How to Be a Parental Ninja

Parents! Are you tired of the constant struggle? -- sick of the arguments? Have you had it with fighting the urge to be a killjoy when it comes to helping your children get a healthy and non-meat-headed perspective on the now cotton-candy, now obnoxious offerings that the pop culture mongers try to foist on them daily, via the television airwaves? 

We all know that advertisers and marketers want to sell our kids a belief system that will bolster sales. We all know that they want to build up a concept of what it "cool" in our babies' innocent, not-as-yet-self conscious minds so that these electronically-created adver-zombies will drag us parents into the labyrinths of the marketplace maze and deplete us of our hard earned money and self-respect. For some, this works out.

Parents, unite!

Sure -- the advertisers get money. The kids get stuff. But what do we get? We get stuck with little groupthink materialists at our dinner tables, along with a lifelong feeling of guilt resulting from the fact that that we allowed our kids to wander down the dark road of really, super-duper darkess -- to step through the door held open by that devourer of young intellect, Justin Bieber, and then to make a fateful left and get on the elevator down to pop culture Hades, where they play Big Time Rush on the PA system all day and night.

Can you LIVE with yourself if this happens? I, for one cannot.

But what are our options? If we merely say, "That's crap, Son or Daughter," we lose. We become old farts who just don't get what's cool. If we forbid our children to listen to this soul-sapping drek, we become mothers of Rapunzel, locking them away from the pleasures in which their friends contentedly wallow, empty-noggined little sows though they may be.

But there is a way of hope; a secret and stealthy way to show our children the light: The Way of the Parental Ninja. We Parental Ninjas operate by stealth. Our primary weapon: Satire!

With humor, we hilariously point out the foibles of our pop-culture targets. We tell a joke and we let our kids in on it. Together, the Parental Ninja and his child conspire against the silly Pop Monsters. As one, we imitate the loud-mouthed announcer on Kids Bop commercials -- carefully, caaaaarefully, my friends, so as not to make fools of ourselves -- until our children are laughing heartily with us. When they see the silliness, we win, my brethren and sistren.

Satire. It's the new "Kids today!"