<p>Around these parts of suburban Atlanta, more and more parents are taking to the windshields to tout their over worked kids. "ALLSTARS ROCK", "EAT MY BUBBLES", blah blah blah. Some cover every inch of the rear of the vehicle windows with this gibberish....to say "My child is BETTER than your child."</p>
<p>I am all for competition, but who asked these parents to be competitive with the world. There is something you should teach your child.....if you earn something you accept it with humility. (BTW, we all know daddy ball baseball and football accolades are RARELY earned but usually paybacks to coaches and those that accepted the status quo.) So, here we are not teaching the kids humility and good sportsmanship when they are blessed to be better than another but, the parents are modeling the inappropriate behavior as well.</p>
<p>One person in a high end neighborhood took a BED sheet and spray-painted this kind of stuff and HUNG IT ON HIS GARAGE!!!!! How tacky. These parents need to get over themselves and their genetic superiority to the human race.</p>
<p>Just wondering if Atlanta is the birthplace and ground zero for this behavior of is it elsewhere? I am ready to jump out of the car with windex!</p>
<p>This is very common where we live in Florida. Many times these magnets and stickers are "sold" for fundraising. I guess the parents buy them and then feel guilty if they don't put them on the car. </p>
<p>It's the precursor to braggin about your child's fancy college on your car.</p>
<p>I've never seen this either (thank god) but, well, there's lots of bad manners out there in the world, isn't there?!</p>
<p>How about the families that insist on cheering, or "woot-wooting," or worse, for their more-special-than-everyone-else's-little-darling during graduation, when they've specifically asked for applause to be held until the end of the line (or whatever)? Crude, rude, and unattractive as my dad would say.</p>
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I have never heard, or seen, this but then, we don't have the "proud parent of an honor roll student" bumper stickers here either!
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<p>Ditto....nothing remotely like what the OP posted where I live, thankfully.</p>
<p>The most that happens here is that the local community paper has articles about things like Dean's list at college and stuff like that but that is fine in my book. The things you describe are over the top and seem to be part of a competitive cultural environment which we luckily do not have where we live.</p>
<p>It seems to be big with cheerleaders for some reason. We've made trips to Hershey Amusement Park that coincided with cheering competitions. It seemed that every car had writing on the windows. Can every team & every girl be #1? I guess so.</p>
<p>Some nutty mom in my town had magnets made up with her kids uniform numbers & names under the silhouette of a hockey player. Great to give the pedophiles a heads up, huh? I do chuckle about the "My kid beat up your honor roll kid" bumperstickers.</p>
<p>The bed sheet story is hysterical! I hope you took a picture.</p>
<p>We have some of that here...but mostly it's just the stickers and big ugly yard signs identifying the kid, grad year, uniform number and sport of choice. Interestingly, our good friend and neighbor's kid who is a freak of nature athlete currently being recruited for baseball by Rice, UNC, Texas A&M, the Cal States, as well as professional teams for their minors, have never ever had a sticker on their car or a yard sign in their yard or painted their windows before a game. Never. Neither has the kid. He's very humble as are the parents...but then they ARE the target of a lot of vicious parental jealousy and scheming...so maybe they are trying to be invisible...lol!</p>
<p>In Northern VA, summer swim league is HUGE. Every Saturday morning and Monday night from late June through the end of July as well as Independence Day is committed to dual meets for the 6-18 y.o. swimmers. Our team caravans to our away meets so we meet at our parking lot at 7am, decorate the cars and head off to the competition. Most people I know erase the spirit writing and take the streamers off when they get back home after the meets.</p>
<p>We have it here but it's mainly done to the students' cars. For D's 18th birthday, her friends wrote all over her car with sweet and funny phrases. She cleaned enough to see properly but left the rest on for weeks.</p>
<p>is this a southern thing? never seen it her in California anywhere</p>
<p>I have seen stuff on vans for soccer tournaments, I remember, but it was for the "cheerleader" type teams, sorry to stereotype, but there you go</p>
<p>I read a book once about a gypsy tribe and how they would hang out the bed sheet after the wedding night to prove virginity, wonder how many animals gave a bit of blood for that "proof"</p>
<p>Maybe it's a suburban thing? Around here it seems to express team spirit more than "my kid is better/faster than your kid." I have never been offended by it, just vaguely aware that it's (generally) a van full of young athletes--swimmers, soccer players, whatever--driven by a dedicated parent whose car has been taken over for the day.</p>
<p>During tournaments, some of the teams at our hs would paint up the cars that were "caravaning" to the games. It was a spirit thing. </p>
<p>Different teams also sold bumper stickers/magnets to raise money. They were only a couple bucks each, and most people would buy them and toss them. It was mostly the parents who might actually put them on their car.</p>
<p>Then there are the AAU, Extreme Cheerleading, Club/Comp Soccer, Elite Sports... all these quasi-private teams that go to tournaments all over the state. Sometimes it's their bumper stickers and magnets we see.</p>
<p>I always thought the "my kid beat up your kid" bumper stickers were really obnoxious. Some form of redneck humor I guess.</p>