Mom Talk
From Helicopter to Glider, a Parent Journey
A year after writing a major story on overparenting, Katherine Ozment talks about how she remade herself as a mom.
Give a boy a watch and send him out the door: After her 10-year-old leaves the house, Katherine Ozment may not see her son again until he reads his wrist and knows it’s dinnertime. Today, she’s fine with that. But one year ago, Ms. Ozment was just coming to terms with her parental hovering habits. Going out to play meant dressing everyone for the weather, packing snacks and water, mom loading the baby into the stroller – a real group activity. Her intense monitoring of her three kids’ every mood and management of their days was, as she wrote, “changing the very nature of their childhood.” So she decided to become a different kind of parent. Last December, Ozment wrote a story for Boston Magazine about how we overprotect our children, …
