This spring, I stumbled on one of those quirky stories in the news. You know, one of those that make you stop and cock your head to the side and wait for what MUST be the punchline. Because, you know, it HAD to be coming at the end of the story. But it didn't.

In brief, a 12-year-old girl was living with her father and stepmother. She and stepmother got into it about the girl posting inappropriate photos of herself and chatting on parental-banned Web sites in May, and father took away her end-of-elementary-school trip as punishment.

I will pause to let each of you reading play this scenario out in your mind. As the Mom of an 11-year-old girl, I have a pretty good idea as to what this argument was about. Emily is, at times, unbearably fresh with her father and I. Not a week goes by that we don't call her on tone ... or eye rolling, or one of the 80 billion other things that girls in puberty have to be reminded about. She is not yet a teenager, as much as she thinks of herself as one — and Terrance and I have been united in our enforcement of our "rules." She can be angry with people, she cannot scream at them and call them names. She can be angry — she can't stomp into her bedroom and slam the door, while screaming at us.

We know, for any small pain that we endure now as we consistently discipline and re-discipline her, we are preventing much worse pain later.

So here is where that news brief picks up. The 12-year-old moves to her mom's house. And mom lets her go on the outing. Dad, who has legal custody, forbids the trip and the 12 year old takes her father to court ... and the judge rules that the daughter can go on the trip.

At the end of this CBC segment, I practically drove off the road. What!?!?!?!?

WHAT-WHAT-WHAT????!!!?!?!?!?!?

Are you kidding me? By the time I got home, I was in a right lather. Terrance and I may have issues. We may not always be of the same mind — but we both agree that we will not undermine one another with Em. If he and I have issues with one another's parenting decisions (and believe me — we DO), we can discuss in private and out of her earshot. The bottom line is that we raise a mentally healthy, fairly well adjusted kid. That means LIMITS. That means BACKING EACH OTHER UP.

Any parent in the game for more than six months can tell you that their child can play them like fiddles. Emily even has a special tone of voice saved just for her father — it is a small, whiny voice, and it gets his attention like no other sound on earth. In my case, she gets real close to me and stands on the tops of my feet.

Dad = overreacts to any small cough as if the tsunami of vomiting is upon us

Mom = Will wait until there is actual dry heaving and or fluid production

Dad = Small amounts of tears will send him into a flippin' frenzy to get her to stop

Mom = Will withstand buckets of tears and will remind you after the fact that if you had simply solved the problem the first time, you might not be flopping around on the ground.

I do not always agree with the way Terrance handles every parenting dilemma. In fact, 80 percent of the time you can be sure that I do NOT agree with his parenting decisions. However, I can only imagine if our daughter had the gall at 12 to decide that she didn't need to listen to what we — her parents — said. That she — a child — could over ride our punishments and decisions by appealing to some higher power?

Chaos, people, chaos.

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Now I am not advocating that children are property of their parents, to do with what they will, nor that they are better seen and not heard, but this seems way over the line. When you can't parent, when you can't reasonably discipline without an external power walking in to thwart your judgment?

When a society complains about the irresponsibility of parents while at the same time sending a distinct message to kids that their parents are not the final authority? You can't criticize us while tying our hands behind our backs.

This is an original post from the Canada Moms Blog.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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