So thanks to Laid Off Dad, along came this little article in to my twitter feed that listed a mere dozen ways that we’re effortlessly, gleefully screwing up our kids for life.  Life, I tell you! Yes, they’ve gathered child psychologists! Psychiatrists! and OTHER EXPERTS (who’d they call? your mother-in-law?) to come up with this handy list of everyday things that you, too, are probably doing which will inevitably result in gigantic bills to either a therapist or bail bondsman later in your child’s life.   And what are these things we’re all doing to mess with our kids, pray tell? Are they things like violence? Verbal abuse? Oh no, no. Far worse. Much more insidious. To mess up your kid for life, you merely have to:

• threaten to leave your kids behind (guilty)
  lie to your kid (guilty) (No, honey, Elmo’s asleep right now, he can’t come sing on the big TV…)
  Ignore your own bad behaviour (guilty) (you should have heard the curses coming out of my mouth this afternoon when  I stubbed my toe for the goddamn 4,682nd time on that goddamn corner..)

Anyway, for the sake of brevity and to keep you from reaching the point where you really just want to call children’s aid on me already, I will let you know that I’m pretty much guilty of every single sin on the Atlantic’s list. And so, probably, are you. Because there is nothing that isn’t on it that we, as parents, don’t do every day just to get through the day.  We’ll rush, and we’ll serve junk food, and we drive our cars, and we just do whatever it takes to keep everyone alive and healthy and happy. And even by doing that, we’re screwing it up. So thanks, Atlantic, for providing us with yet another impossible measure, yet another list that tells us how we, as parents, are irrevocably screwing up the next generation and how the downfall of western society is ENTIRELY OUR FAULT.

So the way I figure it, given that we can do exactly nothing that does not screw up our kids, here’s a list of things I am henceforth not going to give a crap about when it comes to parenting.

1. Kraft Dinner. I have had quite enough of making homemade macaroni and cheese with wholewheat pasta and 1% organic freerange whatthehellever milk and cheese made from unicorn farts. A couple of bowls of KD are not going to kill her, and frankly, not having to stress one more ounce about making that carb-laden shit from scratch is better for both of us in the long run.

2. Swearing. She’s gonna learn the words somehow, might as well learn how to use them appropriately and in context. Bonus: She’ll be the cool kid on the playground. And I’ll get to know the Principal really well.

3. What anyone else thinks. Yeah, I might do things you’d never do as a parent. Tell you what: You call me in 25 years and remind me of that time I did that thing at the mall that you rolled your eyes and huffed at. And then I’ll laugh at you, then you’ll laugh at me, and then we’ll pop our teeth in and go have a drink and chortle at the things we all used to take so damn seriously.

This weekend, I bought my six-year-old daughter a $75 lunchbox. She hadn’t asked for this particular lunchbox, and I didn’t consider it a splurge. But once I was unpacking it and pointing out its features to my friends, I started to wonder –

Was I a total chump, or just completely obnoxious?

Sheepish as I felt explaining why I had just spent $75 (plus tax!) on a friggen lunchbox, I’m glad that I did. I am not a person of great means, nor am I frivolous. I had done a good deal of research into lunchboxes, and this one fit the bill – many compartments, but all one piece; easy for little hands to manipulate; made by a company with a strong environmental ethos and with materials that I feel good about spending my money on and storing my child’s food in, and appealing to my aesthetic. Sold.

But even though I really, really like this piece of necessary equipment, I feel the need to justify the price seven ways to Sunday. Which means I sorta must feel like a chump. And then I think, Whatever, Karen. Just own it. Since you know, you already own it.

So I will try to get the stone in my stomach to stop dropping every time I think about my daughter’s new $75 lunchbox. (OMG – should I insure it?!) And even though I cut the price tag off the lunchbox before my husband could see it, (He’s busy. It’s my money. I don’t have to bother him with details.) I am telling you the truth, no matter how much it may hurt my pride and chequebook.

And hey! People spend money on useless things for their kids all the time. This one is useful! And can be handed down to my younger daughter in a few years! And it’s not like I ever have to spend money on my kids clothes, thanks to two shopaholic grandmothers! And did I mention the useful?

