There Should be a Support Group for Backseat Parents

I started turning into my mother when I was in college. I’d watch younger teenagers at the mall in their garish makeup, revealing tops, and too-high shoes and think to myself, “Kids today! I will never let my daughter leave the house looking like that.” Of course at this moment, I conveniently forget the times in middle school and high school I was rocking the half-shirt, miniskirt, and fuzzy backpack at the mall with my gal pals, but that’s totally irrelevant.

This happens all the time, and not just at the mall. It happens at restaurants when kids scream and throw food and silverware on the floor; at the grocery store when whiny little brats pitch fits over things mom and dad, in an unusual moment of discipline, say they can’t have; at the park when pint-size bullies push other kids around while the parents do nothing.

What is wrong with these people that they allow their offspring to behave like little savages? What happened to discipline? What happened to respect? Why does no one else see this?

I have to bite my tongue when my friends make completely boneheaded parenting moves, like telling their kid s/he will get a time out for a bad behavior and then don’t follow through with it. Or the parents who let their kids jump on my couch and dig through my cabinets without saying a word. Um, hello? Am I the only one who thinks this is a problem?

My parent friends chuckle at me and cluck their tongues, and assure me that I have no idea what I’m talking about and it’s different when you have your own kids. I’m quite sure that it’s different when they’re yours and you can’t give them back at the end of the day, but I take offense to the suggestion that I’m a clueless dolt who isn’t allowed to have an opinion until I’m a parent myself.

I don’t have to hold a commercial driver’s license to be able to tell when an 18-wheeler is swerving all over the road. I don’t have to be a surgeon to know that there’s a neat way to stitch up a wound and a sloppy way to do it. And I don’t have to have successfully procreated to know that your kid is a beast with no manners.

Bottom line, people: The job of the parent is to raise an adult, not to raise a child. You have to teach them the skills they need to survive in the world, to make and maintain relationships, to find and keep a job, to feed, clothe, and house themselves. These tasks will be infinitely more difficult if no one likes your child because he or she is rude, selfish, aggressive, destructive, or otherwise annoying and obnoxious.

So when someone points out to you that your little darling isn’t quite as perfect as you thought, fight the urge to defend your precious babykins and ask yourself whether this person may not be alerting you to an area where you need to save your child from himself.

Backseat parents, unite. And regular parents, do your job.