A very few girls have crafted the bad reputation women have gotten.

Are you a parent of young girls? Hopefully, you'll read this. I can tell you in hindsight, and after raising four children (3 girls, 1 boy), things to look for that might help you avoid some dangerous pitfalls. Am I a parenting expert? No, not by a long shot. But it doesn't take an expert to spot a bad kid from a mile away.

There was a time when I'd never have used the term "bad kid." That was before I ran across my share of them. Most of them were girls, I'm afraid, over-indulged, spoiled, shallow brats who blossomed into the same type of young woman and eventually, the same type of grown woman. You've seen her; she's the one who walks around with a scowl on her face and a big chip on her shoulder.

Now, I'm going to say something else I thought I'd never say, and that's that girls are harder than boys. Girls are mean, devious, hateful, manipulating and conniving - and those are the good ones! Oh, dont get your panties in a knot. I'm a girl, remember? I know whereof I speak. And today, girls can be all those things at the speed of light. True, there are boys who behave the same way, but they typicaly grow up to be - well - we'll call them Mama's boys for the purposes of this post.

Back to girls.  You can tell from a very young age when a girl is overly indulged or just outright given free reign in their homes. They are bullies, total nightmares, horrid individuals. Trust me, our girls ran across plenty of them. While your girls are still young enough, steer them very clear of these girls. They never get better. They end up marrying eunuchs, too afraid of their own shadows and of being "cut off" to ever say anything to their horrid wives about how horrid they are. And the beat goes on, so to speak.

Steer your daughters away from girls who feel compelled to always be someone's girlfriend. Those girls will screw every female friend they have as well as all their own family members just to be able to say they have a boyfriend. Typically. they attach to boyfriends who need girls like that, like desperate barnacles on sinking ships. Not pretty. They end up making awful couples, always bickering and accusing each other of "cheating" and generally embarrassing themselves and everyone else in public.

I always tried to teach our girls to be honest, to be of strong character, and to treasure true friends like gold. They do. They have also been deeply hurt by girls who do not have those same values. But that's OK. Even if you end up with a small, tight circle of friends, those friends are genuine friends, and a girl can never have too many real friends.

I am 50 years old, and I can count on one hand the number of true friends I have. Oh, I have many acquaintances, and they're fun in small doses, but there are  very few I'd call in a crisis. Very few I think to call when I'm freed up at the last minute to shop, or have lunch or exercise. And that's OK, because I like me. I'm OK hanging out with just me.  And that's the key after all, isn't it?

Girls who are just mean, and girls who can't breathe unless they're attached to a man, don't like themselves. So teach your girls to like who they are and to stand up for what matters to them. Otherwise, they'll end up another one of the dime-a-dozen cliches that give women a bad name in the first place.

In my opinion, there's nothing stronger than a strong woman, and nothing more pathetically weak than a weak one or one who lives to bully and steamroll. And our girls are too good for that.

And that, my friends, while not a funny post, was today's Parenting 101 lesson.