Oh, who are the parents in your neighborhood

Thursday me and the kids went outside to play. Our next door neighbor was mowing his lawn and his kids were playing outside with another neighbor kid. The neighbor mowing the lawn was obviously not watching his kids or the neighbor kid as he was fussing with his broken lawn mower, and I didn't see the other kid's mom anywhere, so I asked him where he lived. "Right there." he pointed to a house on a street perpendicular to ours. "Are you out here by yourself?" I asked. "Yes, my mom is watching my baby sister inside." "How old are you?" I inquired. "Five."

FIVE??? Five years old and playing by himself. Would you let your five year old play outside, across a busy street and onto another street, by himself with no adult supervision? And our neighbor friends say that he's been on our street multiple times by himself.

So then my kids start playing with the other kids (who are 3, 5 and 8) and so of course I felt responsible for them all. So the oldest girl says she wants to go see if her friend a few houses down can come play and so they walk over. Abby and Carter follow, despite my protests, and the oldest knocks on the door.

I've never met this family, and so I felt a little weird standing there while they asked if the girl could come play. All the kids are surrounding the door and one of them walks in the house, and Abby and Carter, being the curious kids that they are, took a few steps in the house. I walked closer to the house, telling them to come back, but the lady said, in broken English, "No, it's okay. Let them come in. Please, come in too." So I akwardly walked into her house and all the kids started exploring. This lady has an older girl and 15 month old triplets, and Carter started pushing one of the babies in the baby swing. I told Carter to stop but the lady said, "It's alright. Let him do it." Abby was getting up in the face of one of the other babies, and I again told her to stop. "Please", the lady said, "She's okay. Let her play with them." A THIRD time, I try to keep my kids in line and she said something like, "Let them do what they want to do. I feel like you should let children do the things they want to do, because if you don't they are going to get too curious about it and explore and do it anyway. So I let my children do what they want to do."

Um... okaaaayyyy...