So please, please don’t call me a chump because I spent $75 on a lunchbox for a six year old.

Unless she loses it at the park on the second day of school.

Euthanasia

image via H4UM4N

Now hear this: Everything that might be wrong with your husband is your fault.

The latest: If you are too friendly with his friends, you’ll make his wiener stop working.  True story, according to some bullshit study in the Globe and Mail and a bunch of other places that says that apparently if you get along with your husband’s friends too well, your husband feels emasculated, like his “man cave” has been redecorated and as a result his junk shuts down because he loses confidence in himself. Or something. I don’t even know.

How do you even get funded to do a study like this?  Imagine the proposal. “We are going to analyze men between X and Y age and inspect how their wives interact with their friends and see if there is a correlation between that and whether his junk works properly, as requested and on demand.” How did they not get laughed out of the room? Is the fact that a man’s junk might not function on demand so vitally important to world health and world peace? Is it simply because there’s always a way to blame the woman?

Or is it just someone trying to be sensationalistic?

Perish the thought.

But still, it’s frustrating, because it’s just another instance of woman-blaming, wife-blaming, it’s all her fault. And while most reasonable people dismiss this kind of crap, there are people out there who will use it as a tool against their partners. And to those women, I say: His penis is his own problem, and no amount of anything you can do is going to change that.

(I would also like to point out that I don’t seem to be able to find a study that says when a man flirts with his wife’s friends, his wife starts to feel like shit and maybe isn’t particularly interested in having sex with him anymore.  Which I realize is entirely counterintuitive to the point I’m trying to make, except that nobody seems to study both sides of the equation, and if they did they might find out that if He is doing something jerky that makes Her feel like ass it doesn’t appear to be a big deal worth funding and studies and newspaper articles.)

So I suppose you can add Bad Wives to the list of people we love and embrace at The Bad Moms Club. New tagline: His Junk Is Not Your Fault.

P.S.: I’m really sorry this is late. As y’all know, I usually post Mondays. But this Monday I was still back in transit from BlogHer 11, where I got to hang out with other Bad Moms and a few Bad Dads and eat too much and drink too much and get too little sleep and generally be in the company of Awesome for a few days, and I wasn’t back til late last night. At which point I had to go collapse and die for a few hours.

Every parent knows: There’s good touch and bad touch.

Examples of good touch include hugs and snuggles from Mama, using the washcloth in the bathtub to scrub your back, and Daddy grabbing you by the nearest limb to keep you from running out in front of that gigantic mack truck coming down the street.

Examples of bad touch include touches that are abusive or harmful to the child.  Abuse. Hitting. Sunscreen application.

Wait, what?

That’s apparently the opinion of the Maryland State Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, who sent out a memo to all their youth camp operators last month explaining the rules for helping campers apply their SPF 50.  The memo is well, memorable. It starts with the line, “The Office Of Environmental Health And Food Protection will no longer consider sunscreen a medication requiring a prescriptive order.”  Well, that’s good. I’m amazed it required a prescription in the first place.  It then goes on to say that the sunscreen must be provided with each camper’s name clearly marked on it. Fair enough. Then, this:  “Sunscreen must be provided by the parent/guardian and should be a type that can be used by the camper with little assistance. Camp may not apply sunscreen to campers.”

Huh?

“Campers should, in  most instances, apply the sunscreen on their own. If assistance in application is needed, camp staff should limit touching the camper as much as possible. Under no circumstances should campers assist each other in the application of sunscreen where touching is required in the application process. ”

So what you’re telling me, is that you’re unleashing a group of rabid camp-age kids with bottles of sunscreen and explicit instructions to not let anybody help anybody put the slimy goop on properly. This is a great idea. I can see it now: Kids with streaky, half applied sunscreen, goops hanging off their cheeks, who then at the end of the day will run and greet their parents with half of their face appropriately protected from the sun and the other half burned to a lobstery, peeling, cancer-inducing crisp.

