In the last year, I have experienced a social phenomenon that I would never have believed existed; one that is completely out of view of those who don’t have school-age children, and one that I am completely baffled by.

This phenomenon occurs when parents, ostensibly in the interest of giving their children the best they can provide, treat other parents with disinterest, contempt, and even hostility.

I tried to convince myself that this wasn’t true; that parents weren’t regressing to behavior patterns we should have given up after grade school, that we were merely not quite what they expected. I mean, we are not even 30 years old and we have a four-year-old. We *must* be shocking to people who got their careers settled before having kids later in life.

But then, as I consider that I’m a career professional who makes an honest salary, who makes every effort to provide the most stable, caring, nurturing, educational, and stimulating environment for my little man that I possibly can given the constraints of my living arrangements and career — just like the rest of the parents — I start to get a little angry. And then I start to think about how much effort I’ve put in to teaching my little man how to treat other people with respect, how many times we remind him to apologize when he bumps into someone or hurts them playing, and if someone falls down to help them up, and to always say his pleases and thank-yous, and how these other kids don’t seem to come close to his level of politeness, and the thought gets firmly embedded in the back of my mind: “Where do you people get off treating my family like this?”

It’s tempting to give up, to let my standards slip, to treat these other parents with the same contempt they treat us with, and to let little man run wild. But I refuse. I will not stoop so low, because later in life little man is going to grow up a better person, a polite, learned, and able man, who succeeds on the strength of his restraint and inner strength, and I won’t take that away from him just to wipe the uncomfortable sneers off the faces of these parents.

No, I’ll just be satisfied knowing that at 27 years of age, I’ve managed to keep a four-year-old on track while still building my career and family — something these sneering faces didn’t have the personal strength to accomplish.

And I’ll enjoy the company of those other parents who have taken on the challenge of raising kids without treating it as a competition, who are open to sharing their experiences, joys, and frustrations, who aren’t threatened by other parents and their children. To them, I am grateful for the reminder that I really *can* be successful as a parent and still remember how to have respect for my fellow parents. So, to you, thanks. You know who you are.