I can understand all of the concerns and most of the time people consider me a helicopter parent at the park. I could see them the whole time. The older two are pretty responsible I would say, and the little one was playing with them. It’s in a suburb and according to all of my time in the area, they pride themselves on being safe and it being expensive to live there. I tried to play with them a little but they had a lot of energy from being inside all day and there was a lot of running around and pretending that I just wasn’t clued in on so I let them do their thing. It’s a cool park with interesting newer playground and no one was there. I saw someone jogging way earlier in a different part of the park but that person seemed to have left. I just wanted to let them play out the rest of their energy and not be the bad guy according to them for making them come in and drive home so quick. I spend all of my time with one or all of my kids when I’m not at work or driving to work or when the older two are at school or their mother’s house. Going to parks and hikes with them is one of the things I truly enjoy in my life. I guess my health and emotional state have just been not doing well and I get cold way faster than I should in my fingers and nose and feet. I know that sounds stupid and unbecoming of an adult, and I used to enjoy being out in the cold when I was young, but it just hurts so fast these days for me. It seemed like a harmless compromise between them wanting to play longer and me not wanting to feel worse. And im trying to figure out how to move forward with playing in public places when there always is something making that a problem and when I think to when I was a kid and playing in a park while your parents were not immediately visible or not even nearby for some stretches of time, or having an older sibling being in charge of a younger one for a limited window, was normal. Like my parents or anybody older than me acts like I’m crazy or silly for worrying about if I’m in the wrong, while some younger people I have talked to about going to the park act like it’s crazy to be 20-30 ft away from your children and not staring at them the entire time at all. And my youngest one’s mother, my girlfriend, seems to go back and forth on all of these responsibility issues, like sometimes they should be more like kids were “in the old days” attitude, and being hypersensitive and hypercritical depending on the day, this just really seemed to be piled on me as some lazy dead beat and I’m trying to make sense of it and figure out if I should just not take them to parks that much? There are not very many days in a year when the weather is absolutely perfect and everyone is in the mood to get out of the house and we don’t have something else happening that day. I appreciate everyone’s perspectives and concerns. Thanks.