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. 

Should rich parents "discipline" their kids differently than poor parents? A British MP seems to think so. Last summer the country was rocked with riots. Youths lit fires and looted in cities around Britain. Senior Labor MP and former education minister David Lammy thinks it was at least partly the result of the 2004 law forbidding spanking that "reddens the skin."

He said on a radio show, "Many of my constituents came up to me after the riots and blamed the Labour government, saying: 'You guys stopped us being able to smack our children'." Riiiiiggghhht, those parents just haven't been spanking their kids enough in the past 7 years. But it gets worse.

Some people feel better when passing judgment about someone else’s parenting by prefacing their comments with little disclaimers like “it’s not the decision I’d make for my kids” and other euphemisms to assure whoever they’re talking to that they’re not looking down the long nose of snootiness. Not me.

We have different ways of bringing our youngins up, and surely I don’t have even a quarter of the answers. Heck, I needed a cheat sheet for the ones I have come up with. That doesn’t mean I don’t formulate my opinions on good parenting versus bad parenting by some of the things I see other moms and dads do.

We all make mistakes — even, alas, with our precious offspring. But there are just some circumstances that are so cut and dry that it’s impossible for me to give parents a break or craft a mental excuse on their behalf. Not that they’re asking for one. But in these cases, they probably should:

Most parents dread their kid going through a hitting phase. It has the potential to make them persona non grata in the playgroup and push their number to the top of the teacher's speed dial. That day came in our house, and I realized I had at least something to be thankful for. We had never used spanking as a form of discipline in our house.

Oh, I've heard my counterparts who practice corporal punishment tell me it doesn't matter. You're the parent, you are therefore allowed to tell your kids to do as I say, not as I do. So far they haven't believed me, the adult, that it makes absolutely no sense to tell a kid not to hit when you hit them.

But have I got an answer for them! His name is Hugh, and he's just a little boy. A little boy who happens to have spilled some truths about disciplining children from the eyes of a child ... right on YouTube. Take a look:

There are some who would call Uggs a crime against fashion. Some would call them the comfiest thing since Crocs (see preceding sentence vis a vis crimes). And in one Pennsylvania school, they -- and all other open-topped knock-offs -- are now a crime worthy of punishment for students who dare wear them into the classroom.

Before you go all "OMG, I love my Uggs" on this ugly ban, the school administrators say this isn't about the boots themselves but about what kids are shoving in them -- namely cellphones, which are contraband at Pottstown, just as they are in 99.9 percent of schools in the country. Yes, America, this is why your teen has no respect for his elders. Because instead of coming right out and telling them what they're doing wrong, school administrators try to trick them.

Toddlerhood, the age that defines the parenting warriors from the flakes, the battle-axes from the push-overs. If babyhood is all about mere survival, the toddler years are when you decide what kind of a parent you're going to be. Even if you don't pick a specific parenting philosophy -- say, tall half-disciplinarian half-attachment-parenting with soy whipped cream -- you're still being forced to make decisions about how you will teach your kid to be a decent human being.

For a lot of parents -- and parenting experts -- raising a decent human being looks a lot like raising an obedient person. BUT -- we also want our kids to be compassionate and independent thinkers. An article in The Guardian asks, Since when did obedience become the epitome of good parenting? I think that's an idea worth picking apart.

Do you know the difference between a cursing toddler and a cursing elementary school kid? I'll give you a hint. The answer's more about how you react to them than anything the kid is actually doing.

If I had a dime for every kid whose parents let them get away with insanely stupid behavior as a toddler because it was "just so cute," I'd probably be able to put the elementary school aged brats those cute toddlers become into a private school. But I'm one of those moms who is just too wussy to ever tell her friends that they're parenting wrong (at least not to their faces!!). So I'm relieved that CafeMom Studios has found JoAnn From Bensonhurst to do it for me!

Refusing to listen -- as usual.Remember when your kids were babies, and they cried for what seemed like no reason? And you sat there thinking: oh, I just can't wait until this child can make up her own mind and tell me what she's thinking? Oh, those were the halcyon days, my friends. Before your child learned to talk to you.

And more importantly, before your child decided you had absolutely no idea what you were talking about. Blessed with a stubborn little spitfire (that's loving Mom talk, and I refuse to translate under grounds that I would incriminate myself), I look back on the days when my daughter could not talk and wonder . . . if I'd done it a different way, could I actually convince her of all the completely rational facts that she dismisses on a daily basis? Here, you be the judge. Tell me if you think the kiddos will ever be convinced of these common sense facts: