All my kids really need is for me to leave them alone—right?

"Mommy?"

I look up from my laptop.

"Will you read to me?"I pause for a moment, feeling a customary cloud of guilt cast its shadow over my consciousness. Ordinarily, I'd stop what I was doing and play with her, at least for 10 or 15 minutes. After five years of indoctrination from parenting magazines and the unsmiling pediatricians on WNPT, it just seems like the right thing to do. But then I remember something.

"No, dear," I say, smiling brightly. "Mommy's busy. Go look at the pictures by yourself."

She frowns, unaccustomed to my response, and walks away scowling. I struggle against the remorse I feel watching her go. I'm not a bad mommy, I tell myself. I'm a modern one! I'm practicing a new philosophy called slow parenting, which is a great way to make lazy moms and dads like me worry less about the effect our indolence will have on the kids. Just read this bit of brilliance from Carl Honoré, the guy who started the slow parenting movement: "I think children need slowness even more than adults do," he writes. "It's in those moments of quiet, of unstructured time, of boredom even, that kids learn how to look into themselves, how to think and be creative, how to socialize."

Reading Honoré's sage words reassures me that it's okay to say no to the gymnastics classes my daughter requested, to turn down the playdates and the ballet camps and the endless trips to the zoo. All my kids really need is for me to leave them alone. And I can do that! Also? I think I might be very, very good at it!

Of course, some of you are probably picturing Carl Honoré as some kind of extremist, with opinions that are getting attention only because they go against accepted parenting practices. But plenty of others out there are echoing his sentiments and giving their parental laziness equally catchy monikers.

Take Lenore Skenazy, the brilliant mind behind free-range parenting. Skenazy rose to prominence after she wrote a piece for the New York Sun titled "Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone." Online throwdowns followed, and a new parenting star was born. Today, emboldened by her subway skirmish, Skenazy is bravely pioneering the way for neglectful, I mean, free-range moms and dads across the country. "Children, like chickens, deserve a life outside the cage," she writes on her website. "The overprotected life is stunting and stifling, not to mention boring for all concerned."

Hellz, yeah. Nashville may not have a subway, but thanks to Skenazy, I'm seriously thinking of letting my daughter walk the three miles home from kindergarten. Highway 100 is anything but boring, and then there's the fact that I'd get back the 40 minutes lost each day to the car rider pickup line.

And don't think this new parenting attitude is limited to the states. Over in the U.K., author Tom Hodgkinson's book The Idle Parent gives Brits a sort of roadmap on how to raise kids with as little effort as possible. "There is a way out of this overzealous parenting trap, a simple solution that will make your life easier and cheaper," he wrote last year in an essay for the Telegraph. "I call it idle parenting and our mantra is: 'Leave them alone.'"

As I read these words, I nodded my head fervently. I was having an "A-ha!" moment, and Oprah would have been proud. But then an unbidden memory came to mind, of a kindergarten field trip I recently helped chaperone to an apple orchard.

"These apples start as something else on the tree," the tour leader told our squirming group of 5-year-olds. "Does anyone know what that is?"

"Flowers!" the mom beside me whispered to her son, nudging him hard. "FLOWERS."

"Flowers!" the kid piped up. The man looked at him approvingly.

"That's right, son," he said. "And a certain insect helps the flower become an apple. Can anyone take a guess as to what that insect might be?"

"Bees!" the mom told her son excitedly. "Say 'bees!'"

"Bees!" the boy said dutifully.

"You're smart!" the tour leader said.

"A regular Einstein," I muttered. The mom glared at me.

I prickled with irritation at the memory. And that's when I realized that the only way I could be a slow parent was if every other parent promised to be slow, too. Otherwise, all these other kids would grow up able to play the violin, do back handsprings and answer field-trip questions correctly. My kids, meanwhile, would be great at... playing. Alone. You can't make money playing. And I'm sorry, but I'm absolutely counting on them to provide for me when Social Security runs out. I can't take any chances.

Slow parenting, I've decided in the end, is best practiced sparingly, like when Dr. Phil is on or my friend Susan has called with some hot gossip. Otherwise, I think I'll stick with over-scheduling, coddling and hovering over my children, so that we can keep up with everyone else.

Read more Suburban Turmoil at www.suburbanturmoil.com.