The time Junior peed himself in a tent UPDATED, AND ONCE MORE, AND ONCE MORE STILL

Noooo!!!! Slate is asking parents to send in letters their kids have sent them from sleepaway camp.

The trend in overshare parenting writing will only end when the children begin posting their parents' private business on blogs and social media. I feel as though a commenter somewhere may have made a similar suggestion, but whatever the case, it's the only way.

UPDATE

I was just sent (comment if you wish to take the credit that's rightfully yours) this horrifying - most yet? - example of the genre. NYT commenter DJS, whoever you are, good on you for pointing out that it's not OK, and certainly not brave, to out one's child as mentally ill. To relate, to the NYT audience, the details of the most private things your child has ever confessed to you, as well as further information that emerged during a therapy session. Let me repeat, but this time with more conviction: how is this legal?

SECOND UPDATE

The commenters, many at least, are catching on! They're pointing out: 1) that a child this young (9?) is too young to consent to this story being told, 2) that there are major ethical problems with disclosing another person's medical diagnosis, 3) that this child is completely identifiable (more so than usual, even, b/c the author shares a last name with her daughter; Google immediately reveals precisely who this girl is, where she goes to school), 4) that there are so many reasons it would be terrible later in life - middle school, adulthood - to have even innocuous details about your childhood, let alone not-so-innocuous ones, revealed to all, and 5) that while the story of parenting and mental illness is an important one, the story of this particular little girl isn't her mother's - or anyone else's, for that matter - to tell.

THIRD UPDATE

You can count on me for a YPIS angle, and here it is: I suspect that part of why there isn't more of a movement to stop parents from writing tell-alls about their kids in national publications is that we-the-readers assume that anyone whose parents are writing for the Times, the Atlantic, whatever, anyone whose parents are not merely journalists but paid to muse on their own lives, is growing up in a well-off, well-educated, privileged household. Which is probably a safe assumption. As YPIS holds, socioeconomic privilege means any problems you do have - and that would include 'my mother wrote a tell-all about my toilet training' - are first-world problems, rich-kid problems, non-problems. Why should we feel bad about the children of Berkeley or brownstone Brooklyn, when (goes YPIS mythology) all kids brought up places other than those two are being raised by neglectful parents who don't give a damn?

Thus the commenter who writes, "I'm glad your daughter is getting the treatment that she needs [...]. I feel worse for all of the children who must be out there with conditions like this without caring parents or access to a plush Park Avenue specialist." Yes, commenter, you've proven yourself a plugged-in, clue-having, class-differences-sensitive, perhaps liberal-arts-educated individual. And well done on correctly identifying that this upper-middle-class family is upper-middle-class, and on pointing out that this is not universal. (I'm only half-sarcastic on this last bit - Styles-ish writing does often address a "we" who take the F train to doctors on Park Ave.)

Meanwhile, I'm not entirely sure a kid with OCD is so privileged to have a parent whose "caring" involves spilling the details of private conversations and therapy sessions to the entire world. Is it better than ignorance or indifference? Inconclusive - untreated mental illness isn't so hot, but parental over-involvement/screwy involvement has been known to make matters worse. What I'd say with confidence is that a psychiatric evaluation in Peoria that isn't offered to a limitless audience sounds a whole lot better than one on the Upper East Side that is.