A mother was arrested inside her daughter's school after allegedly assaulting an 11-year-old girl whom her daughter says was bullying her. Attifa Brown was charged with a slew of things that make her sound like a terrorist -- including "terroristic threats." Which makes me wonder what that entails exactly because I have the feeling well all make "terroristic threats" occasionally when we're pissed off! Anyway, the mom says she had good reason to confront the 11-year-old -- because she was beating up her daughter, who even has a face bruise to show for it. She denies she assaulted her, however.

It's never easy finding out your child is being bullied. As parents, we're supposed to be their protectors. But just how far do you take the mama bear role? For Jill Trahan-Hardy, being her daughter's advocate has translated into attending school with her 11-year-old every day, shadowing her in the halls like a bodyguard.

Moms and Dads, has it really come to this? Do we really need to give up our own lives to keep our kids safe?

It's the question of the decade. How far should schools go to stomp out bullying? Should a school, for example, confiscate 900-some yearbooks, destroy them, and print new books ... all because one student was called a mean name on one page of the book? That's what the mom of a teenager called a "freak" in a caption of his marching band photo wants.

Dylan Worthen's name was adjusted by someone prior to the printing of the South Paulding High School yearbook this year. Every book purchased by students at South Paulding features a photo of the 16-year-old with the addition of "freak" as a second last name.

It's cruel. It's awful. But does that mean the school should shoulder the burden of printing new books?

Steubenville. Rehtaeh Parsons. A high school "hotness" tournament. These are the stories that keep parents of little girls up at night. Finding respect for our daughters, finding a safe space for our girls, is like searching for a needle in a haystack. But it's out there.

Take Project Bold. It's run by soldiers in the Indiana National Guard. It's teaching tween girls self-defense. But it's so much more than that.

If only it were rating this kind of hotnessThere may be no harder time to be a girl than during high school. Your body's changing, your hormones are all out of whack, and you're trying to figure out just WHO you are. And for girls at one Washington State high school, all that is being done with the added stress of a high school "hotness tournament."

It's everything the name implies: a tournament that rates teenage girls on their "hotness" factor. And parents in the Issaquah school district should be ashamed of themselves.

Most of us don't want to be a helicopter parent. It just sounds bad. And annoyingly loud. Choppy even. Hover parent? Sounds awful as well. Overprotective. Overbearing. No. No. No thanks. But the reality is, sometimes we are despite our best efforts. Parenting is confusing. We work it out, though. Try to figure out the best course of action while we react to each action -- terrible, mediocre, fantastic -- of our kids. Some days it feels that everything we do is wrong. And sometimes it really is. 

Two studies have come out revealing that things we do to protect our kids can actually be hurting them. It could make them more susceptible to bullying and in other cases give them unhealthy views of food, in turn increasing their risk of being obese. 

Anytime I hear about an elementary school student being bullied, it always tends to make me more than a little bit irate. But the case of a 6-year-old who had wood chips put in her underwear by classmates about made me scream at the top of my lungs.

When Cirildo Rodriguez's daughter came home from Webb Primary School in North Austin, Texas, her mom went to help her change out of her clothes -- and found wood chips in her underpants. She asked how they got there, and the little girl explained that two boys pulled open her pants on the playground and put them there. And she didn't tell any of her teachers because she was too afraid. (OMG. The poor little thing!)

There is no doubt that teenagers tend to get a bad rap. Between the bullying and the weird YouTube videos and the drug use and the sassiness, most parents of children dread the day our precious babies turn 13. But there are some teens who make us realize things aren't really as bad as they might seem.

Maddie is a senior in high school, and in a story that is floating around Facebook this week, it's revealed that she went to the parents of Jon, a junior, and asked them if she could take their son to prom. She chose this way because Jon is autistic. “He’s a junior,” she explained to Jon's mom. “So it’s his prom too. I just think he should have the chance to go.”

Cue the tears. Apparently the two met through a group that pairs teens with special needs with kids like Maddie and she took a special liking to Jon. What a moving story.