Ok-want to know what I’m thinking when I see this? Your kid was too dumb to make honor roll. For crying out loud, praise your kid’s accomplishments if you must but aren’t you aware of how pathetic this looks? Is this really the best you can come up with? Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said something like “It is better to remain silent and be thought an idiot than to speak up and remove all doubt”? I’m sorry your kid didn’t make honor roll but guess what? There’s a lot of things he/she is not going to get or win in his/her life and I just don’t care for this boost the self-esteem at any cost crap. Your kid’s friends and their parents are not stupid either. Why broadcast to the world that your kid is not so bright (or tests poorly or whatever). Teach your child to be proud of whatever he/she does well and that just because others brag doesn’t mean you must too. There is a certain grace in knowing you have an accomplishment even if it is not broadcast to the world. It may even be an important lesson for your kid to know that you think he/she is special and that this is the important part regardless of what others think.
Yeah! And I can’t fit My kid has ADD primarily inattentive, ASD, OCD, agraphia, dysgraphia, SID, is severely gifted and would only make it on an honour roll if the test were multiple choice on a bumper sticker.
It’s shorthand you see? And since when was great kid and honour roll mutually exclusive? Maybe some of these people think that honour roll bumper stickers are pretty naff but they know their kids rock.
Maybe the parent of the kid is stating that “I have a great kid” and it has nothing to do with his/her accomplishments in school.
School is not a measure of what kind of kid they have. He/She could be a C student but does a lot with their church, school, or just a plain good kid at home.
My mom used to have a bumper sticker that said:
“Have you hugged your kids today?”
Oddly enough, she used to kick my ass. You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. It’s just a bumper sticker for fucks sake. Why is is this even in the Pit? Now with my language it belongs here but why?
I assume everyone knows I think my kids are great. I also think they’re smarter, more talented, prettier, and just all-around better than everyone else’s kids. That’s because I’m their mother. I expect the other kids’ parents to have the same opinions of their own children.
I don’t put the “My Kid Is Better Than Your Kid” bumper sticker on the car, because my mother taught me not to brag. I suppose that means I think my mother is better than the mothers of the people with the bumper stickers, but I don’t advertise that either. I save the high-octane bragging for occasions where the audience is a) related to me or b) can retaliate with stories of their own phenomenol offspring. So, for instance, it’s okay for me to mention that my children got stellar grades and are all-around perfect beings of light here, where everyone else can chime in, but if I put it on a bumper sticker, the other drivers can’t do the same.
I once saw a teenager wearing a shirt that said, “My Mommy Says I’m Special.” I’ve told my 13-year-old that if I ever find it in a store, I’m buying it for her, and she’s said if I do, she’ll wear it.
(I did put the “Honor Student” bumper sticker up on the refrigerator with magnets. I suppose I’ll need to take it down now that my paragon of virtue got a B and a B- in two classes because she isn’t organized enough to turn in her completed homework.)
nah it’s just shorthand for tearing your hair out when your kid fits NOWHERE! Terrifically talented would actually imply the kid was accomplishing something. Severely gifted is a snide term generally used by parents when the kid is out of the socially optimal zone of IQ and is functioning in the seriously weird category.
Regardless of whether the bumper sticker is there because Snotleigh didn’t have the grades to get one of those “My Daughter is on the Honor Roll at Richard M. Nixon Elementary School” or because her school has refused to jump on the band wagon and hand out bumper stickers… if I saw one, I’d probably have a fit. With luck I would not be driving.
That sort of warm fuzzy “self-esteem building” crap doesn’t work. Self-esteem does not come from being told that you’re great, not even if the words are glued to the back of Mommy’s Ford Explosion. In fact, that sort of thing may even backfire, because if a kid is constantly hearing empty, automatic praise, they quickly figure out it doesn’t mean a thing. So they tune it out, and may miss the praise that’s genuinely earned and deserved.
Kids gain self-esteem from successfully meeting challenges. They get it from knowing that they are interesting people who are important enough that the adults they care about also care about them and are interested in what they do. You can’t buy a bumper sticker that will replace that.
(I suppose it’s possible that the parents in question were doing all that, and added the bumper sticker because Snotleigh’s best friend’s mom had put one on her minivan and Snotleigh was feeling a little bummed. But this is the Pit, dammit, and I don’t have to be reasonable if I don’t want to!)
So I 'spose that a mom that constantly tells you that she wishes you were never born, that you are a loser, that you suck, that you are not what I wanted is a good alternative? This is what I grew up with. My dad didn’t do such a great job there either. Encouragement, a little goes a long way.
