BOSTON -- At first I dismissed this story as too New York. Only in New York do limos line up outside preschools that cost $14,400 a year and are harder to get into than Harvard.

Only in New York is it plausible that a $20 million-a-year Wall Street analyst would goose up the rating of a stock so the boss would help get his 2-year-old twins into the right nursery school.

Only in New York would there be a "right" nursery school, for that matter, the 92nd Street Y, a place where Woody Allen's kid was accepted and Madonna's kid was rejected.

But the incriminating e-mail has become a pop-up message on my brain's computer screen. Jack Grubman wrote: "For someone who grew up in a household making $8,000 a year and attended public schools, I do find this process a bit strange, but there are no bounds for what you do for your children."

Strange? Mr. Grubman could have bought his kids a nursery school. The desire of the self-made man to turn his twins into the little master and mistress of the Playskool universe has made him the poster father of competitive parenting. But under the scoffing, isn't there something uncomfortably familiar?

There was a time when we used to laugh at folks who lived in Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average. But don't parents today want their children to be above that "above average"? They want them to go to Leg Up. Leg Up on the other kids.

Trophy children are a rich source of satire. The authors of The Nanny Diaries portray an East Side mother telling her preschooler, "Go get into bed and I'll read you one verse from your Shakespeare reader and then it's lights out."

There's a preschool consulting firm in New York actually named IvyWise Kids. But it goes way beyond Manhattan. A recent gathering of college admissions officers, Ivy and (Other)Wise, added "parents" to their list of problems. They swapped stories of mothers and fathers who talk openly about "our application" and "our interview" and threaten to sue when their kids are rejected.

Meanwhile, on the playing fields, there's been an epidemic of parents behaving badly at their kids' sporting events. It's the parents who can't stand to have their kids lose.

One professor noted that New Yorkers have "redefined status distinctions to the pre-K level." But elsewhere we've gone from pre-K to prenatal. It wasn't just New Yorkers who were encouraged to give their offspring a jump start by playing Mozart to the womb.

Maybe it's baroque to worry about competitive parenting when we consider the number of neglected kids. Maybe it's foolish to worry about preschool Olympics for elite education when one out of 10 18- to-24-year-olds can't place the United States on a map.

But children aren't trophies. Nor are they proof of our success. I suspect that we've all felt that protective, competitive itch, watching someone else's 10-month-old walk or someone else's 3-year-old read. A man we know who grew up in the same apartment building as young Leonard Bernstein was nagged by his parents who wondered, "Why can't you play like Lenny?" And none of us is so detached that she can watch her children stumble without feeling it.

Indeed, parenting is a role full of emotions and contradictions. We want what's best for the child. Or do we want our child to be the best? For them or for us? We too may say that there are "no bounds" to what we'll do for the kids. But shouldn't there be boundaries between us and offspring?

It's no wonder that children pick favorites like Pippi Longstocking and Harry Potter off the bookshelves. These are resourceful girls and boys who may miss their parents but revel in freedom. Eventually, somewhere between womb and college, our own children want both parental approval and independence. They come off the trophy shelf and into their own.

Jack Grubman allegedly gave his boss at Citigroup what he wanted. Citigroup gave a million bucks to the 92nd Street Y to be used for adult performances and lectures. The Y found slots for the Grubman kids in the preschool. It's a New York story.

But whatever else happens to Mr. Grubman, this father should be sentenced to take some of the lectures the company paid for. One of them is called: "Raising Children of Integrity."

Ellen Goodman is a columnist for The Boston Globe. Her column appears Mondays and Thursdays in The Sun. She can be reached via e-mail at ellengoodman@globe.com.