Another laissez-faire mother recently let me borrow her copy of It’s OK not to share, Heather Shumaker’s book on raising small children that prompted a few parents to ask whether we’d gone back to the Eighties. But this isn’t an extension of “greed is good”; it’s practical. Why should my child want to have a helmet plunked on her head? Conversely, why should this other girl not want to see if she can dress up her new playmate? Children need to test their own boundaries, and those of their peers, and it seems ridiculous to helicopter parent to the extent that your child can’t work these lessons out for him or her self.