Cara was singing the Barney Clean-up song so now its my turn with Barney. He sings a great rendition of Please and Thank You Are the Magic Words. I still sing it sometimes to my kids - they roll their eyes and smirk - but they remember to say please and thank you, for a little while anyway. If you are a Desperate Housewife watcher, than Sunday night you got to witness Bree washing her paralyzed husband with a garden hose for not saying please. Okay so I don't go that far with my kids, but sometimes it's the little things in life that make all the difference. My children can ask and ask and ask and if they don't say please, they don't get it. Sometimes I remind them that they forgot the "magic word" and other times I don't. I just say no. If the big ones are in the room they might whisper to Lu to say please. I am told often that I have polite children. I am proud of that.

Sometimes I think our biggest problems are caused by some of the littlest oversights. Like saying please when talking to someone. Like saying thank you when someone does something for you. Like not spitting in the street or not texting when you are in the middle of a conversation with someone. Decency and manners are a dying art in the good ole USA. Look at our politicians - they take every chance they get to be negative and mean to one another. You don't have to like everyone - but you have to be polite. Maybe if everyone started with manners at home - with saying please and thank you, with if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all, with little common niceties, it might translate to the world around us. I know it's a pipe dream - but as Moms and parents and friends, we owe it to our children to leave the world a better place than we found it. I don't think we are doing that. I think some of us are raising children - and you know moms and dads like this - who just don't give a sh!t about anything but themselves. Who think they can do no wrong. Whose parents haven't been doing their job and have decided to give up - it's just easier to let little Johnny be a sh!t than to be a parent.

I don't want to be around kids like that - or their parents. I want parents who step up - who leave the party when the child doesn't listen instead of threatening to do so one more time. Send your kids to bed without dinner like your parents used to do - it works wonders. Parents have become soft - I catch myself doing it. Sometimes its just easier to say yes than to fight. I think we all need to say yes less and teach our kids more - myself included. So if you hear me singing the clean-up song, or the Please and Thank you song - I haven't gone off the deep end, I am just trying to get my kids to remember the important things in life.

Cara's two cents: Who knew Barney would provide so much fodder for blogging? :)