… my wife and I just got a list of items to be auctioned off at a "gala" fundraiser at Scout's private Montessori school. (Cristie and I don't go, but we contribute to what I call the "Cinderella fund," which allows the fucking teachers to go.)
The list is breathtaking, but this item takes the cake.
Turn your child(ren) into a superstar for a day. Have a special A&E styled documentary made about your child courtesy of Moxie Post. Once the film is complete, invite your closest friends to join you for the red carpet premier in the Theater Building Chicago! Dress your child in style thanks to Bullfrogs and Butterflies. This package also includes a special "Academy Styled" birthday party to be hosted by Zia Fosca, Ms. Lisa and Ms. Amina, as well as a special photography session with Audrey Woulard!
Kristen Ridley, you don't need to respond; I think I can write your response to this in advance. But I'd like some confirmation of the others that I'm not crazy, these assholes are.
Here’s another one; and that’s it. I’m saving the rest for my next Huffington Post piece, in which I’ll wonder aloud if any of these same parents are the ones who don’t believe in raising taxes for public schools because you’d “just be throwing money at the problem.”
International Humanitarian Experience
Travel to South Africa to work as a family on a humanitarian project! Tickets to Johannesburg Zoo and Golf Reef City, and guided tour of Nelson Mandela Square and African Craft Museum. You will have an exquiste 1150 SF hotel suite at the Park Hyatt with Butler Service and in-room babysitting!
As a non-parent, I wouldn’t DREAM of presuming to comment on this!
I’m sure looking forward to the OTHERS’ comments, though.
I would bid on that documentary one for Zach, my nine-year-old son, and then at the red carpet thing, I’d have him come stumbling out of the limo like Robert Downey Jr., and start lashing out at all the papparizi and yelling, Cool Hand Luke-style, “STOP FEEDING OFF ME!!!!”
Then I’d have him vomit on one of the reporters and climb back into the limo.
Steve C.
Zach could pull it off.
Steve – I love your idea!!
David – OMG! A friend and I were just discussion how much is too much for a five-year-old’s education. But that isn’t the point as you want your child to have the best education possible.
Soooo…reacting to your auction item: we regularly see “princess parties” happening where the girls are made up and then given a ride in a hot pink limo. They lean out the windows and holler to those of us who are having lunch nearby. Now, is this not the beginning of “How to act like Paris, Lindsay, et al?” I mean, what happens when the kid goes home and the party is literally over? (At least I hope so, but who knows, every family is different.)
I mean, bedtime, bath, brush your teeth, eat your veggies, ask to be excused from the table, say ‘yes ma’am’, ‘no sir’, etc., happens at our house.
I despise the shows like “Sweet Sixteen”, etc., where the girls get everything they want at 15 or 16 – money is no object. Um, hello, money is an issue. Fiscal responsibility happens at all levels. Manners? Oh yes, my dear, you will learn them! (I say/think this at my daughter.)
In short, these types of auction items, are stupid. It may be sound cute and I am sure there are people who will bid on them or risk their child’s wrath, but it’s just paving the way for ridiculous expectations and behaviors later on, in my opinion.
My two cents.
Scout likes princesses, and we let her dress up like one. But she knows, Mom doesn’t like princesses and Dad thinks they’re only “okay.”
The very idea of princesses, if you ask me, is mildly offensive in a post-feminist democratic society.
And as for “Sweet Sixteen”? I’ve never heard of that, and I’m going to pretend I never had.
Supernanny is a bad enough sign of the times.
Agreed on Supernanny. What are people thinking? “Oh, I can’t control my kids so I’m going to put myself on tv so everyone can see.”
I don’t know, Susan. Yesterday while Scout was changing after school–it was taking her forever (changing shoes, donning gloves, scarf, coat)–her three-year-old friend Riley was sitting on the floor, doing nothing, while her dad stood patiently, six or seven feet away from her.
A standoff: She refused to change for home, he was determined to wait it out. He watched Scout get dressed, and said, “See Riley, that’s how it’s supposed to work.”
But he did nothing. What could he have done? He could have picked her sorry ass up, grabbed her clothes in his other arm, carried her screaming ass downstairs and tied her wriggling little insolent body into the car, and ….
Well, of course it wouldn’t come to that, would it?
Ah, but maybe Rileys are born, not made. Maybe it’s the same with parents, too. Pride goeth before the tattoo-covered teenager.
David
I know you said I wasn’t allowed to comment on this one, but can I tell a funny story about Super Nanny which was mentioned here instead?
