My youngest kids have been learning about Thanksgiving at preschool all week, and today was the main event: pajama day and a party, with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. (Provided by the parents, pot-luck style, of course. Because we'd be laughing too hard to eat if we followed the pre-k recipe.)

A 10-year-old Arkansas boy is refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance at school until our country does a better job of living up to its ideals.

"I looked at the end and it said 'with liberty and justice for all.' And there really isn't liberty and justice for all," Will Phillips told CNN recently. "Gays and lesbians can't marry. There's still a lot of racism and sexism in the world."

You know what? I think he's got a great point.

When social scientist Marion Kilson's children were born, in the 1960s, she assumed that they would identify as African American, like their father, not European American like herself. "I was still in graduate school," she remembers. "I wrote my term paper on slave revolts. I assumed my children would be identified as African American, and I wanted them to know that not all African Americans had been gospel about their slave status."

Her friend and fellow social scientist Florence Ladd, on the other hand, says that she didn't have expectations about her child's race in his early years; it was her stepson, who is white, who "made me think about his future and racial identification in infancy."

In their book, Is That Your Child? Mothers Talk About Rearing Biracial Children, Kilson and Ladd discuss the challenges facing parents in a multicultural world; the two will be hosting a discussion about the race and identity tomorrow (Nov. 19) at The Advent School in Boston. The event (at 8:30 a.m. in the school's Earth Lab), is open to the public.

A new survey by the American Psychological Association says that teenagers are more stressed out than ever before. But their parents, for the most part, haven't noticed.

The embers of the Stay-at-Home vs. Work-out-of-the-Home Mommy Wars must have grown cold there for a moment; good thing this study came along to fan the flames. According to a recent BBC News story, young kids whose mothers work are less likely to lead healthy lives than those with stay-at-home moms.

That headline could easily include step parents, but I ran out of room. The gist of the question remains the same: Should your significant other, who is not your child's parent, be allowed or encouraged to discipline your child?

Lynsee, a 23-year-old teacher in Minneapolis, is expecting her first child any day now. And she's decided to share the whole experience, from the first labor pain to that final awesome push, with the internet.

Tomorrow is Halloween, and this morning I dropped an adorably ferocious dinosaur and a sparklingly happy winged fairy off at preschool. They have been looking forward to their class parties all week, proudly making decorations and planning games and treats (a pinata shaped like a ghost! Slightly spooky stories at circle time! Haunted apples!).

The month-long march toward trick-or-treating with ghosts and ghouls (and princesses, and superheroes, and animals, and celebrities, and licensed characters like Harry Potter or Dora the Explorer) is considered pretty normal, by most people. Apple-picking and pumpkin carving are traditional celebrations of fall, and Halloween is a time for dressing up and having fun.
But there are many parents who consider Halloween to be a quasi-religious holiday -- and they don't want it celebrated in schools.

I read the New York Times article last week about how, for some parents, shouting at kids has replaced spanking, and I immediately felt guilty.

I've been solo-parenting for the past week while my husband is with our oldest kids, out of state. I've noticed that I've been yelling much more than I usually do, and over things that usually don't frustrate me right away.

My about-to-turn 3-year-old is really pushing limits, trying to see how much he can get away with. After asking him to do something (or, more commonly, not to do something), my voice gets louder and sharper, and there I am, yelling instead of speaking calmly. I'm not saying anything awful, but I'm definitely angry -- and he can tell. It gets his attention, but it's having an effect I didn't notice right away: My sweet-tempered 5-year-old has picked up on my frustration, and when he gets in her way now, she yells at him.

And I cringe.

My post about Hillary Swank being nude around her boyfriend’s child sparked some interesting discussions, one of which took place on Twitter. “Nudity is natural. Violence isn't," one person wrote. Others shared stories about parents who covered their kids' eyes during a brief nude scene but let the same kids watch the hours of violence that preceded the kissing.

Which got me thinking about Halloween and all of the slasher movies and tortureporn (like the Saw series) out there... how come that stuff is acceptable in the mainstream, but nudity isn’t?