Q. What does Magaluf Girl have to do with a single mum from America who was arrested for letting her 9 year old daughter play alone in the park ? A. Almost Everything (that’s wrong with the world)

I believe early independence can help prevent teenage rebellion. I believe this so strongly I am going to hold up my hands and admit I let my nearly six year old daughter and her nearly nine year old brother take the dog for a walk, alone – together – in Hackney. Yes, in inner city London. I do this because I believe that the shorter the leash you keep your kids on, the further they will try and run in the longrun.

Before you call child protection on me, there are no roads to cross; they go to a green space just outside my house where there is an easy circuit I’ve timed to 10 minutes. If they take 15, I go looking for them.

But there is a pond they could fall in (they won’t), occasionally tramps congregate there (but not until evening). Anything could potentially happen. But I take a calculated risk it won’t. Or if it does, it will require little more than a sticking plaster to put right.

In this post-Madeleine McCann era of paedo madness and health and safety jobworthiness, I try and keep the following in mind. Statistically, you have to stand a child on a street corner for 750,000 years before someone will come and take them. (My maths isn’t what it should be, but there are some great stats here on how likely your child is to be abducted and they are exceptionally slim..)

I’ve always taken the stance that my children are not suicidal. I didn’t hover over them in the playground when they were toddlers, because I believe they’d learned to manage risk better if I wasn’t also right on top of them. I, by and large don’t tell them what to do, eat, think, say or believe, although I try and give them the right environment to make good choices of their own.

Perhaps I am overly lax. I’ve been fishing around the playground mums of the Hackney primary where my kids go to school to try and work out if it would be appropriate to let my kids take the bus to school next year – there are no roads they would have to cross and it’s about four stops – it would make my commute massively easier by about three legs. I think they will be fine, but so far, the jury’s out. But having said that, some of the mums I’ve asked (I don’t know why I bothered)  were either still breastfeeding at 4, or had their child in full time nursery at six months – neither of which would be my preferred method of parenting (BUT I’m NOT CRITICISING THOSE WHO DO. Jesus. Keep your knickers on!) But in my area of London in the post war period, kids as young as five played on building sites and took the tube to work. I’m serious. We need to get a grip.

I’m a strong believer in giving my children enough rope – not to hang themselves with, Christ no, although I’ve defo had my moment,- but to at least have to untangle a few knots by themselves.

But with a women getting arrested in South Carolina two days ago for allowing her nine year old daughter to go to the park alone, I realise that perhaps I’m swimming against the tide here. Granted, pockets of America are properly weird, and I wholeheartedly disagree with the creeping criminalisation of mothers who in some way fall short of perfect (by which I mean, an unachievable, all consuming and probably unwise matrydom/sacrifice – drinking in pregnancy is something about which I’ve already written here, yet since I published this, women are being prosecuted stateside for having babies damaged by their choices in pregnancy – not ideal for anyone, but criminalisation is not a good solution for either mother or child either.) And it’s a slippery slope.

Admittedly, in the case of Debra Harrell– a single mother whose daughter had been left to her own devices while she went to work at MacDonald’s, this is not something I would do until my own kids are quite a bit older. But then I’m lucky enough to be well paid enough to be able to afford the truly extortionate (esp. in London) cost of a full-time holiday childcare (who is worth every penny btw) as my aspie son finds the much cheaper holiday clubs which are available a bit too intense.

But, even when you consider that criminalising this woman for her actions is going to have the least best effect on the child – far worse that letting the daughter have an hour or two in the park – or even a day playing video games, surely letting kids play free range is better than spending a lifetime glued to screens. In short, this whole scenario gives me the willies. And not because I’m afraid something might have happened to the nine year old. Mostly, it’s the state interference to which I object.

We are lucky enough in the UK to have zero laws governing the age at which a parent can leave a child, although parents have been prosecuted for leaving young children alone with older teenagers – basically it depends on the child as much as anything else.But how long will this last bastion of parental discretion remain untouched? I’m guessing legislation will creep in over time.

I have myself been guilty of sitting in a pub garden with my kids, in the playground opposite -ACROSS A ROAD I may add – having drinks with parents of children of a range of ages, all in agreement that it was fine. We could see them. There was a crossing, and I only had a shandy. But still, the idea that this could constitute some kind of gross neglect of my children is unthinkable, however some may disapprove of my actions.

Yet it is my heartfelt belief that children need to learn to set their own boundaries, cross a few roads, get a little bit wary and look out for themselves – so they don’t go on holiday with their mates aged 16 completely repressed, with no street sense, desperate to rebel.

In my experience, the biggest teenage rebels are always the ones with the strictest parents. I should know – my dad was pretty strict, and I have a somewhat regretted tattoo and a tongue stud hole to prove it. Yeah, I know.

So keeping a sense of proportion about how parents let their children go needs to be addressed, because it seems to me, the effects of over protecting our kids can be seen in every town centre on every Friday night when young people finally get the chance to let it go – it normally comes back up again pretty quick.

I’m not blaming every social ill on over protective parents – there’s a lot to be said for heaving a healthy interest in one’s children. But it’s my belief that an over protective state has the power to do a LOT more damage than a relaxed and trusting parent.