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Not your father's newspaper: Parody parenting blog brings the snark

Headlines that read “Gifted/Talented Students to Get Longer Buses” are enough to make you shake your head and wonder what the world is coming to. Then you realize you’re on the new(ish) parenting parody news site, TheParenteer.com, and you realize the world is coming to a very funny place. Much like The Onion, The Parenteer is full of witty, fake news stories. Any parent who has ever inwardl
1950s Nuclear Family
1950s Nuclear FamilyThe Power of Forever Photography / Getty Images / Vetta
1950s Nuclear Family
This isn't your father's newspaper. Parenting parody news site The Parenteer brings fake headlines, à la The Onion.The Power of Forever Photography / Today

Headlines that read “Gifted/Talented Students to Get Longer Buses” are enough to make you shake your head and wonder what the world is coming to. Then you realize you’re on the new(ish) parenting parody news site, TheParenteer.com, and you realize the world is coming to a very funny place. Much like The Onion, The Parenteer is full of witty, fake news stories.

Any parent who has ever inwardly (or outwardly) groaned over Ruby’s incessant bossiness will surely enjoy reading about Max’s plans to do her in after watching “Fatal Attraction.”

“When Max, of the popular kids television show 'Max and Ruby,' sat down to watch a little television on a rainy Saturday afternoon, he had no concrete plan in place to do away with his horrible, bossy sister, Ruby. But upon watching the famous Fatal Attraction scene in which Glenn Close murders a bunny rabbit in a pot of boiling water, that all changed,” the article begins.

And who can’t relate to a story about the ongoing frustration of constantly losing your keys – even if you’re just a 7-month old baby who likes to gum the plastic toy kind?

“They drive me crazy… I think I’ve put them down in one place, and then they turn up somewhere completely different. Sometimes they get lost in the couch, and sometimes I fall asleep in one room and wake up in another, which means I have to turn the damn house upside-down to figure out where they’ve gone. And one time, after searching for what seemed like hours, I realized, finally, that they were in my mouth the whole time.”

Like Adriana Velez at TheStir, who first turned us onto the site, we appreciate their humorous take on the “crying it out” method as they report on a “Coldhearted Five Year Old Girl” who just let her “Crying Carrie-Anne” doll cry it out until poor little Carrie-Anne’s batteries died. “I just let her cry until she doesn’t work any more…until her batteries don’t work,” said Kepple, the imaginary 5-year-old. “That way, she’ll learn her lesson and think twice about crying again. I’m trying to train her to not cry. The more she cries, the less I care. That’s my motto.”

The quote from the fictional girl’s fictional father is equally priceless. “Letting her cry it out for hours is one thing, but putting her out in the garage, in the dead of winter, for some perceived slight is odd. Or waterboarding. What five-year-old waterboards their dolly? And how does she even know what it is? It’s upsetting.”

What’s made you laugh at the foibles of parenting lately? Tell us on our Facebook page.

Dana Macario is a Seattle-area mom who loves a good spoof – especially at the expense of Max and Ruby.