The only reason I am complaining here is because my mother was just that woman.
To this day I still remember that bumper sticker she had “Have you hugged your kids today.” While that was an empty statement at the time, I remember it and I finally realize that it meant something to her even though it was a difficult thing for her to accomplish.
Self-esteem, in my opinion, completely comes from your parents encouraging you when you suck at a very young age. They give you the idea that even though you failed, you aren’t a horrible person.
Life is full of failures, but a kid that can understand that a failure doesn’t mean the end of the world or the end of you trying, this is good parenting.
You don’t have to be the superstar on the football team. You don’t have to be the valedictorian (sp,) you don’t have to be on the top to be a great kid. It’s what the kid does to his/her community that makes him/her a great kid. Even if that community is within the family.
Kids don’t have to be on top to be great kids. God Damn that attitude really ticks me off. I know from experience.
I wasn’t a great kid but I was a good kid and if my parents had told me that I was okay, I wouldn’t be the bitter bitch I am today. I wish more parents would tell their kids they are great.
Parents have a responsibility to their kids to encourage them in teh best way possible. If that includes a stupid little bumper sticker, then I am all for it. Every little bit counts.
It’s not about the parents, it’s about the kids. The kids need to feel accepted, wanted, needed and that they aren’t failures.
This attitude I see here distresses me. It’s a fucking bumper sticker. A parent thinks their kid is great, where is the problem with that?
When I read this I thought, well um no. I dont think the people who have these give a flying rats ass what you think of this. I’m preaty sure they didnt put it on there to impress you.
Yes, and that is the whole point of the “my child is a great kid” bumper sticker. I’m sure it is better than waiting untill the kid is 40 and in therapy to tell him “you know I always was proud of you even if i didnt say it so much”
Oh yeah, you can’t tell from looking at my kids. Maybe you’re doing it wrong.
Look I’ll say this about the subject, Im very proud of all fourof my kids. Some are smarter than others (acorse they all think they are smarter than their parents), and some are more active in sports than others and one still shits himself (hes only 2), but they are all proud of their accomplishments and they all know that their parents are proud of them as well. It doesnt matter how they know, just that they do.
also FYI I dont have an honor roll bumper sticker.
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We got the new klingy window sticker ones.
Even for the Pit, that was one mighty amazing leap of logic. Hope you didn’t sprain anything on the dismount.
Sounds like you have plenty of good reasons for being pissed at your mom. She was physically and emotionally abusive, and it sounds like emotionally neglectful besides. Those are damn good reasons to be angry, and I won’t argue you’re not entitled. But if on top of that you’re angry because she didn’t say the magic words that would give you your self-esteem, then you’re cheating yourself. It’s not like Peter Pan sprinkling Pixie Dust on you so you can fly. Self-esteem ultimately comes from within. Other people can encourage it, they can discourage it, and if they try hard enough (which it sounds like your mother was doing) they can break it down. But they can’t build it up for you.
And never have I said that any praise is a bad thing. (My mother did, actually - she believed praising children for any reason would make them get a swelled head. I do not recomment this method.) Directed praise can help a lot. But emptily reciting “That’s wonderful”, “Great kick”, “Beautiful picture”, “Fantastic cooperation”, all day long, as the pop-psych self-esteem gurus of the '80s and '90s encouraged you to do, dilutes the genuine expression for something worth praising. If you tell your kid it’s “fantastic” that she got a 95 on a test in arithmetic, her best subject, what are you going to say when she remembers all her spelling words even though she’s been struggling there?
I’d like a bumper sticker that said “Our kid’s self-esteem is sufficient to the point that it is completely unecessary to post his minor academic achievments on the back of our car.”
I have to admit, the sticker makes me want to vomit as well. If you’re into that cutesy crap, send your child a purple Ronnie card saying “you’re burpley great” or some such crap.
Just please don’t inflict it on the rest of the world. All parents (usually mistakenly, certainly so in my parents’ case) think their child is the most amazing, beautiful and talented in the world. But thank god my mother didn’t splash it across her car, and our childhood artwork was confined to the kitchen, not my father’s office, etc etc.
Besides, it’s also important to teach kids modesty. Last think you want is having them ragged and bullied at school for having big-headed parents or being big-headed themselves.
I have to say that every time I see this bumper sticker it seems redundant to me and “kid” reminds me of goat which reminds me the Pit where people seem to use the term “goat felching” an awful lot which then always gives me a laugh. I can just see the child running around on all fours at their elementary school braying like a goat.
I don’t care if you want to brag about your kid but there has to be a better way to phrase it.
