When I was a teenager, I once took my father’s car out on a weeknight, hit a concrete barrier on the Pali, limped the car home and left the mangled car the garage for my father to take to work the next morning.

I was sober, in case you’re wondering. I was just stupid.

I suspect my parents can tick off a number of times I was even more inconsiderate than that.

That’s one of those things that pops into my head when I find myself getting frustrated with my kids.

So my son doesn’t want to get off the computer.

So my daughter asks for something to eat just as I’m finishing up the dishes.

How do such manini things get so magnified?

My son – who usually just gets defiant – called me on my intolerance the other day when I asked him where something was.

“Why are you asking me? You already know,” he accused me.

He was right. I was trying to get an admission from him. As far as he was concerned, I was just doing what I always do: trying to make him feel guilty.

I don’t know when I went from a kid trying to get away with stuff to a parent who doesn’t want her kids to get away with anything. After a lifetime of mistakes, I should know better.

I don’t want my kids to run rampant. I want them to know they have to treat people – and things – with respect. I need them to take responsibility for their actions.

How can I teach them that, though, when every little thing escalates into war… when sneaking a book under the covers past bedtime takes on the same proportion as missing homework, which takes on the same proportion as a temper tantrum?

At a certain point, we need to dial it back, lower our voices and concede that even if things aren’t perfect, it’s not all doom and gloom.

Maybe I’m too quick to whisk away the laptop, seize the remote control and sentence the kids to bed. Sometimes I know I jump to extremes when a few minutes of quiet time would suffice. Maybe I do “always” make my son feel guilty.

Nothing either of my kids has done anything that rises to the level of a car wreck or even some of my far lesser offenses.

It’s about time I stop making them feel like they have.

It was an odd sensation, sitting in front of an airline departure area when I wasn’t going anywhere.

Instead, I was waiting to say good by to my 11-year-old, who was as eager to embark on his adventure as I was to hold on to him just a little bit longer.

“Can you leave?” he whispered, as we waited for the class to ready themselves to go through security.

“Just go hang out with your friends,” I responded. “I just want to make sure that you get through safely.”

“I will after you leave,” he hissed.

I stood, well rather, sat my ground and made excuses. “I don’t want to have to come back here if things go wrong,” I said.

He didn’t buy it, nor should he have, I suppose. It was pretty clear at that point that things were going perfectly.

It’s so hard to let go, though.

When I was in the sixth-grade, my class went away for one night for camping at an “outdoor lab,” which I suppose is the nearest equivalent my school district had to taking kids out to Camp Erdman or Mokuleia.

There was no jetting off for a whirlwind tour of all the historical sites we learned about in social studies. Given, I lived in Virgina, where many of the historical sites were a short bus ride away, but still… I don’t even remember going to southern Virginia with my class, which would have given us a better taste of colonial and confederate Virginia.

For all the talk about how sheltered and overprotected kids are today, these kinds of trips seem pretty common. As I complained about the expense to other parents, the commiserated, telling me about their own childrens’ trips to other parts of the Mainland or even out of the country.

How do we do it? We arm our kids with cell phones so that we aren’t out of touch even when they’re just a couple miles away, then we send them off – with those same cell phones – and let them travel thousands of miles away. Why? Because to deny them such a great opportunity means keeping them sheltered and overprotected.

It’s pretty crazy.

I’m not used to ceding so much control. I drove my son nuts as I tried to explain to him exactly how I packed things: each day’s clothes packed into a separate bag, labeled so he’d know which pair of socks to wear on what day. I packed snacks and then bought more snacks, just in case. I bought a reloadable VISA debit card so I can add money if he needs, and I put little stashes of cash in different places, just in case something goes wrong with the card. He wasn’t thrilled when I then proceeded to attach his wallet to his backpack so it wouldn’t fall out, but I thought it was better not to take chances.

In the end, my son was so bored with my constant quizzing that I felt like a mother hen, but it was the only way I could stop myself from being a nervous wreck in front of him.

