Am I too Protective?

Ok, I admit, I am not the most wild-and-crazy person on the earth. In fact, I am much more conservative than most people. Besides my love for skiing and enjoyment of crazy theme park rides, my recreational activities are pretty low-key. While I am a conservative person, I do not like to raise wimps. We let our children run and play - even if it means they are going to fall down and get scraped or bumped. We let them ride bikes in the street as well as brand the cows in Arbon. We have always tried to encourage our children rather than shield them from pain and hurt.

The subject upon which I am basing my self evaluation is that of tree climbing. Now, I had trees while growing up in Arbon. We had nice sized Willows that we would climb every so often. We even had a few tree houses in them. I was never afraid to climb them, nor did I think it was too dangerous.

I remember however, as a young 6 year old, I was climbing Grandma and Grandpa Call's apple trees in their yard. I distinctly remember getting stuck, in the tree at an intimidating height of five feet above the ground. In my plea for help, one of my uncles came to my rescue and lifted me down. I still climbed the tree and got used to it, but still those trees weren't much higher than 10 feet or so - at least the highest that I ever went. My experience with trees has been minimal, but they have always been sturdy, well matured trees.

On Tuesday, Aylee and Johnathan decided to show me what they had been working on. Amber had told me that they had been climbing trees and I thought that was cool. They climbed a couple of trees for me and then we went for a walk and let the kids ride their bikes. Aylee and Johnathan rode ahead and beat us home. As we were walking home I saw Aylee at least 20 feet in the air atop one of our Aspen trees. I just about died. I took a quick picture and then asked her to come down. Amber thought I was being a little over protective (and this coming from a lady who won't set foot in Lagoon's Tidal Wave ride), but all I could see was one of those soft, quaken aspen branches snapping and Aylee tumbling to her brain damaging, neck snapping, back cracking end.

So, I ask of you -- am I too over protective? If I turn a blind eye to the situation are my kids going to be jumping off of our two-story home onto the trampoline, running out in front of passing cars to see how close they can get to them, or even law down on the ground and let their friends and cousins jump their motorcycles over their prostrate bodies. If I refuse to let them climb the trees are they going to be scared of butterflys, consider themselves brave for getting their eyes wet in the bathtub, or even (gasp) play freeze-tag on the school playground.

Parenting is way too hard.