I've got a pretty darned good nephew.

My nephew's been spending the week with my parents, his grandparents, but I had him for yesterday. I had a great time, and I think he did, too. We played with the cats, went to the diner for lunch, made ice cream, played some MtG, and played a few computer games (although not too many: he was grounded for using his iPad later than bedtime then lying about it, but, as his uncle, I was given permission to un-ground him for a limited period of time when we were together) -- there's a CRPG version of Shadowrun out that I introduced him to, and he was also showing me some of the stuff he's been doing in Minecraft.

Anyway, I was noticing something about myself.

You may have noticed that I'm really down on overprotective parents. I think that kids today are not given enough freedom, and their parents aren't preparing them for adult life. When I was nine, I was allowed to go down to the park on my own and stay out until dark; when I was in junior high and high school, I was allowed to go into Harvard Square on my own to hang out, and stuff like that.

Drew's fourteen, and his parents give him an appropriate amount of freedom. He's at least as smart as I was at his age, which is maybe not a very high bar, but I turned out okay anyway.

The thing is -- I totally wanted to protect him from absolutely everything in the whole world. I didn't want to let him out of my sight all day, because, y'know HE'S A LITTLE TINY BABY AND I HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF HIM.

So, yeah. I get it now. I get why parents get overprotective. Intellectually, I know that he's old enough to have a certain amount of freedom, but it would be SO HARD for me to give him an appropriate amount if I were his parent. At least the point of me having him was to spend the whole day together, so we were SUPPOSED to spend the whole day together the way that we did. But, yeah.

I get it.