My nieces love that show and watch it obssessively. They are also sometimes not quite as well-behaved as my sister would like them to be, although she works hard at instilling manners etc.
Anyway, they were acting up one night when Super Nanny was on TV, and in exasperation, my sister finally yelled: “If you two girls don’t smarten up, I’m going to call Super Nanny and have her come here and fix you up!”
My elder niece shot back: “Well she can’t come tonight – she has a show to do!”
It really scares me how much quicker and smarter they seem to be than I was at the same ages.
They’re more media savvy, yes. But the little dupes still go for the Santa Claus thing every time.
I’m confused – is the “humanitarian project” the Johannseburg Zoo tour or Gold Reef City? Or maybe it’s the butler service – you know, it’s good to employ “the natives” darling…
That such unlimited ostentation and wealth exist side by side with extreme poverty and homelessness is the shame of our generation. My hope is that the current global financial meltdown will be the catalyst for a shift in North American values towards a society that recognizes and acts on the need to bridge the gap between the extremely rich and the hopelessly poor.
I am part of the problem. As the parent of a teenage daughter I have financed birthday limo rides and other extravagances that have allowed my child to live, at least temporarily, the Paris Hilton fantasy. No limo rides these days and the party that was high school is over, but she lives at home, I still pay for her cell phone, and the money she makes at her poor-paying job gets spent on rye and coke and not on rent (let alone helping the poor).
What kind of an adult she will become remains to be seen. As she emerges from years of hormone-fuelled brain fog, she’s turning out to be a thoughtful, helpful and even kind person and I don’t think she will become a spoiled brat of an adult. If we go through some hard times in the next few years and she suffers a bit for it, all the better.
What ever happened to just pretending?
David – Yes, this is CRAZY stuff, as long as you live in/around affluence, you’ll need to get used to being the weird mom (weird dad in your case) that objects to things like this. I have to warn you, though, (and oh I so doubt the wisdom of admitting this here), there may come a time when you will give in to a daughter’s request for a lavish “birthday experience” because she is a really good and forebearing girl, and you don’t want to constantly single her out before her peers (more than she already is for having the weird mom — or dad, in your case). And that’s where things get widgy, and the values you espouse clash with each other in your mind and heart. I gave my daughter that “birthday experience,” but I paid almost $500 to make sure that every single girl in my daughter’s class and her brownie troop was invited (we had something like 34 girls attend) because I wanted to teach her the value of inclusion. Did she learn from it? I hope so. Would I do it again? I don’t know. Do I always give in on stuff like this? Clearly not. But are these easy and clear decisions? I’ll let you decide when Scout is turning 7 and looks up at you with those lovely, soulful eyes of hers, and begs you for once to let her have a birthday party “like all the other girls do.”
Hmm, funny you should mention this, Amy. Just yesterday we had Scout’s birthday party. A lady came and helped the kids all make their own (fucking) pandas.
Not only was it dumb and overpriced, it looked like a sweatshop.
(An observation I made, causing some parents to gasp.)
Then, one of only two black girls at the party gave Scout a white Barbie doll dressed like a sawbuck whore.
“I don’t want a Barbie in my house” said Cristie, after trying feebly to give the newly minted five-year-old a premature lecture about body image issues. “We’ll keep the whore in the backyard, honey,” I said.
I concluded that argument by saying it’s impossible to protect kids from an asinine society, and the only thing you can do is pour a lot of good ideas and influences into the kid’s head, teach them to read and teach them what’s funny–and hope they learn to ignore (at least to the extent that WE manage to ignore) the surrounding fucktard culture.
David
David – What’s a “sawbuck whore”? Around here, we have white-trash sluts, so that’s all I’m really familiar with. For the record, Barbie qualifies as a WTS. Also for the record, Julie has something like 12 Barbies, which I tried – valiantly – to denounce and get rid of each time a little friend of hers would produce one as a birthday present. (Insert mental image here of me giving lecture to child and child grasping stupid doll as if it were her very life and pleading for it not to be tossed in the garbage.) It didn’t work. And they have sharp little shoes, which hurt like HELL when you step on ’em barefoot.
sawbuck Hear it!
sawbuck Definition
A $10 whore.
☆ saw·buck (-buk′)
noun
1. a sawhorse, esp. one with the legs projecting above the crossbar
2. Etymology: from the resemblance of the crossed legs of a sawbuck to an X (the Roman numeral for 10)
Slang a ten-dollar bill