My fellow Millennials,
We gather here today—not in peace, but in powdered sugar and confusion.
Because we are no longer just raising children.
We are raising our parents.

They have entered their Sixty-nager Era—a phase no parenting book warned us about.
They are sixty-year-olds with retirement accounts, zero curfews, and the chaotic energy of a teenager who just discovered Venmo and McDonald’s money.

They used to say, “We didn’t have extra cash when you were little.”
Now they roll up in campers with mood lighting, matching hoodies, and a suspicious number of Happy Meal toys.
They eat out every night.
They call your toddler their “little bestie.”
They refer to themselves as “the fun ones.”
And they don’t answer their phones because they’re “busy.”
Busy doing what?
Teaching your child how to gamble with fruit snacks and negotiate bedtime like it’s a hostage situation.

They’ve retired from responsibility.
They give the kids sugar before bed.
They whisper “Don’t tell your mom” while handing out popsicles like party favors at a rave.
They’ve started using phrases like “We just wanted to make it fun!”
And “We upgraded the snacks.”
And “We took them to a flea market and now they own swords.”

You gave them one rule: No screens before bed.
They nodded. Smiled. “Of course.”
And then last night?

“Oh, we just showed them a few old westerns. You know, the classics.”

Now your bathtub is a frontier town.
The loofah is a tumbleweed.
The shampoo bottle is Sheriff Bubbles.
The rubber ducky is Wanted in three counties.
And bedtime? That’s when the shootouts start.

Meanwhile, Mimi and Papa are back at their camper, sipping Diet Coke and high-fiving over how “cute” it was when the boys reenacted a saloon brawl using bath toys and bubble bath labeled Whiskey.

And what are we left with?
Sticky children.
A traumatized cat.
And a preschool teacher asking why James drew a stick figure yelling, “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us, Rubber Ducky.”

We are tired.
We are the rule-makers.
The broccoli czars.
The guardians of bedtime and boundaries.

And yet, every time we drop our kids off with Mimi and Papa, we return to find them feral, fluorescent, and fluent in phrases like “Mommy doesn’t need to know.”

So we ride at dawn.

We laminate the rules.
We revoke glitter privileges.
We ban unsanctioned field trips.
We create behavior charts for grown adults.
We are no longer just raising our kids—we are raising our parents.

If your mom has ever texted “We upgraded the snacks” and your dad once said “We took the kids to a flea market and now they own swords,”
Welcome.
You are not alone.

This is our moment.
To speak.
To snark.
To organize the chaos into a saga worthy of bedtime retellings and laminated documentation.

They call me The Warden.
I call it Tuesday.