Last week, on one of the sparkling spring days we’ve been enjoying recently, I was walking on the Upper East Side heading from one child’s pickup to the next. In the course of this short walk, I passed several mothers who were doing their stint as school patrol guards.

Even with their au courant wedge sandals and oversize sunglasses, I could identify these women as patrollers because they were wearing an indispensable bright orange vest. As I looked at them, chatting on their cell phones and lugging oversized designer handbags, I began to wonder if these patrollers were more security hazards than security enforcers.

At one point I even watched a patroller stop to pick up one of the school’s walkie-talkies, which had fallen out of her oversize Prada bag and broken into pieces on the sidewalk. How was she supposed to communicate with the school if Little Jimmy’s bus pass was stolen by the neighborhood bully?

Parents — mothers in particular — are famously talented at multitasking. We can make dinner, oversee homework, lay out clothes for the next day, and order photos online, all at the same time. We can return business calls while we give the baby a bath. We can put our younger children to bed while playing Scrabble with the older children. We can check e-mail while we talk on the telephone and open up a pile of mail.

But lately I’ve started to think that this ability to multitask has a serious unexplored downside: Our children are paying a hefty price for the increasing premium that is placed on one’s ability to do as many things as possible at the same time.

“At my son’s school, I often see mothers and babysitters on their cell phones or BlackBerries as they greet their children at the end of the school day,” a mother of three said. “Does anyone stop and wonder what that must feel like? You’ve been in school for hours and it’s finally time to go home, and there’s your mom or nanny ignoring you while they continue to talk on the phone. As far as I’m concerned, schools should be no cell phone-zones.”

Some parents say they know their children need their undivided attention, but that they find it difficult to give when the cell phone is ringing or there are dozens of unanswered e-mails and their child is tugging at their sleeve.

“I come home from work and I wish I could just leave my Treo behind. I’d like to ignore the home phone. I’d like to leave the computer alone,” a father of three said. “I wish that I could just be with my kids for a couple of interrupted hours. But I just can’t. I know you’re going to ask me why not, and maybe I don’t have a great reason, but I feel like I live in a world where everyone — my boss included — expects to be able to reach me when they need me. And since that’s the expectation, I feel like I have no choice but to go along with it.”

One longtime school administrator said he thinks the increase in his students’ inability to stay focused on a single task is linked to their parents’ behavior.

“Many children today don’t have an uninterrupted five-minute conversation with their parents each night,” he said. “In some cases the parents are tired after work, and the television is on and phone calls are being returned. Or the parents are rushing out the door to dinner, or the e-mail is being checked, or the phones are ringing. Parents would be wise to teach their children that there is a time and place for cell phones and email, and the best way to teach this is to model decent behavior.”

A teacher at a private school on the Upper West Side said some parents see very little connection between their behavior and their children’s. “At a spring conference, a set of parents asked me what I thought about their son’s addiction to his iPod,” the teacher said. “They worried that the kid is in his own world. They said they were worried that he’ll get hit by a car walking home after school. They thought the iPod was preventing him from making friends, from learning how to be polite and sociable. And I swear, in the middle of my response, the father’s cell phone rang and he started talking, loudly, for a few minutes, as if that’s normal. The mom didn’t even look embarrassed. I promise you, they have no idea about the role they are playing in their son’s behavior, and they’re not the only ones.”

As for the high-heeled school patrollers, it’s just a good thing the city is safer than it’s ever been. I wouldn’t want to see one of these women trying to apprehend a suspect.

But in all fairness, I really should cut them some slack. Maybe the oversize bag could be used as a deadly weapon.

sarasberman@aol.com