Finally a youth sports league has realized that when it comes to our kids, winning isn’t everything. (More on that below.) For too long, we parents have been pushing our kids way too hard, telling them they need to get passing grades in school if they want to get into a top flight college, or nagging them to do their chores now rather than waiting till, say, never, or harping on them relentlessly to practice their piano longer than fourteen minutes a week if they want to do well in their recital next week.

We are constantly pushing our kids way too hard to achieve, try harder, and be nicer to their younger sister, to the point that we are forgetting one fundamental point – that no matter how much of a snot-nosed brat they are when we ask them to help put away the dishes for the third time, no matter how much they whine that “Angela’s parents let her have Internet on her cell phone – why can’t I?”, our kids are all winners in this game called life.

Read More…

Are all teenage daughters evil? It’s a question I have been wondering about a lot lately. A research study recently reported that people with teenagers in the house are, statistically speaking, the least happy demographic group of all* (I am not making this up). Interestingly, disgruntled postal workers and prisoners in solitary confinement rank higher in their daily happiness quotient than the average parents of teenagers. Sadly, Melvin Zemmecki, a postal worker from Newark, New Jersey, serving time in prison in solitary confinement and father of four teenage girls, has the dubious distinction of being rated the unhappiest man in the entire USA.**

Not to toot my own horn, but I consider myself an expert in understanding the impact of parenting mistakes and communication failures (based on years of intense field research – mostly in the family room). As a parent of two darling teenage daughters, ages 16 and 17, I find myself discovering the miracle of witnessing in stereo hormonally-induced multiple personality disorder on a daily basis. There are all sorts of theories as to why teenage girls tend to be so moody, angry, irritable, thoughtless, self-absorbed, lazy, disrespectful, emotionally distant, narcissistic, a giant pain in the ass, never EVER cleaning their damn rooms, would it kill you to clean it up just once, I tell you??!!!??…. But I digress.
Read More…

In my previous post, I posited the theory that at one time or another all teenage girls become evil – not permanently, mind you (at least, I sure hope not). Thanks for the hundreds of emails and letters people never got around to sending me in staunch support of my theory.

In fact, based on further limited but rigorous field research I did (comprised mostly of renting the movie Mean Girls) I have concluded there appear to be several actual city ordinances which require girls in some affluent suburban neighborhoods to turn evil (or at least seriously bitchy) by the time they reach puberty. This ordinance clearly is in effect in Beverly Hills, Orange County, Palm Beach, Florida, the Hamptons, Greenwich, CT, and oddly enough, Omaha, Nebraska*. (I know, that last one surprised me too.)
Read More…