Can you believe the State of Maryland even took the time to discuss and write a memo documenting this policy? Can you imagine the government hack meeting around that one? “No, NO Diane, children should NOT help each other apply sunscreen! It’s wrong, I tell you, WRONG!”  “But Charlie, what if the kid needs sunscreen on his back?” “Well, his parents should have THOUGHT OF THAT before they decided to breed!”

Sigh.

The odd thing? Sunscreen application is one of the most innocent touches that I can think of.  It’s necessary to wear it, and you just can’t do it all yourself. Most people can’t reach their own backs. It’s a physical impossibility.  Everyone asks someone else to get their back, and everyone else willingly obliges.  It’s the one time you can ask the cute boy you have a crush on to touch you, completely legitimately.

And it’s also one thing that us parents are nuts about. My kid wears way more clothing, hats, and sunscreen in the sun than I ever did at her age – because I remember the nasty sunburns I used to suffer through. With all the evils out there in the world, sun damage is one that’s easily, easily avoided – as long as people don’t enforce draconian policies about not being able to touch each other with a bottle of SPF 85.

Mercifully, the State of Maryland has backed off. Sunscreen still has to be labelled, but there’s no regulation around touching. Sanity, hopefully, has returned.

Photo credit: Hawk684 on Flickr.

Jumping through hoops, working for free, and deceiving their readers — these are three things it seems like mom bloggers are a little bit less willing to do these days. I must admit, it is a trend I like and one I’d love to see go viral.

A lot of bloggers get multiple e-mails every single day from companies and public relations professionals offering to send them free product if they’ll review it on their blog. Some go for that, some don’t. Some of those brands want just a little bit more. They may want you to host a giveaway of their product on your blog, one that requires people to click through to their website and, for example, comment on which product they like the best. That takes work and may also take money if the company is asking you to ship the product to the winner of the giveaway. Will they pay you to do it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Mostly no if they can find enough people to do it for free. But then there are companies who ask a whole lot more.

Recently, toy company Melissa and Doug was promoting a “Great Opportunity” for bloggers. In the promotion (captured here by Mommy Niri), they wrote:

If you’re a BLOGGER looking for the opportunity to provide a Melissa & Doug giveaway to your audience – look no further!

If you would help us promote your Sand Play Toys, specifically the 4 items listed below, and suggest that your followers come by our Facebook Page and *Like Us, we can send you a set of these sand toys for your own enjoyment, as well as a giveaway to your audience for every 200 fans you send our way! Just ask your audience to post something on Our Facebook Wall saying that YOUR blog sent them! The giveaway form for the sand toys set will be on your blog.

Two hundred fans? Who not only need to “Like” Melissa and Doug based on your recommendation, but who also need to leave a comment indicating that you sent them? That’s work. A lot of work. More work than a few sand toys are worth. Not just a lot of work, but a lot of social capital to expend in a world where that capital slips away all too easily.

Mommy Niri wrote about the contest on her blog, outlining what was wrong with that particular scenario. Melissa and Doug did end up responding in the comments and indicated that the page was poorly worded (although it was awfully specific for something that was simply poorly worded). They also updated their web page for the contest to simply read that if you wanted to help them promote their Sand Play Toys, you should send them an e-mail.

I wonder if anyone got them 200 likes?

Speaking of likes, there is also a bit of backlash against the “Vote for Me” contests. You know, the ones that make you beg your friends to go back every single day for a month to vote for you? It seems as though some people have realized that these contests are more beneficial to the website that is hosting the contest than the person who is nominated for the award. In her post, On Blogging, Popularity Contests & Why I QUIT!, Katherine Stone from Postpartum Progress wrote:

What good does it do for me to drive friends and family and people I hardly know up the wall so that some other website can get a lot of traffic?  What are we doing?!  Everyone I know who has to beg for votes is uncomfortable the entire time they are doing it.  So why do we do it?

Yes, why? Being on a list based on merit…has merit. Being on a list because you annoyed more of your friends than the next person…not so much merit.

Unless you’re the website that benefited from all the page views and associated ad revenue, in which case “woo hoo!”

