This blog post has gone through multiple transitions. Initially, I set out to write about how I noticed that my relationship with Teen Child has subtly changed. Just last year, I was ready to kick that girl's butt up one side of heaven and down the hot beds of hell. Her report cards were terrible and I was talking to her teachers so often, we just started texting to save time.

In the eighth grade, though, things have mellowed out a little. And I was just about to celebrate it. I had started writing about it and everything. Then we hit a setback last Monday. All because of a stupid, blockheaded boy who, to be quite honest, she isn’t supposed to be talking to anyway. Now I’m back to wading waist-deep through the fiery pit of tween angst, and that well-deserved respite is a memory. Most moms talk about surviving the Terrible Twos. I’ll be glad to get my stripes and say I've managed to make it through the Tumultuous Tweens. 

Until today, I never would have been able to tell you what kind of parent I am. Sadly, I now know. I am a permissive parent. And my children are pretty much in deep trouble because of it.

A new study out of the University of New Hampshire shows that of the three parenting styles they looked at -- authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive -- only the authoritative parents raise respectful, happy adolescents. Are you surprised? I am not.

The fact is, as they are defined, two of the parenting styles are just plain lazy. Here are the definitions:

When our kids are little, we take every story from the teachers and the playdate host mom about how well-behaved our kids are out in public, and we eat that ish up. It's how we survive the at-home tantrums that make us feel like we're total failures at this parenting thing. And then come the teen years.

And suddenly, sending the kids out in public is a whole new ballgame. Because if you have ever left your house, you know what happens when you get a group of teenagers together, in public, without parental supervision. They act like little pissants! No matter how well-behaved they'd be on their own, no matter how well-raised, teenagers in a group feed off of each other's need to act like a rebellious jerk. 

Is it any wonder we've got a whole group of people in society who flat out hate your teenager? Just take a look ...

Here's the thing about parenting. Some of the things we do because we love our kids so darn much is the very stuff that makes the ungrateful little twerps hate us. And this is where two groups of parents diverge in the wood, so to speak. Most of us just grin and bear the teenagers' angsty attitudes. And there's Tommy Jordan, dad of 15-year-old Hannah, who took the road less traveled.

The North Carolina father printed out his daughter's 'tude-filled diatribe about how much she hates her parents from her Facebook page and decided to make a YouTube video to set her straight. He read her entire rant about how unfair her life is (sooooob) and explained one by one, why her parents' expectations that she pitch in around the house are part of being a member of the family. And then things got really interesting.

The one thing that has always given me pause about raising my kid in the country is the complete and total lack of ethnic diversity. Everywhere you turn, there are white folks as far as the eye can see. And the brouhaha over racist slurs used to by white kids to taunt players at Pittsburgh basketball game is not doing much to make me feel better about my current choices.

The story goes that teens from the predominantly white Brentwood High School dressed up in banana suits on the sidelines and started screaming at their rivals. They allegedly called players from Monessen High, where most of the students are black, monkey and other disgusting slurs.

It's disgusting. It's disturbing. And even though there's debate over the truth of the allegations right now, it's still the kind of thing that keeps me up at night, wondering if I'm doing enough to teach my child to embrace other races and cultures.

From one extreme in school birth control policy to another: Here in the U.S., free condoms in high school and Plan B vending machines in college are controversial measures; over in the U.K., girls as young as 13 have been getting contraceptive implants at school. Without parental consent.

Not surprisingly, this particular method of teen pregnancy prevention is also being considered controversial ... but with good reason! Forget the whole "morality" question -- performing a minor surgical procedure on kids without informing their parents (or their doctors!) is potentially dangerous.

Too little birth control, too much birth control -- can't we find a middle ground here, people??

Poor Lenny Boberg. The 9-year-old from Winona, Minnesota, just wanted to impress his friends and family with a killer rendition of "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson. He studied the King of Pop's moves and tried to replicate them just as Jackson did, leaving no move untouched -- even the infamous crotch grab.

To say the educators at his school -- a Catholic school, mind you -- didn't react kindly is an understatement. In fact, they suspended him saying it fell into the category of "gross misconduct." Watch for yourself and see what you think. The following video is a little blurry, but you can't miss his controversial moves.

When I first heard Jamie Lynn Spears explain why she ended up getting pregnant at 16, I was kind of confused. As the now 21-year-old recently told Glamour magazine:

I believe in safety and birth control as prevention. But like many young girls ... I was really scared to go to the doctor. And I was on a Nickelodeon show, and it [felt] especially embarrassing to ask someone to put me on birth control. I didn't want to ask my doctor, because she had a little girl.

My initial reaction was: Wait a minute. Britney Spears is your big sister and you were embarrassed to ask for birth control? I knew plenty of girls who went to their older sisters for help in that department, and besides, when Britney Spears is your sibling, is there anything you can really do that would qualify as "embarrassing"?

But then it occurred to me: I was missing the point entirely.