Last month the San Francisco Chronicle reported that six-year-old Zachary Christie had been suspended for 45 days for bringing a camping utensil that contained a knife to school. Because he was excited about Boy Scouts.It seems the school board did come to its senses and reduce his sentence, but the knee-jerk application of a zero-tolerance policy enacted to protect students in the wake of school violence for basically packing a spork is troubling. Where do you draw the line?

Perhaps I have been team parenting too long! With our five kids and their six different sports, we are two worn-out parents!! Just this evening, as basketball season opened for my high school aged daughter, I, once again a designated team parent, was rushing

My five-year-old has been lucky so far. She's never been bullied.That I know about.

My daughter's hair is crazy long. Like past-her-waist long. People ask me all the time if I've ever cut it (she had a bob when she was two and gets it cut every few months) and if it's hard to take care of (heck, yes). You see, I don't make her cut until it fails the toilet test.You read that right.

 

This week I'd like to highlight some of the bloggers in our network who write about parenting twins, triplets, quadruplets or quintuplets. I looked at over 100 blogs by parents of twins and more. By the end of the day it was like complete overload! In fact I kept thinking of the Rules of Cuteness, like "A thing, accompanied by a smaller version of that thing, is always cute." My new rule: a small child, accompanied by one or more siblings of the same age, is always cute!

Trick-or-treat!  These words bring back images from my childhood as well as new traditions with my own family.  The custom can bring out the best from children, the worst from teens, and is loved and hated by adults.  Still, Halloween marks the start of the autumn and winter holiday season, commercialism and all.

When the news broke about the missing "balloon boy" last week, I was attending Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. More specifically, I was a panelist and focused on my presentation - far away from television but I was connected by twitter. As tweets scrolled by with #balloonboy, I tried to piece together what was going on with this trending topic. From what I gathered, 6 year old Falcon Heene was in a hot air balloon being persued by authorities and at some point it seemed as if the child had fallen out of the balloon.

I would love to tell you how even-tempered my husband and I are, how we never ever raise our voices.  I'd love to tell you that on the exceedingly rare occasions that we disagree (because really, we never, ever disagree), that one of us just gets a quiet little smile and raises an eyebrow, as a signal to the other that This Is A Topic Better Taken Offline, Where Young Ears Will Not Be Affected By Words of Discontent.  I'd love to say that when it comes to the topic of arguing in front of our daughter, there's really no discussion:  it never happens.I'd love to tell you that, but that would be a Big Fat Hairy Lie.

My daughter started kindergarten this year, and because we wanted to ease her transition, we left her in her normal daycare for before-and-after-school care instead of putting her in the program run by the public school system. Even though it cost $200 a month more.

Not only do my partner and I argue in front of our kids, we believe that arguing in front of the kids is an essential responsibility of parenting.Now, here are my caveats:I am not talking about intense arguments about grown up issues like money and sex and whether we ever should have had children in the first place.  I am not talking about knock-down, drag-out fighting; no screaming, no door-slamming, no throwing things or stomping off.

When my in-laws were packing up their house to move, my husband discovered a huge pile of story albums. I practically drooled over them -- but there was no record player in the house.