Then there are the swank offers to travel across the country, be wined and dined, and be given exclusive access to the inside scoop and high level executives in a company. Once upon a time there were the Nestle Family Bloggers. Invited on an all expenses paid trip to Nestle’s USA headquarters only to be fed a bunch of doublespeak by company executives while receiving flack from anti-Nestle activists on twitter and across the blogosphere.  Some people learned that company executives and media relations people do not follow any sort of oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Others didn’t.

But I have to hand it to McDonald’s Canada. Not to be outdone by Nestle, they decided to offer bloggers the opportunity to go on a similar junket. However, in their case, they were offering not just one trip, but four. And, instead of just inviting a group of bloggers they thought would help spread their gospel, they decided they were going to get bloggers to compete for the opportunity to be All-Access Moms. But the opportunity for what? To be deceived by McDonald’s executives, to be shown only what they want to show them, to be fed public relations approved answers to “tough questions”. There is no way that McDonald’s will choose someone who is truly critical of what they are doing. They are going to choose someone who likes McDonald’s, who is popular, and who has a few tough but not really so tough questions they want answered.

The funny thing? Although McDonald’s Canada promoted this contest across the blogosphere and even on television ads, I haven’t seen more than a handful (around four people) who have actually posted anything saying that they entered the competition. Maybe there are many, many, many more that applied secretly and didn’t tell anyone about it, but I have to admit I’m kind of hoping that most moms were smart enough to see that the downside to this offer was likely greater than the upside.

I won’t hold my breath on getting real answers to my questions to McDonald’s via whoever is chosen, because I’ve read their spin before and I doubt it has changed much.

Finally, there are the more plainly and painfully obvious requests for deception. Those e-mails, saying “I would like to place a text ad on your website.” Great. A lot of bloggers do offer text ads and they provide a bit of extra income without taking up too much space. But then in the second e-mail comes the caveat — they want the text link placed discreetly in a blog post without any mention of it being an ad. No disclosure = no go. That’s my policy. That is the law in a lot of places. Yet every day, there are companies e-mailing and asking mom bloggers to deceive their readers and break the law all the time.

Like the spam bots on twitter, I wonder who takes them up on their offer? There must be someone, right? I’m just so glad it is none of you, bad moms. Cause I know you’re smarter than that.

What do you say Bad Moms? Are you ready to be part of the trend that says “we are not your bitches” to the brands out there that want us only for our social capital and that ask us to do unseemly things in return? The very same social capital that will go down the drain if we take them up on offer after offer after offer?

Image credit: cote on flickr

Look, world!  Here’s the “real” Angelina Jolie. She’s in her own clothes! She’s not wearing makeup! She is carrying her own six year old handbag!

Translation: Wow, this is how good she looks when she really should look like hell. Why don’t you look like this, too?

Yes, this afternoon springs upon us yet another deceptive, patronizing ad campaign aimed at women who will then believe that if only they carried a Louis Vuitton bag, they, too, could end up sitting on a bridge in Cambodia getting photographed by Annie Leibovitz looking ethereal!  Who needs a shower! Who needs coffee! Who needs makeup!

Except, not bloody likely.

Do you really think she’s makeup-free?  Are we really meant to believe that a woman who has six children and a thriving career  miraculously does NOT have some kind of quick-dry cement-style undereye concealer to hide the gigantic bags under her eyes?  Do you really think that they’d ship Annie Leibovitz to Cambodia to take a photo of Angelina Jolie and NOT have an incredibly expensive coat of Bobbi Brown Sandwash Pink coating those famous lips?

My feelings about The Jolie notwithstanding (and for the record, they are not positive ones), it slays me, SLAYS ME that this ad campaign is meant to illustrate “core values”. Apparently, the “core values” of the people both in and behind this ad is to pay an actress $10 million go to one of the poorest countries in the world to take a photo that will be used to sell insanely overpriced handbags – and then to lie about it.

