Two States Away

Newsletter 2025-04-27

Like most parents, I only trust my kids as far as I can throw them. Unlike most parents, I interpret that saying to mean “as far as I can throw them with mechanical assistance” since I’m not very strong. I trust my kids as far as I can launch them with a catapult. I can still have faith in them even if we’re separated by tall ramparts and a deep moat.

If I’m being honest, it’s more laziness than trust. I constantly tell my daughters that I don’t want to be their prison guard. I didn’t become a dad to wander around my house enforcing the rules. If the kids violate some statute, I’d rather not know. As long as no one is bleeding and nothing is on fire, no harm, no foul. Of course, my offspring refuse to comply with this extremely lax request. They prefer to scream at each other while misbehaving, letting the entire neighborhood know that they’re up to no good. When they loudly announce their crimes, they call my bluff. If I don’t enforce the rules when I’m notified of a transgression at maximum volume, then there aren’t any rules at all. That’s how the girls end up grounded, much to their disappointment and mine. If only I could convince them to be smoother criminals.

Their behavior gets better when I’m out and about and they’re still at home, mainly because I’m too far away to hear them yelling at each other. This assumes that I’m outside the three-block radius of their screams. I’m more than willing to let them watch each other with no adults at home. It’s not so much babysitting as mutually assured destruction. My fourteen-year-old, Betsy, is nominally in charge, but in practice, each child is an independent city-state, subject only to their own laws and counsel. In the case of a dispute that they can’t resolve with loud words and physical violence, they each have a phone they can use to make a direct appeal to the highest authority in the land: me. Obviously, the actual power rests with Lola, but the girls almost never call her during fights. If the kids contact me, there’s a chance I’ll do something arbitrary and unfair, wronging only the sister they’re mad at. But if they call their mom, everyone will end up doing chores. Even at their angriest, the girls are reluctant to use the nuclear option.

The cell phone era has allowed me to place even more unearned trust in my kids. The range of that catapult keeps getting longer. It’s a far cry from where we started—literally. Our earliest parenting method was to stay within crying distance when a baby was napping. We never used baby monitors. My strategy with infants then was no different than my strategy with teenagers now. If I can’t hear them, they’re probably fine. Beyond that, I’d rather not know. If you’re a young parent, you’re likely horrified by that approach. It’s extremely common for parents with infants today to watch their sleeping children on video monitors. My sister-in-law, Alice, and brother-in-law, Jerry, always know if their rage baby (now a rage toddler) is actually sleeping or merely writhing around like a Tasmanian devil in her crib. I say it doesn’t matter either way. If she’s entertaining herself with barrel rolls, let her be. You’ll know there’s a real problem when she shakes the walls with her screaming.

The earliest stages of a child’s life are the easiest. The more mobile they are, the more of a danger they pose to themselves and others. We had to watch our kids more closely when they were toddlers than when they were inert babies wiggling in place. I miss the days when I would put them on the floor and they would stay in that spot until acted upon by an outside force. It was a big deal when we could finally be in a different room from our two-year-olds without them dying. It took us a lot of trial and error before the house was toddler-proofed to the point where there were no more easily accessible knives and explosives. I never should have joined the Bomb of the Month Club.

Our trust zone continued to expand as the kids got bigger. Lola and I could go for walks without them and trust that the house wouldn’t burn down. As they got deeper into elementary school, we gave them keys. They could get off the bus and into the house without a parent being home. Not long after that, we let them lock up the house and put themselves on the bus if Lola and I had already left for work. My biggest motivation in giving the kids more independence was to stop paying for daycare. When the world shut down for covid, Lola and I were both at home. For our first time as parents, we weren’t spending any money on child care. As that era ended and we began leaving the house more often, I refused to go back to the way things were. Instead of paying people to keep my children alive, I installed cameras around the house and bought the girls cell phones so they could be alone before and after school and on breaks. That approach was hardly free, but it was less expensive than the alternative. Being a parent is mostly finding ways to mitigate financial damage. My ultimate goal is to go broke more slowly.

