Are those stirrup pants because this sure feels like Nineteen Eighty-Four?

A while back, I saw a friend at the Babies R Us/Toys R Us customer service desk as she was returning a broken baby monitor and I was seeking a price adjustment on an overcharge at the register (by the way, kudos on your business operations, Mistakes R Us). And it got me thinking: how long is too long to “monitor” your child?

When we had Suttie, affordable video monitors had just come out, and I was in love. What’s that sound? Is someone trying to kidnap my baby [through a locked window on the second floor]? Nope, it’s just the little dude gnawing his crib rail into oblivion. Breathe, momma.

Or…did I just hear the dog jump five feet into the air and land in the crib, being now moments away from smothering our son? Oh, no, that was just Suttie dropping his glow worm onto the floor in an act of bedtime rebellion. Thank you, Summer Infant, because if I’d gone up to check, the sleepless vigilante would think he’d won and we’d be playing with the shape sorter at 2 am.

And I will never forget the moment when the baby monitor truly proved it’s worth. Suttie was somewhere between 18 months and 2 years (I said I’d never forget the moment, not every freakin’ detail), and after my husband checked the screen one evening after bedtime, he nonchalantly walked out of our bedroom and did double steps up the stairs. What I didn’t know is that he had seen that our son’s crib was…EMPTY! Like Easter Sunday tomb, your bank account after responding to that Nigerian prince…EMPTY! Thankfully, he opened Suttie’s door to find our smiling toddler running toward him, so proud of himself for mastering the over-the-side, use-your-tummy-for-leverage crib escape.

But when we had Molly, we moved Suttie’s video monitor from his room to hers simply because we didn’t want to buy another one. Thankfully, Suttie still thinks that Big Brother is watching him and if any of you narcs tells him differently, you can expect repercussions that would make John Gotti blush.

So now that I have no way to look in on what my four year old is up to during his bedroom hours, I’m definitely missing my powers of surveillance. Yet, if we had purchased a second monitor, when would I stop? At 6? At 10? At 18? Yeah, 18 sounds good.

But then I think of the horrors of checking in on my adolescent son because there are just some things that not even a mother needs or wants to see. And I’m not talking about picking his nose or his bottom because he would do either of those on the 6 o’clock news. No, there’s plenty that he needs to figure out on his own without his mother yelling:

“Suttie, you’re gonna go blind…”

Or his father calling out:

“Son, that move works better from behind; you’re gonna pull something!”

I know. Sutton’s disgusting.

No, it was the right move to take down the camera and give the boy some privacy, even in the age of helicopter parenting and s-mothering. And in two or three years, I’ll have to force myself to do the same for my second born because it’ll be a lot more fun to escort her into school with my rear (at least most of it…okay, some of it) squeezed into the mini-skirt that I found hidden in her backpack than it would be to prevent the indiscretion in the first place.