When I get out of bed and put on my own clothes and go makeup free, (and by the way, nobody miraculously pays me $10M to do so), I call it “Tuesday”. I get up to take care of my child and clean the house and figure out what to do with my life. Those are my “core values”, Louis Vuitton.  You want to sell handbags to Moms of six, or moms of any amount of kids? Then don’t make your ads full of shit. Just make the bags stainproof, reliable, and big. Big enough to hold my smartphone, a snack pack of cheerios, and that gigantic tub of undereye concealer. Because trust me: we all need it.

Did you know that as soon as that scalpel cut in to my abdomen to birth my daughter two years ago, her IQ dropped a total of 46 points? It’s true. She was also going to be born with a natural talent for the piano and a deft hand at sculpting, rivaling that of Michelangelo and other greats.  But because my daughter did not descend through the birth canal, all of those things were presumably left behind in my uterus and not only left her less intelligent and less talented, it may have also left her with Conservative Party of Canada leanings.  SAY IT AIN’T SO.

At least, this is the only reason I can think of that Dry Creek School District in Roseville, California might ask about the method of a child’s birth on their Application for Enrollment to their elementary school. Not only do they ask whether your child was born vaginally or via c-section, if you choose c-section you have to answer “Why?” Since the story came out, many people have asked the school why they are collecting the information; the school has as of yet refused to answer. So I am left to my own devices to decide for what purpose they might possibly want this information, and the only reason I can think of is that they somehow believe c-section children are inferior.

I mean, never mind that I had been contracting for five days and was going out of my mind, or that even with 12 hours of pitocin I wasn’t dilating, or that my daughter’s heart was decelerating precipitously with every contraction. Never mind any of that. That decision to have a section (which, by the way, I resisted to the end, in case that scores me any “points”) has somehow branded my daughter and will now follow her the rest of her life, if judgmental overly nosy crunchbag twatwaffles like these ones have their way.

Before you jump down my throat, I am very aware that too many c-sections are performed these days. The WHO says the rate of c-sections should be around 5-10% of births; in North America we’re around 30%, and it’s a guarantee that it’s not because we have a whole lot of high risk births around here. Both mothers and physicians need to be educated about what a “normal” birth really is, and when the scalpel just needs to be put down, already.

However, to imply that the way your child was born will matter whatsoever by the time they enter school is utter lunacy. There is only one reason this information would be needed by a school or any non-health-type-organization, and that is to Judge. Judge you as a parent – “oh, dear, didn’t you know to just say no to your pushy OB? Were the midwives full? Were you too posh to push? Was your body too inadequate to perform the natural childbirth process? Well. (Hushed tones) We’re wondering if you’re really going to fit in here“. Or to judge your child. “Little Johnny is having trouble paying attention in class. It’s to be expected, though.  He was a c-section baby.”

As if we don’t have to put up with enough, what with people giving us sympathetic looks and telling us they’re “sorry” we had to have a section and that our “birth experience” wasn’t everything it could be. Way to make us feel like failures right off the bat, when really, the point is we both walked away alive and healthy. Taking your c-section stick and beating us over the head with it years later does nothing but make you look like an overly self-righteous jackass.

Don’t bother feeling sorry for me because I had a section. And don’t bother judging my child on it, either.

So first, Kerry Campbell claimed she injected her 8 year old regularly with Botox and gave her bikini waxes so that she would win beauty pageants and be “famous” when she grew up. We were appropriately outraged.

Then someone finally called children’s aid and the child was removed from Campbell’s custody. And Campbell swore up and down that she’d learned her lesson, she’d changed!  We were appropriately smug.

Then she said the whole thing was made up, that she was paid off by The Sun to make the outrageous claims and the whole thing was hogwash.  We were appropriately righteously indignant at having been had.

Then the reporter Campbell said put her up to it said Campbell’s lying about lying. Now we’re just confused.

My head. It hurts.

Every new revelation in this story brought a new wave of fury. The first one was well placed. A mum, a non-medical person, is injecting her daughter with toxins in order to prevent wrinkles? Wrinkles? In an 8 year old? What 8 year old has wrinkles? She’s giving a prepubescent child bikini waxes?  To wax what, exactly? What is she doing to this child’s body, never mind the lifelong damage she’s inflicting on her psyche? This woman is UNFIT!

