There's gotta be an app for this

@itselliedunkle it's only 7:15 and my mom has already managed to ruin my day #thanksmom #iknowyourereadingthis

Seriously? Twitter? What’s next, a My Mom Sucks facebook page?

And, the profile picture … an elephant behind bars? Please.

If this is where parenting is headed, give me back stomping up or down the stairs and slamming doors, punctuated by a dramatic, “I hate you!”

I mean, I knew my 15-year-old was mad, but broadcasting to the twitterverse about an alleged parenting fail? This is completely unchartered territory. Ten years ago, all I had to do was close the windows and our spats remained private.

In my defense, she’d been acting like a brat. She didn't deny this, but she did play the teen card as if her behavior was beyond her control and some God-given right of passage.

"I'm a teen-ager Mom," she said, rolling her eyes, which is code for "you're an idiot."

We'd barely moved beyond an episode two weeks ago, when I reinforced the decree that there be no sleepovers the night before an early morning swim practice, she retorted: “I’m 15. I’ll make my own decisions.”

The voice inside my head responded, “Like hell you will.”

My speaking voice, however, stayed silent. I bit my tongue and repeated the calming mantra, "You are the adult." I can’t say with any certainty whether I managed to keep my head from whipping into a 360-degree Exorcist spin.

But, to be sure, the maternal waters have been roiling ever since.

So, last night, as the conversation grew increasingly heated about what I perceived to be a lousy attitude and she believed to be verging on child abuse — I think the exact words were, “You have no right to know about every little detail in my life” — I threw down the grounding card gauntlet.

“That’s it,” I declared. “You’re done. You’re home after school tomorrow. No friends.”

“Whaaaaaaaat?!!!!” she cried. “That’s so not fair!”

Maybe not. But, that wasn’t the point. The point was/is, I am the parent and I decide. Fairness is not part of the equation. We operate on the benevolent dictatorship model, not a democracy. End of discussion. Or, so I thought.

I turned on my phone this morning to discover the offending tweet, which, admittedly, evoked a slightly horrified gasp.

From the Arab Spring to Anthony Weiner, we witness through twitter, texting and facebook, et al, moment-by-moment updates of breaking news events. It never occurred to me after 21 years in the mommy trenches that my parenting would become part of the scrolling update feed.

Thanks to continually evolving technology and new frontiers in social networking, raising children has never been more invasive, immediate and in your face. Even as I write this, I nurse a deep, dreaded fear of what this child may throw back at me.

She’s clever, quick-tongued and can write. She has a phone and computer access. Even if those privileges are revoked, there are too many ways around parental paywalls. As the mother of four, this is not, as the cliche goes, my first rodeo.

I’m wondering where we will go from here, how the parent-child relationship will evolve and if the friction will ease. Already, we’ve shifted from twitter to texting — “Ugh … can i not be grounded Saturday?? Please i wanted to go watch xc” — even though she is in school, where phone use is not allowed.

But, that’s another battle for another day. In the meantime, I'll update my blog password.