When I saw his bright smile as he walked off toward the security check-point, I was glad that I’d held it together.

He’s going to be fine.

Me? I might need some super glue, but I think I’ll keep from falling apart while he’s gone.

“…teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini, that she wore for the first time today.”

Ruffled bikini from Old Navy

I’m such a sucker. My daughter needed a new bathing suit and I couldn’t resist the yellow polka dot bikini because in size 4T, it really was teeny-weeny.

You know they made it just because the song would pop into moms’ heads.

By today’s standards, it was actually pretty modest for a bikini, with boy cut shorts and decently-sized top.

When she saw it on the hanger, my daughter loved it.

When I put it on her this morning for water play at school, however, I got a different reaction.

“What is this?” she asked, pulling at the top.

“Where’s my pants?” she asked, tugging at the bottoms.

“It’s a bikini,” I explained, and buckled her into her car seat. She immediately pulled a blanket up over herself to contemplate the whole two-piece bathing suit issue on the ride into town

When we got to her school, she got out of the car and stood there, tracing her tummy with her finger tips. “People are going to see my boujie,” she noted, placing her hands over her belly for coverage. (Boujie=belly in Sloanieworld. I should probably do something about it)

I don’t know where this modesty came from, but I like it.

I covered her up with a tank top and a pair of shorts and told her she could keep them on during water play.

I can’t say I’d be upset if that’s the last time she ever wears a bikini.

Yesterday my 4-year-old and I had a rather long — and as yet unresolved — debate about an all important issue: Do snakes have butts?

I don’t know.

She doesn’t know.

What we both know is that the “What? Chicken butt?” joke has gotten old and my daughter is trying to mix it up.

Luckily, the snake butt issue threw her off, so I didn’t have to hear about the butts of every animal and person she knows.

Why are butts so funny to little kids anyway?

My daughter not only laughs hysterically at anything related to butts, but she also likes to make everything twice as funny by saying “butt-butt.”

She assumes that there’s something wrong with me if I don’t at least giggle at her rear-end humor.

“It’s not nice when someone doesn’t laugh at a joke,” she scolds.

I need new jokes, preferably ones that don’t involve body parts.

Help!

We’re always talking about how kids today are so sheltered.

The seesaws have disappeared, along with a lot of the swings.

Kids have to strap on helmets and knee pads before getting on anything with wheels.

Their version of “wall ball” is completely different from the game we played as kids, which could send kids to the hospital with broken noses and split scalps. They actually hurl balls at the wall, rather than the person standing in front of the wall.

Apparently, if you take away the things that cause the most injuries, kids find new ones.

According to the Washington Post, a Virginia elementary school has had to ban the game of tag:

“‘This is not the old-fashioned tag, where you could use two fingers and you would be it and move on to someone else,’ Hooker said. The game, she said, has become much more aggressive. ‘I call it the nouveau tag.’

“This tag involves grabbing people who do not necessarily know they are playing and possibly bumping them to the ground. ‘Then the kids do “pyramiding” or “towering.” They pile on each other. [Sometimes] they call it “jailhouse” or “jailbreak,”‘ because the child has to break out, she said.

“Since the prohibition began early this month, physical education teachers have begun a “chasing, fleeing and dodging” unit in first through fifth grades. Students essentially play variations of tag, and the teachers remind them about safety rules and point out the athletic skills they can transfer to other sports, said Sue Straits, a PE teacher.”

– “At McLean School, Playing Tag Turns into Hot Potato,” by Michael Alison Chandler, Washington Post Staff Writer

Ouch.

As a parent, I have to say that I don’t want my kids to get hurt on the playground, but kids are coddled enough already with bans on dodgeball and tug-of-war and who knows what else that was considered perfectly fine when I was a kid.

Kids today aren’t any nicer because all the “dangers” are being removed. If they aren’t tackling each other during tag, they’re tripping each other in the hallway. Or, as a friend pointed out, they’re fighting and posting videos of it on YouTube.

I say let them have their tag. They’re going to need to get their energy out somehow.