A silly little piece in the Times the other day caught my attention.

It was, at least on one level, a good holiday story about commercialism and overspending on children for the holidays. As a parent, I can relate. JP got two sets of Lincoln Logs (one from my Dad, one from my ex), a TinkerToy set (from me), two identical learn-to-write-letters kits (one from my mother, the other from my brother), a dominoes set from my mother (we’re going gangsta in my house, apparently), along with tons of clothes he will never wear.

The writer, Julie Scelfo, talks about how she can’t convince her parents to stop giving her child so much stuff. Fair enough. She also talks about culling some of the toys that her child doesn’t use any more. Check.

Fine, fine, fine.

But why does this issue have to become an issue?

While entire industries have sprung up to help people deal with problems like household clutter, few resources exist … for navigating what many discover to be an emotionally laden issue: how to keep well-meaning loved ones from overdoing it with gifts for the children. Online message boards are filled with pleas from exasperated parents seeking advice on managing the endless influx of toys, and preventing what they see as the dual tragedies of creating waste — financial and environmental — and raising spoiled brats.

Huh? Is she suggesting a support group for parents who get too much shit? Perhaps there might be a little blue pill that might help? Should we pass legislation protecting parents from over-consumerish grandparents?

Ugh. The article goes on in this vein, too, not wanting to leave any part of this ridiculous “hot-button issue” uncovered:

One grandmother recently posted an anonymous message on grandparents.com asking for help dealing with what she sees as ungrateful behavior: “Am I unreasonable to expect my daughter-in-law to keep the clothing and toys I give my granddaughters for a while before she gets rid of them?” she wrote. “It seems like everything I purchase or make for the girls is given away or ‘lost’ after a short time. It upsets me to the point of tears.”

Has anyone alerted the National Guard?

Look, I get all of this stuff. We buy things for lots of reasons: love, guilt, fear, pleasure. Buying pervades everything that has to do with the holidays, our relationships with our children, all of it. But this is just claptrap, something only marginally true that is reported as real about a thing that is mildly disturbing and pitched as a big problem.

Gotta love the Old Gray Lady.

It was, as usual, another cheery week at DadWagon.com. We began with Theodore’s “Whoa”-filled reaction to the Twittering of a 2-year-old’s death in Florida, and from there proceeded through drunken baby games, the impossibility of dealing with bratty kids, murderous ninja children, and the general misery of living in New York City. And as Christopher pointed out, sometimes that misery is pretty miserable indeed.

There were a couple of bright points, of course. Or maybe not bright, exactly, but weird enough that they weren’t utterly depressing. I had an enlightening encounter with my doppelganger, Bizarro-Dad, and dreamed of burritos and bicycles, while Christopher amused himself with a Zen koan: “What is the sound of one tooth brushing?”

Nathan, meanwhile, was the thoughtful one, first exploring his babysitter’s crush on his son, Nico, and how that might skew Nico’s relationship with his sister, Dalia. Then he realized that things might actually go very, very wrong.

Oh! And along the way we threw a Tantrum. That is, we took on one of the big parenting questions: TV or not TV? I don’t know if we quite solved the problem, but at least it wasn’t the kind of thing that makes you want to take a rusty razor blade to your arteries.

We’re going dark now for the long Christmas weekend, but when we come back there’s a good chance we’ll have cheered up somewhat. Or not! After all, I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” and am currently distilling that featherweight comedy into a set of parenting principles sure to amuse and delight.

Until then, Merry Christmas!

Just on the heels of my wish that my children would grow up with equal treatment and therefore become better friends and allies, a wonderful example of what can happen when they are not (from Nerve via DadWagon friend Steven E.):

“A girl named Katie found a twelve-pack of beer in her teenage brother’s room and ratted him out to their parents. This is not news in any way, but what young Chris, the brother, did in retaliation after being grounded for three months is funny as hell… and so, so wrong… Not only did he rummage through Katie’s things and find her “hookup list” (aka “blow-jobs-to-hand-out list”), but he published it on his Facebook page… and tagged all of the intended recipients.”

Check out the full vitriolic comment thread between the pwnd older sister and the smug younger brother to witness the end of whatever relationship they might have had.

Of course, I don’t know that this is actually for real. I couldn’t find it on Snopes. Assuming it is real, it leaves us a few questions, namely, what the hell does “v-card” or “bibby bang” mean?

And then it leads us into the murky world of sibling rivalry, which is so rich with meaning that Slate’s Emily Yoffe needed a Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship to unpack it all for Slate. In it, she interviews people with job titles like Evolutionary Behaviorist and Evolutionary Psychologist, positions which qualified them to state that siblings are very competitive.

The Facebook siblings here seem to be operating on theory of negative competition. That is, they’re not trying to beat each other for some prize; they’re trying to rat each other out to avoid the ridiculous sanctions of their parents (three months’ grounding for hiding some beer in your room? Really?). A good reminder: the crazier the parent, the more psychotic the sibling conflict…

The worst thing you can imagine occurred in Brooklyn last night.

The snow, the blood, the small footprints. May nothing like this ever happen to anyone you know.

(Also, a hat-tip to the two guys with the byline. This is old-fashioned newspaper writing, the kind that moves people, and the kind that few people do well.)