Jenice Armstrong | Mom's a problem

IF YOU'RE EVER tempted to succumb to the pressure of just being the party mom instead of parenting your child, remember

Lindsay Lohan

's sorry excuse of a mother and what happened between them.

For starters, Mama Lohan appears to have conveniently forgotten all about her party-girl daughter's well-publicized struggles with substance abuse. In the April issue of Harper's Bazaar, Dina Lohan is shown "living la vida Lohan" as she poses seductively, holding up a partially filled champagne glass. An opened bottle of Moet rests at her bejeweled foot. Another bottle of Moet is nearby, ready for the pouring.

So, while this celebrity wannabe is posing provocatively in what looks more like a liquor ad than a fashion layout, where's poor Lindsay, who has been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in recent months? What kind of message is dear, old mom sending her impressionable daughter? When an interviewer raised the subject of her daughter's notorious drinking, it was clear that Dina is in deep denial.

"Nooo! She's just a 20-year-old who had to reel it in. And she's from an addictive personality genetically. And in that world, they give you things like candy. You hurt your ankle? Let's give her something," Mama Lohan explained.

What's scary is that Dina admits to having done the good-mother thing by staging interventions to get Lindsay help for her substance-abuse issues. That's hard to reconcile with Mama Lohan's bragging about fitting into her daughter's expensive castoffs and going clubbing with her. No wonder poor Lindsay's mixed up. Mama Lohan comes off as being whiny and self-centered, as well as more interested in being a hanging buddy than in helping her famous daughter stay sober.

"We're just so misunderstood," Dina says in the magazine, which hits newstands Tuesday.

"My sons are in sports; my daughters want to be actors. I was in the business, and I'm going to help them. You don't like that?" she says. "I'm living the American dream, and you can go . . . "

Excuse me, but how's it the American dream when your ex-husband is fresh out of jail and your meal-ticket of a daughter goes to AA? For this woman, it must be all about the bling. Wave a bunch of it around and that means you've made it? So, what if the person who earns it winds up in rehab? Just make it a posh one such as Promises, from which Britney Spears has just been released. Good grief.

Speaking of Britney, Dina had something to say about her, too. "The girl is a beautiful kid. She married some guy just to get out of the limelight. Cut her some slack. Her mother, I'm surprised she didn't come forward. I'm not gonna sit back and go, 'You're gonna trash my kid!' If my daughter was in high school, I would be at the principal's office. Hello?"

The lesson in this twisted saga is:

Moms, don't let your girls grow up to be Lindsay Lohans. But that's hard not to let happen, if you operate like Dina. As she tells Harper's Bazaar, "You know, you can't blame parents for kids." And while that's true sometimes, often it isn't. *

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