When TC Luoma is on, I think he's the Robert Bly of the hypertrophied-American community (Generation Flex, if you will).

TC's latest column is a bleakly realistic look at the difference between male and female friendships, and I encourage you to read it. (You'll really like the end, and I mean that in multiple ways.)

But this morning I'm thinking about relationships from a different angle. I've just spent a frustrating Saturday night and Sunday morning dealing with a six-year-old girl who spent the night with my six-year-old daughter.

I'll preface this by saying that my kids are a handful, which is why I've always been cautious about inflicting them on other people.

But my kids are being raised with a few fairly simple rules:

* Nobody gets excluded from any activity, unless there's a major safety or cognitive issue involved (i.e., the water or the board game is over someone's head).

* Rules are made to be enforced. In other words, "bedtime" means "stop kicking the f***ing walls and let the other people in the house get some sleep."

* Parents aren't servants or codependents. If you need something done, and you can do it yourself, then don't even bother asking me to do it. If you don't want to eat the crusts of the bread on your sandwich, fine; that's why Nature endowed you with opposable thumbs. Unfortunately, as I learned this weekend, we may be the last parents in America to draw these distinctions between progenitors and spawn.

TC talks about friendships among men and women, but what I struggle to understand is why girls get such a kick out of excluding other girls.

All weekend, I've been comforting my four-year-old daughter, who's been told over and over that she can't play this game, or can't share that secret.

This morning, when the six-year-olds told my youngest she can't be in the bathroom while one of them urinates, and the other watches, I came close to losing it. (I guess "pissed off" took on a whole new meaning there.)

Like I said, I know my kids are part of the reason Xanax exists; each is a little Crock Pot filled with diagnosable conditions and unique quirks.

But if I ever caught one of them creating games that seem to have no purpose other than to exclude other people, I'd make them read self-help books until their eyes bleed.

Tags: society