Kids these days

* The following is one man's judgmental opinion and should be treated as such *

One nice thing about having a blog that is read by only 3 people, is that I can go on a rant and not offend too many people with my overly opinionated views.

My rant is this, "when did kids begin to rule the world?" I feel justified in my question, based on the facts that I was once a kid, and now as a parent have a few kids.  

This all really stemmed from mine and Jackie's anniversary weekend. Everything went wonderful, with a few exceptions. One of those exceptions was our failed late night swim.  We went down to the hotel pool at 10:30 to hit the hot tub before bed.  When we walked in, we found there was a "shrieking  girl convention" taking place in the pool. We saw a mass of girls leaving the hot tub and decided we would be safe there. Unfortunately they weren't getting out to go to bed, they were just getting out to have a quick cupcake break and scream at each other before getting back in the hot tub. After all 83 were back in the hot tub, they started talking REALLY loud and splashing each other (along with us). As riveting as their conversations were, they weren't exciting enough for us to endure the splashing princesses.  I tried to make my very best "annoyed adult face" but it didn't help. I wouldn't have been so bothered by the whole thing if it wasn't for the parents reactions to how their girls were acting.  The three most popular responses were:
    
       ·         doing whatever their little angel demanded of them.
       ·         smiling at how adorable their daughters canon ball into the hot tub was.
       ·         ignoring their child, to gossip with another attentive parent.

At some point it seemed to me that if my kids were acting like that I would have pulled them out of the pool and had a talk with them.  Or maybe I would have thought "hmmm it's 10:30. I think I'll get my kids in bed".  It didn't take long to see who was running the show in that relationship.

Since I'm already on my soap box I might as well continue. I remember when I was a kid, and we had a social gathering like Christmas, birthday parties, baby blessings, that I was required to wait. Grandparents went first, then parents, and then kids.  I've watched plenty of nature shows in my day.  In all those shows I have never seen one where a family of lions sits down to a delicious Sunday zebra, and sit and watch the cubs eat all the best parts, leaving the scraps for the parents. In those nature shows the parents make sure the kids know their place. Now days I don't think people care if their kid is squeezing in front of grandma to get the biggest piece of chicken, only to go eat two bites and throw it away. Maybe we should be more like the lions and occasionally eat one of the impatient kids to remind them who's the boss.

Don't get me wrong . I love my kids. I think kids are funny, and amazing and interesting, and all that other good stuff. I'm just worried that if we act like everything in this world revolves around them, then when they're a teenager they're going to think "everything in this world revolves around me!"

 I'm glad that I'm not one of those awful parents that does everything wrong.

(Next week's rant: Annoying people who tell you how to raise your kids.)