Your child is not special...

And neither are you. Get over it!

I'm so tired of all the bumper stickers I see all over the place: "My child is an honor student at Fill-in-the-Blank Elementary!" "My child is Student of the Month at Such-and-so Middle School!" "My child is a STAR! at the Twinkletoes Dance Academy!" "My child is an Accelerated Reader!" "My child goes poop in the potty on a consistent basis!"

Except for the last one, I've seen all of the above (names changed to protect the not-so-innocent) in the past week. Plus all of the huge magnetic thingies that are shaped like cheerleader megaphones and football helmets and whatnot that announce the child's name and jersey number and what team s/he is on. I'm beginning to think the proliferation of Monstrous Behemoth SUVs is an outgrowth of the desire to turn the back of one's automobile into the personal billboard advertising the greatness of one's children.

My school is feeding the ego-frenzy, too. Instead of generic stickers that advertise the school, we now have stickers for football, stickers for cheerleading, stickers for the Arts Guild, stickers for the swim and dive team, et cetera. We do have generic school stickers, but we also now have stickers to go under the generic school sticker for Every Single Activity/Club/Sport in which your kid is involved. Bonus points if your sticker collection has to make two rows. (And I'm not talking just a "Band" sticker. We have "Marching Band," "Jazz Band," and "Concert Band." "Swimming" and "Diving" are two separate stickers.)

At one time, I think, putting stickers on your car advertised support for a school or organization with which one was involved, not one's individual achievements or accomplishments. Now it's all about the individual -- like the organization exists to showcase Your Specialness!

I'm having a hard time this year dealing with parents and children who believe that they are Special. It's not that I don't want children to believe that they are precious in the eyes of God and worthwhile individuals who have much to offer their world -- I do -- but it seems like more and more, I'm just seeing children who think they're the only persons who count in the world. Everybody Else has to meet certain standards, but I'm Special, and I need to be treated differently! And then I meet the parents, and I get where it's coming from.

Instill a sense of individual worth in your children -- that's great. But when it's not accompanied by the lesson that other people are just as worthy, then you've created Selfish Monstrous Bratty Beasts.