One Of the best things about September, (Unless you�re a teacher), is that school starts. You have survived the summer with the kids, not counting Poison Ivy, disappearing skate boards, constant refrigerator tours and other anxious moments. You now get to have �Free Time� for about 7 hours, 5days a week. What A JOKE!!!

Anyone who uses the term; �Stay at home Mom� with a certain patronizing tone deserves painful torture. I was one of those �Stay at home Moms� for 12 long years. I would have signed up to work the Alaskan pipeline all winter but I never got a reply to my pleading letters. When I got a job, my youngest was 4 years old and I had just become a single parent.

My Mom was the parental unit for my 3 kids. Oh, she was tough with them alright! Not as tough as she had been with me, but tough all the same. She had certain rules of behavior and she enforced them with an iron fist. I look back and wonder what her reaction would be to children�s behavior today.

These days, children look to the T.V. for standards of behavior. Things like �Rug Rats� are shaping their moldable little minds.

Ever watch �Rug Rats�? Their parents play the role behind the scenes. They are rarely involved with the �R.R.�s� These cartoon kiddies get to render the kitchen into a complete atomic disaster site. The parents get to come in at the end and laugh and smile at the darling�s efforts to re-plaster the holes they knocked in the walls with peanut butter. Then giggles and hugs to all. Yes, this is definitely a fantasy! Kids get to watch this from a very young age and get the idea that this is what they are supposed to do. When Mommy goes over the top and Daddy starts yelling , they can�t quite understand why no one in their family thinks it�s cute. �Angelina and Chuckie did it and their mommy didn�t send them to their room for 6 years!� Do you think they can understand that a cartoon is not reality? Do they spend more time with the T.V. than with humans? �O.K.!�, you say. �I won�t let them watch that. I�ll only let them watch educational channels.� Oh Boy!! That�ll work! As long as there are no commercials.

My 11 year old grandson has already picked out a career. He wants to be one of those guys with a cell phone who walks 3 feet and asks, �Can you hear me now?--- Good.� I have explained to him about exaggerating for effect but I don�t think he believes me.

Let�s say your kids, or grandkids , have the table manners of a wild buffalo. You can�t understand why they act like that. Have you seen the commercial for napkins? The one where this chubby little boy is eating a flock of chickens saturated in barbeque sauce? He wipes his face constantly and flings the filthy napkins on the floor until he has a pile that reaches to the ceiling. Where are his parents? Not even an off-screen voice to suggest that this is a �BAD IDEA�! And when you see yours doing that your reaction won�t be to run out and buy better napkins for the little slob. If my kids had ever done that they would be on all fours scrubbing the floor with toothbrushes. (See �MOMMY DEAREST� for that household hint.) In my opinion barbeque sauce should be like booze. Can�t have any until you�re 21.

And then there�s the one with the birthday girl. She looks like Patty Duke in the �BAD SEED� and acts the same way. When she discovers that her stuffed bear doesn�t talk, she turns on her parents and shrieks, �You got me a broken bear!� Then daddy takes advice from the lady who is hawking cell phones. He rips off the bears head and sticks a cell phone in it. Taping the bear back together, VOILA! The bear now talks! If that was my kid I would drive her to the woods to spend time with some REAL bears! That way she could learn that real bears don�t talk either. As parents, we know that this is another case of exaggeration for effect. The kids don�t see it that way. If your cell phone goes missing someday, check the stuffed animals for duct tape.

I don�t even want to think about the commercials for detergents�. When Junior comes in coated with mud, he�s expecting mommy to smile at how cute he looks and gently remove his crusty clothes. She gives him hugs and kisses while she starts the washer and helps him get clean gear on. She walks him back to the toxic mud puddle, grinning like a happy baboon. A thought just occurred to me�why doesn�t daddy do the laundry? Please note, it�s a woman who is almost always waltzing with wash. She is also seen hanging it outside on a line as she dances with the towels and sheets. I think she may have taken Prozac supplied by Timothy O�Leary.

Even the most liberated woman, who is raising her children without the dubious benefit of a male role model may wonder why Sonny is becoming a junior chauvinist. He�s been watching women on commercials doing the household chores. He trusts the T.V. to teach him how to handle life�s passages. On the other hand, Sally age 7, is asking to get a makeover and get breast implants. She is a fan of Jenny Jones and Ricki Lake. What would Gloria Steinem do? Probably hire Martha Stewart as a nanny. (She needs the work these days anyway.)

If you have a kid who goes to a school where uniforms are required you know the many ways they see to be individuals. Like the Back Pack� They must have the same one that their friends carry. You thought you could get ahead on that and you bought the camouflage one like last year�s. Your son saw it and cried out, �NO!! That one is so lame! NO ONE uses them anymore! I have to get the Spiderman one in blue.�( How he knows this, considering school hasn�t started yet, is a mystery.) I dare you to find one,,,ANYWHERE!!! They sold out in June. You call all over and there are none left. They are on back order for at least 3 months. Sonny informs you he would rather go to school naked than use the back pack you bought, I know that you are really tempted to call his bluff. The child guidance people will be at your door in a heart beat. Sweet little Sally is not that fussy about the back pack. Her issue is underwear! Victoria�s Secret should try branching out like the Gap did. You bought her cute little cotton ones with rainbows on them. They will never make it to her butt. She wants tie-dyed satin with pearls. You want to guess how long the back order is for them?

And then there�s the public service announcements� famous athletes telling how you should say �NO� to drugs. Movie stars do these too. People like,,,,,Oh, I dunno,,, Darryl Strawberry and Robert Downey Jr.? Tonya Harding can do the good sportsmanship ones along with the Russian ice skaters. I�m personally waiting for the one about incest and child abuse from Woody Allen. Community service at it�s most basic.

Sure, you can throw your T.V. out the door. (After checking the trash pick-up rules in your town.)

Bye-Bye Big Brother, Sayonara, Survivor� Good riddance to yez! Uh-Oh. That�s when you find out that the homework assignment is to write a report on a program that�s on tonight! Naturally, the teacher assumes everyone has a T.V. In this day and age it would be un-American NOT to have one! You can try hiding the remote in your car trunk until a situation like this arises. Now that is what a responsible parent does! (Inside of a week, your 4 year old will have built a better remote with Legos and a key chain penlight.)

It�s time to accept that we cannot take complete responsibility for our kid�s behavior. I bet some of you are thinking, �There�s always home schooling.� That�s fine for those who have the skills and the time. Not to mention the ability to spend all that time with the offspring. This may work if you plan to never let them out in public until they are around 35. I know 3 moms who tried the home school route. One of them managed until 3rd grade when she had baby #2. The others did it until 4th and 6th grade. They were very difficult to talk to. Every phone call to �catch up� with them sounded like a P.T.A. meeting. I have to tell you that even with home schooling they grew up to be the usual bratty, obnoxious kids. They did have beautiful manners though. They would apologize profusely for spilling the chocolate milk on the new white couch. My kids just denied it and swore they weren�t in the house and had never even seen the new couch, and they had character witnesses to prove it. My kids are adults now and have developed their own witness protection programs.

I feel almost sorry for my Grand kids. There is no excuse they can use that will work. Their mother, aunt and uncle can recognize every one. Just as I could when my kids were using them. They may have to resort to actually doing the work. The alternative would be to come with an excuse that sounds like a plot line for an Alfred Hitchcock movie.--- �A huge flock of birds followed me from school. They started to fly right at me so I reached into my back pack and balled up all the papers in there to throw at them so they wouldn�t pluck out my eyes! My homework must have been in with the other stuff. Oh yeah, so was my report card.� AND THE BEAT GOES ON,,,,,,