Leave your Selfishness at the www.

"Attention: All Hip Parenting Bloggers. You are being served with notice. Your parenting rights are about to be suspended. You are all in desperate need of a parenting class, or at least a healthy dose of reality and common sense. I am officially nauseated by your bitching, whining and complaining. Children are not social accessories. It is not their job to make your life easier, prettier or more exciting. I am hereby boycotting all "hip parenting bloggers". (While this boycott may be wholly ineffectual, it's principle based...a virtual sticking out of the tongue, if you will)

Children need parents, not buddies. They do not need you to have tattoos, piercings or be "cool". They need you to set boundaries, make rules and understand that it is, in fact, your job to clean up after them when they make messes. They need you to be the grown-up. They need you to not care if it makes you uncomfortable to confront the parent of the bully down the street because she's a friend of yours, they just need to know that you care more about them than you do about your social standing.

I am officially tired of the rhetoric being served up as "journalism". I am tired of being told that I am somehow failing as a parent because I am not trendy. There will be no bandwagon jumping here. My children will not be given cell phones to "keep in touch" with me. I will not buy them clothing that costs more than I spend on electricity in a month. I will not wrap them in so much protective gear that they bounce when they hit the ground. I will not enroll them in every after school activity known to man in the hopes that thirteen years from now some pinched faced matron will be kind enough to allow me to spend fifty thousand dollars on a college degree they can get at the local University.

I don't know where this new trend sprang from, but I really wish someone would stuff a sock in it. This "new voice" of parenting is, quite frankly, embarrassing. You make us look like a whining dissatisfied bunch of immature babies. You don't speak for me....so quit trying."