I've been trying to stay out of the whole hipster parent smorgasblog, hoping it will just go away, but since David Brooks brought it up in his NYTimes editorial today - and my kids are asleep - I guess I'm going to enter the fray.

Needless to say there has been a lot written on this subject already, some of it smart, some of it entertaining, none of it really getting to the heart of the matter. From Neal Pollack's Alternadad, articles in TIME and New York Magazine to today's New York Times editorial, all of it seems to focus on whether it is OK to raise your kids like little mini-me hipsters or not.

So far I haven't heard anyone say anything about what is the true issue at hand - Hey, alterna-parents, you're not cool. And, yes, since I'm a native New Yorker I do feel qualified to judge you on this - that's why you're raising your kids here too.

An article in the New York Times discusses the school choice process parents face for their children in NYC. In a city where education is such an important issue for families, parents and kids are stressing out over it earlier and earlier. The article questions whether educational choices give more options or whether "school shopping" just makes it harder for families.

Mommy Poppins was interviewed for the article and I will share excerpts of the interview with you. I hope it provides some useful information on the school process and the education choices for kids in NYC. Here's Mommy Poppins' experience:

Read more.

Macmillan's Online Dictionary has featured the phrase Fridge Googling, a term coined by the online parenting community, as its term of the week. Have you heard the term? Is it something your family does?

This is the perfect Valentine's Day post because Mommy Poppins LOVES the wonderful design site, Apartment Therapy. And now they've created a site all about kid design called The Nursery, so we actually have an excuse to link to them here. Check it out for a daily dose of eye candy.

("Mom." "MOM." [walk over, open door.] what. "Do x-rays give you skin cancer?" no "I thought they were bad for you." well kind of, the old kind, but let's not talk about it now, go to sleep. "How are they bad for you?" i don't know. "No really, tell me, how are they bad for you." no really, I don't know. "If you don't tell me I"ll just lie here imagining how they might be bad for you." and so on....)

Telling kids that they are smart will make them dumb. That's the gist of New York Magazine's cover story, Praise is Dangerous. It's actually a pretty interesting topic for parents on several different levels.

1) There's the modern parenting culture of making our kids into "praise junkies" by just praising them constantly to try to inflate their self-esteem.

2) There's the issue that what parents are really trying to do when we do this is to stroke our own egos.