Then the story collapsed, and that collapse is just as telling. It says just as much about us as a society as it does about her as a mum. While her judgment is seriously under question no matter what she did – is it worse to inject your child with botox, or to just pretend you did for fame and profit? – what does it say about us that we believed it, that it was newsworthy in the first place? What does it say that we were completely willing to accept that someone could be that crazy as to do this kind of crap to a child for the sake of the publicized, Hollywood image of “beauty”?

Here, I’ll answer that: It says we are so obsessed with youth and youthfulness and sexuality that we’ve gone completely insane. Think about this: it’s OK and totally mainstream for you and me to inject ourselves with deadly toxins so that we won’t show a wrinkle. It is accepted and expected that women will maintain an attractive weight, an attractive style, and women of a certain age who look younger than that age are praised for “keeping themselves well” despite their years. We worship youthfulness and tautness and reject age in all its forms.  But we draw a line at botox on a child, because – well, because why? Why draw the line at all? It’s not like we don’t parade girls in beauty pageants. It’s not like girls’ clothing isn’t sexualized. It’s not like a 13 year old girl didn’t stand up on stage in front of millions during the taping of the last Oprah show and brag about losing 20 pounds.

So why were we so outraged by the thought of a Mum injecting her kid with botox?  Because yes, it IS an outrage, but let’s not pretend that in 10 years our society won’t be shilling that same product to that girl in the pages of Cosmo or Marie Claire.  If we want to figure out why this was even news in the first place, we need look no further than the copy of Star or Us Weekly in our grocery carts. Our society buys in to it, and we do too.

Oh, well this is fun.

Age Limited.

Laura Miller has started a website. This website is called Too Big For Stroller. It features pictures of children of varying ages being wheeled about in strollers. Many of these children are older than 1 or 2. They are maybe 4 or 5 or even older – ages Laura obviously thinks as Too Old to be in a stroller. She is apparently very upset about the fact that children who appear to be too big to sit in strollers, sit in strollers. (I think Laura needs some real problems.)  So Laura walks around and takes pictures of other people’s children (or accepts email submissions from people who take photos of other people’s children) and then posts them on the internet, with a little blob over the child’s face (because that makes it all OK) with the word “walk” emblazoned over it. She also adds a snappy caption like “its ok, everyone…there’s room for her PURSE” and “these parents must be exhausted.”

How funny.

Laura, probably back in third grade or so, they should have taught you something in school. Something about how picking on someone smaller than you, someone who can’t defend themselves, someone who really isn’t doing anything wrong, isn’t cool. About how it’s really not a good thing to do to take something you somehow brand as “lame” and turn it in to a weapon to use against someone else, to point and mock and laugh and belittle. Often people who do these sorts of things try to get other people on their side, to use their cruelty in order to get other people to laugh along with you and tell you you’re cool. But here’s something you might not realize:  they might laugh to your face, but they actually think you’re mean, and they walk away going, wow. I can’t believe she had the nerve to do that! Because really, to surreptitiously take photos of children (which totally isn’t creepy at all) and post them on the internet (wow, even less creepy!) in order to make your point that you in your personal judgment think that the use of a stroller past a certain age/weight/height is just so, so, terribly wrong that it deserves public shame? Is pretty awful.

I’m not going to use the fact that you don’t have any children against you. I mean yes, I already know that you would never ever have your child in a stroller past whatever arbitrary age you decide, and your child will be babyworn and then walk everywhere. Because, of course, imaginary children are far easier to parent than real ones. They never get tired or whiny or sore or sick or have any invisible physical limitations or any of a million things that might mean a stroller will make life a lot easier for everyone.

No, instead, I’m going to use this opportunity to inform you of something. When someone picks on a child, their parents’ response isn’t to say “oh, yeah, hahaha, that’s funny! And so right! I am going to totally change my ways because that bully is totally correct!”

