Cutthroat Parenting

I love the internet and blogging and comments and discussions. I'm glad so much of it is focused on parenting because everyone needs help and support and ideas and, yes, every one needs to feel a little better than another parent at one time or another. It's a great ego boost when your 5-year-old is playing a particularly savage game of emotional extortion with you.

Things can get pretty ugly though.

But don't you see, folks, we are the victims. We aren't in competition with each other or with stay-at-home moms or working moms or single dads or whatever--It's us against our children.

Sure, we have the capacity to ruin our kids the way our parents ruined us but it is us who are the losers. We are the ones who will grow old and tired in the service of our ungrateful children. We are the ones who will become irrelevant and useless as they become the parenting bloggers of the future. We lose. They win.

All this in-fighting amongst the ranks weakens us. It almost feels like a strategy our own little diabolical dictator-children came up with to wear us down along with making infinite impossible requests, demanding that we watch them do cartwheels (that take, like,  FOREVER) and--let's call a spade a spade--sleep deprivation torture techniques that I will refrain from comparing to Gitmo, but it's taking a lot for me not to. 

Who will you chat with online when your kids are grown and busy with their flying cars that we can't figure out how to work? THE VERY PERSON WHO FLAMED YOU ON FACEBOOK. Let's build bridges, not landmines. It's going to be a long lonely life in our custodial care centers. I HOPE I've got someone left to follow on Twitter who hasn't blocked me because my kids eat school lunch. I should be so lucky, friend. And so should you.

So, when you find out I didn't love nursing, that I stuff my kids with gluten, and that not only do I let my kids watch Phineas and Ferb, I watch Phineas and Ferb when I'm by myself. What does that say about my precious, fleeting IQ points? Please. Don't tell me. I'd rather you just said "thank you" (for making you feel good about your Nick Jr. ban) and went on your way. Or, better still, though I know it's a lot to ask, I'd love an air-high five from one exhausted parent on the road to ruining their kids as slowly as possible to another exhausted parent trying to keep the really bad stuff at bay and pick her battles.

We're the same, you and me. And the only ones laughing at the end of the day are our kids. Mark my words. And keep your head down--We are in this trench together whether you like it or not so scooch over.