R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I swear I just had them. They were right here. I sent a shiny faced three-year-old and neatly combed almost-five-year-old to school last week. Now, I have no idea who I'm living with.

You see, I'm all for school. But school also has these things called friends.

Friends are much more influential than I am. Whatever I say now skips right by them. To be honest, if that's how it's going to be, I wish friends would pick up the groceries, make dinner and change the beds, thank you.

After Day 1 of pre-school, Julian came home jiving at me in the bathtub like Will Smith.

"I got, I got, I got soap in my eyes. Woah, Mama! Shake it, shake it!" Julian said, jiggling his frontal parts wildly and shaking his head like a wet dog. When he noticed the confused expression on my face, he started cackling and baring his pointy canines.

Wha?

Ian, now in Kindergarten, has also learned some new ways to express himself. (Some of what he says could serve as useful dialogue for soap opera script writers if they are running low.) When I vetoed TV on a school night, he promptly informed me that I am "the worst mother in the entire world!"

"Good," I said. "Then I'm doing my job. Didn't you know that was my job, Ian? To be the absolute worst mother ever?"

"I don't want to talk to you EVER!" he shouted, stomped to his room and slammed the door. I've said I-don't-know-how-many-times that there is no door slamming in our house, so this time, I marched into his room with a pair of Fiskars and clipped about 30 silly bands right off his wrist. So there. How's that for worst mother ever!? Cue evil cackle...

Every day they come home with more complaints about how our life does not measure up to their friends lives. We need a bigger house so we can buy a dog like one of their friends has. I need to put cupcakes in their lunch because the lunches their friends have are more cooler. I have to let them wear ripped NFL jerseys to school because that's what all their friends are wearing. My answer to all of these complaints is: What? Sorry I wasn't listening.

I'm going to have to bust out some Aretha Franklin on them and those friends if this keeps up.