Teeny Manolo

Courtesy of SketchySantas:

That’s the question Details magazine wants to know, and it seems that in most cases, it’s the parents.

Well, actually the title is “Are You Raising a Douchebag?”  According to the article, your child might be a douchebag if he labels his friend’s birthday party as lame, is the one in charge of picking the weekend brunch spot, and “asks how the branzino is prepared.”

But what it all boils down to is basically parenting, or lack thereof.  The magazine points out the recent trend of wanting to be your kid’s friend rather than their actual parent. 

I don’t understand parents like that, to be honest.  I’ve got plenty of friends my own age, I don’t need my kid to be one.  And more importantly, he doesn’t need a 38 year old “friend” either.   I know someone who was so attatched to her mom that she wanted her mother to accompany her on her honeymoon cruise.  That, my friends, is just all kinds of wrong.

What I want to know is, do the parents who are raising douchebag kids really know that they are raising douchebag kids?  My guess is that they are too involved in their own little worlds to acknowledge the all-around douchebaggery of their family.

Because let’s face it, parents who are truly cool don’t raise douchebag kids.  Being a truly cool parent has nothing to do with your Bugaboo stroller and everything to do with how you teach your strong morals and ethics to your kids, hopefully by example. 

However, as an example used in the article, I totally cop to wanting my son to appreciate Roxy Music as much as I do. 

If that makes me a fractionally douchebag parent, then my apologies in advance.

You know, normally I am the very last person to dislike a child.

But for some reason, I dislike the character this child plays in this commercial. I’m very tired of the “precocious redhead” type, thank you very much.

Even Welch’s Grape Juice got the picture after a while. Have you seen an ad of theirs lately featuring a wise-beyond-their-years preschooler? Nope, I thought not.

I’m all right with a kid just being a kid, not some sort of wise know-it-all. Because nobody likes a know-it-all. Especially a crabby woman with a newborn who isn’t getting enough sleep.

You guys,  I just bought this new, super-cool cradle for my soon-to-be-arriving daughter.  I happen to think it is just perfect!

You love it too, right?

Well, you would think we were talking about snakes by the way people are reacting to the fact that a supposedly unruly 2 year old and his mother were kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight.  Southwest has since apologized, but it hasn’t changed the way people feel about it.

Here are some letter writers on the website Salon, who wrote in reaction to the news:

F*ck Her and F*uck Her Brat
I am goddamn sick and tired of screaming, misbehaving children making my time in public places a misery. Kudos to Southwest for having the intestinal fortitude to do the obvious thing: Boot their asses off the damned plane. If I’d been there, I would have given the flight crew a standing ovation.

The world doesn’t revolve around your spawn
People need to realize that. don’t get me started on people who bring their little beasts into movie theaters.

Keep the Kids Home
I was recently on a NWA flight, in first class, suffering through a kid screaming at the top of its lungs for the last 45 minutes of the flight. We surmised that the kid was sick with an earache and was basically being tortured for the latter part of the flight. The parents should have been charged with child abuse.

I applaud SWA. I wish them and other airlines would apply a very stiff surcharge to anyone under 12, in order to discourage flying with kids.

Throw Them from the Plane (at Altitude)
Sorry, I’m childless which apparently makes me already at risk for being an asshole, but having flown recently in a plane with a six year old kid who apparently was autistic and screamed the whole way? Fuck’em. If they can’t shut up, I don’t want them on the plane. That’s what driving was invented for.

I’ll have to write Southwest an email applauding their efforts.

It’s about time!!!
Finally! Throw mama from the plane and the screaming brat too. It’s about time someone got one of those lousy mother’s attention. Make your kids behave. This should happen more often!

All I can say is wow, there sure are a lot of bitter-ass childless people in this world.

I feel sorry for them.

This is apparently a Halloween costume.  She’s nine years old.

Yes, I know it’s supposed to be called H1N1, but that just does not have the same ring to it, does it?

I’ve tried to stay relatively calm, though it’s a little hard when there are headlines screaming at you that “PREGNANT WOMEN AMONG HIGHEST MORTALITY RATES DUE TO SWINE FLU” and the like.

At first, I didn’t know exactly why we were at so much more risk than everyone else, and then I finally read that it was because the baby decreases your lung capacity, which makes a secondary infection of pneumonia more likely.

Great.

And then there is just the seeming randomness of whom the flu strikes. Some people have to stay in bed for a few days, yet others, similarly healthy, find themselves in the hospital. I think that’s what bothers me the most.

Even though they told me that I would be getting the vaccine in mid-September, I’ve yet to receive it. And as a person in one of the highest-risk groups, you would have thought I would have gotten it by now. Which really sort of annoys me, because it’s going to be too late by the time it does arrive, and I would have liked for my baby to develop the antibodies from it as well. The antibodies for her would be limited, but at least it would be something. I’m not a vaccine-avoider, which I think too many people are.

So far, only the Munchkin has gotten vaccinated, and that is only of a certain value because he has to be vaccinated twice, and won’t be able to get the second one until late November.

All I’m reading in the newspapers is how widespread the flu is in pretty much every state, and it’s only a matter of time. Makes me sort of want to not go anywhere in public, you know?  There’s got to be some sort of bubble I can rent and travel around in.

In the meantime, my husband and I are still waiting, as it is still important that we get vaccinated even after our daughter arrives, since as an infant, her immune system will be underdeveloped.

Way to go CDC! Way to completely drop the ball!

Last week’s poll asked if you thought the Heene (aka Balloon Boy and brothers) children should be taken away from their parents, based on your knowledge of them. Forty percent of you said you didn’t know enough to make that decision, but thirty-one percent of you said yes, they should be taken away.

I’m torn, because I know that foster care certainly isn’t a great solution, but on the other hand, it seems these parents are pretty much willing to do anything to seek fame, which isn’t exactly the best of parenting examples.

As for today, I want to see what you think of tanning salon laws for minors. Some states have strict laws, others have hardly any. You can go here to see a breakdown by state.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the recent case of six year old Zachary Christie, who ran afoul of his school’s zero tolerance policy for knives on campus when he brought his Cub Scout eating utensil to school.  The utensil included a fork, a spoon, and of course, a knife.

Zachary was instantly pulled from school, and a hearing was set to determine if he should spend forty-five days in reform school, as was the punishment outlined in the zero-tolerance guidelines.  The School Board decided to make the policy a bit more lenient in cases dealing with kindergarteners and first graders.

I have never been a big fan of any of the zero tolerance policies that school districts have recently enacted.  It seems to me that each incident should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis rather than a one-size-fits-all mentality.

But then in the article I linked to above, it was stated that the policies were enacted in part to reduce discrimination in cases like this, as evidence had shown that African-American students were being punished more harshly than their peers.  The policy was meant to level the playing field, so to speak, so that everyone caught would face the same consequences.

That did make me pause for a bit.

But, I still don’t like the idea of zero tolerance. 

And what I really don’t like even more is that we have to have such draconian measures in place because there are still people  in authority positions in our educational system who discriminate.

The town of Bobcat, Pennsylvania has decided to ban trick-or-treating on Halloween.  Count that as a place I would try to move away from as quickly as possible.

Instead of being able to do door-to-door, the town will hold a four hour Halloween party.

That’s all well and good, but what if you really wanted to go trick-or-treating? I think it’s fine to suggest that it’s safer to attend a party, but to ban the option altogether? What is the reason behind the insanity?

Assistant Dunkard Fire Chief David Pritchard, running unopposed for supervisor in the election, said he was surprised by all the negative reaction to the decision to ban trick-or-treating.

He says there’s been a lot of break-ins lately and that older people in Bobtown were scared.

What up with that, older peoples of Bobtown? Because you are scared some little kid in an angel costume is going to demand more than just a bite-sized Snickers?

You know, there is an uptick in crime during the Christmas season. I wonder if the older people of Bobtown are going to demand that Christmas be put to a stop as well?