The Top 40

Has anyone observed Millennial parenting? I've seen a few in restaurants and my observation is that they are obsessed with their kids diets, activities, and interactions with others.

They are almost like Munchhausen-by-proxy parents.

They stick a *device* in the kid's hands and then ignore them forever.

Yep, it's one or the other. Either helicopter parenting on steroids, or babysitting by iPad. There seems to be no happy medium, no letting kids be kids, within well-defined and enforced limits.

"...well-defined and enforced limits..."
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???

Know what limits my dad placed on us kids?
"Have you asses home at 5pm for supper."

Back then, late 50's and through out the 60's, neighbor parents talked to each other. If one saw a kid misbehaving it usually got back to their parent pretty quick. Call it networking if you will. Back then it was just called being friendly. Cause parents were well aware their charges had the tendency to behave different when the parents weren't around. And adults were mostly honest. So when a neighbor down the street told my dad I threw a rock through his boat windshield not only did I get my ass beat but I also had to surrender my allowance and any lawn mowing money I made to make the neighbor whole. Kids tend to behave differently when they know there are eyes all about.

Now, nobody lives in 1 home very *long* and they don't take the time nor effort to know and learn their neighbors. No, "staying connected" isn't the answer and never was and people that believe that stuff are worst culprits.

**The average american family moves every 7 years.

Right ghost. Did my parenting '56 to mid '70s (six of them). Not only did neighbors talk to each other back then, the kids ran the neighborhood and played together, often in large groups, at each others' houses a lot of the time, so you pretty well knew all the kids in the neighborhood and more importantly, the kids knew us as extended parents. Kind of a down-home version of Hillary's It Takes a Village theory.

Yes, Ghost, parents used to know the other parents in the neighborhood and had no problem talking to them if a kid wasn't behaving right. Mine did, and if I pushed little Johnny's face into a pile of dog doo without a good reason, I'd be held to account. Or if he did it to me, same story. But if I caught a foul ball in the nads or took a header off my bike, well, that was just part of growing up, and maybe I'd know better next time.