Our response, instead, is to behave much as the bull who’s just been taunted with the red flag. We don’t listen to reason. We go, proverbially, or perhaps literally, in to a state we call Mama Bear. We anger and protect and defend.  We politely (even though we don’t want to be polite) tell you why your website sucks and how you’re hurting people. We make sure our child never sees the photo of them on the internet that a mean person put up to mock. And from then on we walk around with our hackles raised, making sure nobody’s surreptitiously pointing a cell phone camera at us in order to get something to make fun of on the internet.  But if you are, and we see you, jebus save you from the verbal blasting you are about to receive.

Maybe you never had a Mama Bear. Maybe you have never seen a Mama Bear in action. Maybe nobody stood up for you when you were little and instead left you to be eaten by the wolves, wolves who were never taught themselves that it’s not cool to pick on someone else. In that case, I feel sympathy for you. But in this case, this case where you’re publicly picking on kids, you’re on your own.

So sure, Laura, pick on parents. We’re used to it. Hell, we’ve got a whole website here based on the fact that people think parents suck since people like you, people who like to haughtily tell parents what a shit job we’re doing,  are a dime a dozen.

But do not, do not pick on our kids. Because that doesn’t make you funny. It just makes you mean.

Via Jezebel.

She found me in the schoolyard, a few days after all the invitations had been handed out.

“So,” she said, smiling, “My son has had his first taste of rejection.”

Blink. “Excuse me?”

“Well, my son said that the some kids were talking about your daughter’s birthday party, and when Paulie* asked Mischa about it, she said that his invitation was in the mail.”

I looked at this woman incredulously. Was she relating a conversation that two 5-year olds had had?

She was.

And was my daughter clever enough to come up with, “Your invitation is in the mail?”

She was.

High five, Mischa! I thought to myself. Unfortunately, faced with a surprise attack from another mom, I wasn’t as clever as my daughter. I did my best not to flounder.

“Ha ha! Well, no, Paulie’s invitation isn’t in the mail, but there *is* one for him; we’ve been handing out a few each day – you know! Gotta be stealth about these types of things! – anyway, uh, yeah, why don’t I just bring Paulie’s invitation tomorrow morning? But the party’s on the 14^th – save the date!” I turned and walked away.

Who does that? I wondered. Who gets so up in arms about a junior kindergarten birthday party that 6 kids have been invited to, that they corner me and demand to know where their kid’s invitation is? Mischa and Paulie aren’t even friends!

And then, after the incredulity, self-admonition: Why did I play into that? Why didn’t I just tell her that our kids are not great friends, and Paulie’s just not invited? Why didn’t I just say, Oh well! Can’t pin the tail on every donkey!

In the end, everything was fine. Paulie came to the party, there were no hurt feelings (well, at least until Paulie’s mom reads this. Ahem.)  and my husband and I were able to reflect on Lessons Learned.

They were:

1) Do not back down. There is no rule in the school that every child must be invited to every birthday party, and thank God for that, or we’d all go broke.

2) Make your invitee list, stick to it and distribute invitations after school hours. Better yet, save paper and heartache, and just Evite everybody.

3) If your child already has a handle on the clever retort, review her lessons on discretion. True, only so much can be expected of a four, five or six year old, but if you explain gently about hurt feelings, she should do okay. As with picking noses and running around pantless, the goal should be boundaries without shame.

It is now one year later, and Mischa’s sixth birthday is this week. Invitations to her party have long been sent out. We implemented our Lessons Learned, and for added measure, I steered clear of the school yard for a week after the invitations were sent. I had a feeling that my husband would not have been accosted as I had.

And what of the relationship between Mischa and her schoolmate, Paulie? Well, there isn’t one. Paulie moved to another class, and when I see his mother, we are polite. No, dear readers, Paulie was not invited Mischa’s party this year. And if his mother were to ask me if Paulie were invited this year, I would simply say, No. We’re all very comfortable with this scenario.

Because Paulie had a birthday party over the summer, and Mischa wasn’t invited. I know, because Danny’s mom told me.

But maybe the invitation just got lost in the mail.

*Names of children that are not mine have been changed.