In recent months, our trust range has taken huge leaps. From a practical standpoint, it doesn’t matter if Lola and I are fifteen minutes away hanging out with our board game friends for the day or on a quick trip to a nearby state. The kids have to cook two meals for themselves either way. They’re not limited to the microwave. They can use the stove, oven, and air fryer. Even our nine-year-old, Waffle, can make scrambled eggs. If our house ever burns down, that will be the sentence that haunts me. The farthest we’ve ever gone without the kids was our day trip to Cincinnati. In the event of an emergency, it would have taken us two hours to get home, but the kids all have cell phones, and the police station is two minutes from our house. We also still had all those cameras I set up to avoid paying for daycare. It’s weird that my version of being a laid back dad involves monitoring my children more closely than the average police state. That still makes me chill by the parenting standards of today. There are many parents who have the police-state-level surveillance system and also never leave home without their kids. Those are the children who, upon getting their first whiff of freedom, become frat house legends.

About the only thing my daughters can’t do for themselves is buy groceries. Scratch that. There’s a corner store within a few blocks of our house. Betsy loves baking. She’ll start a batch of cookies before realizing we’re out of a key ingredient. We’re always missing something. The first rule of baking is that every recipe requires at least one additional grocery run, even if you were already at the store that morning. In those instances, I tell Betsy to walk to the corner store and buy the item herself—with my credit card, of course. She’s not buying our weekly grocery haul, but she understands how the concept works. If she had her own income, she’d be fully independent. I’m not sure if I’m rooting for that day to come faster or to never arrive at all.

All of this leads me to my current predicament. I, the most relaxed and coolest dad on the face of the earth, have one final barrier that I have yet to cross. I still haven’t let the kids stay home alone overnight. Lola and I have left the girls to their own devices during many daytime adventures, but we always end up in our own bed under the same roof as them. I’m not sure why this is my last hang up. Nothing magical happens when I sleep at home. It’s not like I have to tuck in the kids or check under their beds for monsters. Sometimes, like on the trip to Ohio, they’re already asleep before we get back. They wouldn’t have known if we returned that night or not. Trusting the kids to stay in the house overnight while we’re away is somehow an added level of responsibility that, in practical terms, changes nothing, but, in emotional ones, is a game changer. If I tell people I left my almost-fifteen-year-old in charge for a day, they shrug, but if I told them I let her watch the kids overnight, they’d have to stifle a gasp. If only Betsy would get older a little quicker to make this a non-issue. Time continues to simultaneously move too fast and too slow.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The matter will come to a head at the start of August. We typically see my college cross country teammates, Rocco and Phoebe, twice over the summer at their place in Wisconsin. They have a boat, which is the basis of all long distance friendships. On our first visit each year, usually in June, we go up with the kids and ride around on the lake for two days. The second visit is an adults-only outing, which involves substantially fewer water sports and significantly more hydration. I’ve missed the adults-only weekend three years in a row. The first time, my appendix exploded a few days before we were supposed to visit. The following year, I was recovering from an abscess on my butt that left a gaping wound my wife had to pack with gauze once a day. She’s a lucky woman. Soaking that cavity in dirty lake water seemed less than ideal. Last year, the adults-only weekend was moved from Wisconsin to Costa Rica for Phoebe’s fortieth birthday. We missed that one because it was the same day our kids started school. The last time we actually went to the adults-only weekend, Betsy would have been twelve, which meant leaving her home with the other girls was out of the question. This time she’ll be fifteen, which is borderline. Unfortunately, she remains on the wrong side of that border. It looks like we’ll have to guilt a family member into watching the kids for a weekend for the first time in years. If you’re my parents or in-laws, this is your warning to start making up reasons you’re busy on those days.

The fact that I even considered leaving Betsy in charge of her sisters overnight shows that we’re getting close. Maybe we’ll finally get to that point when she’s sixteen and can drive the other girls around if they need anything. Then again, perhaps we won’t reach that level of trust until she’s eighteen and legally an adult. Whatever the line is, there are two things that are certain: It’s approaching fast, and it’s not here yet. By the time of this year’s adults-only trip, the kids will be fifteen, thirteen, eleven, and nine. We’ll be in the awkward position of sending two teenagers to a babysitter. Our daughters will surely resent us for it, but at least they’ll be easy to watch. Wherever they end up for that weekend, they’ll likely spend the entire time on their phones. My parents or in-laws won’t even know they’re there—except when they hear the stove turn on because one of the kids got hungry. That’s not entirely true. They’ll also know the kids are there when they scream at each other for no reason at all. The best solution would be to send the girls to stay with four separate family members in four separate houses. Only then would there be peace.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James