I’ve been thinking a lot lately about independence. And still, no matter how much I ponder the idea, I’m still not sure I can put my finger on a tangible notion of the thing. Sure, there are definitions, but there are kinds of independence — gradients, shapes, flavours, tones — in the word, and it can be tough to pin down exactly what one means when one speaks of it.

I was thinking about independence yesterday, for example, when I was playing in the backyard with The Girl. We recently split the cost of a play set with her grandparents. It is nothing fancy: a wooden swing set with a plastic slide attachment. She can speed, climb, dangle, whirl, twist, and even swing and slide, all in the quartered supervision of our fenced yard. (It makes it easier for dad to get some yard-work done, or just sit nearby with a book, than going out to the local playground every time.) And the reason I was thinking about independence in the context of this new swing set is marginally related to just that: The Girl is physically big enough, strong enough, and coordinated enough to use the toy herself (and the equipment is just safe enough, too.) But, emotionally and mentally she’s still a little unsure.

So… yesterday. We’re out in the yard. I was pulling weeds from the flower beds while she played. She was swinging, climbing on and off the swings on both her bum and her belly, laughing and shouting for my attention, pushing her doll in the seat, and attempting to convince the dog to be an attentive audience, too. And then she decided to slide. She climbed the little ladder, mounted the wooden platform, sat herself at the top of the green, plastic hill, and promptly started to cry.

Herein is where many parents will know what happens next: dad gets to weigh the options of (a) running to aid the daughter to go down the slide, or (b) smiling and shouting across the yard “go ahead, dear, it’s okay!” And since this is a post on independence (presumably independence-building) readers should have a pretty good idea of which option this dad went with.

I felt quite cruel and heartless, but the exercise was in the name of skeptical parenting, right? I sat on the grass, pulling clumps of weeds from the soil around my trees and flowers, and tossing reassuring phrases to the The Girl sitting atop her play-set repeatedly shouting “daddy help!” And, reading the description, it almost sounds cruel. But there was really very little danger. Barring an unexpected outcome, of course, she was safe and had ridden the slide a hundred times previously — albeit with the hand of a parent gripping hers. Yet there I sat for ten minutes, listening to an increasingly whiny little girl pleading for help.

Now, you might wish to scroll to the bottom of this page and use the comment form to call me a heartless father. You may wish to tell me I was damaging the emotional well-being of my daughter. And while I will accept properly documented arguments for either and any case against those actions, I think you should first read the outcomes of the exercise. About ten minutes after the quasi-tantrum started it abruptly stopped. I looked up to see what was going on and saw her sitting there staring intently in my direction. And then without ceremony she pushed herself forward, performed a perfect decent down the slide, stood for a moment at the bottom assuring herself of her balance, cast me the biggest grin I’d seen all day, and promptly went back to playing. And slid three more times (by herself) that afternoon.

Now, did we just have a moment of independence-building — or what?