, maybe everything? Maybe they will remember the neglect and distracted parenting. Maybe they will remember the fun of a lazy day? Maybe nothing?

No parent wants to be remembered for their ugly moments. But I think that's another risk of parenting - being known, not for who we want to be, but for who we are.

I don't know the answers. I distrust anyone who says they do. In the end, all I can do, is turn back to TS Eliot and hope that what I've given is a life of significant soil for them to grow in.

' Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two and hater of pants. Email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her writing at LyzLenz.com.