"My wife doesn't let our 5-year-old son climb on top of the plastic houses if someone is inside. I'm okay with that, however, but I draw the line at jumping up and down on the houses, occupied or not. And our preschool's policy is that "all slides are down slides." Yet on the elementary school playground after hours, our almost-3-year-old daughter follows all the kindergarteners up the slide like a monkey up a tree. I let it go.

"As an avowed "non-hoverer," I tend to be pretty liberal and let my two children do whatever they want – crash plastic cars into each other, dump the sand in the mulch and vice versa. My approach to conflict is just short of Lord of the Flies. If they're not bleeding or using "ugly voices," I rarely intervene. My theory is that I'm teaching them to work it out themselves.

"My wife points out that since I see the kids more, so I have a better sense of what they're capable of. I agree that I could do better at telling her. But I don't agree that just because some other parent's 3-year-old might break his neck following my kindergartener that I should rein it in. I already harp on my son about enough. Maybe other moms or dads should actually parent and set appropriate rules for their own children. Tell them, "Sometimes you're not allowed to do what other kids can do. I'm your dad, not theirs!"

"When our son was 3, we told him he was too little to climb on the plastic house roof. He wasn't especially physical and would have fallen off. He fussed, but we held firm. Once he could get up there under his own power, though, we told him he earned his "climbing license."

"It puzzles my wife that I'm absolutely rigid on meal times and bed times, yet I can bend like a reed on playground behavior. It puzzles me, too."