It’s perfectly normal to slip a kid a little nip of champagne at a family wedding or let them have a swig of cocktail at a New Year’s Eve party. (Right? I mean, I don’t drink—never even had a sip, except for an accidental taste of my cousin’s haphazardly placed beer-in-a-plastic-cup—but it seems pretty harmless, if only to satisfy their curiosity.) That’s debatable, I’m sure, but I’m absolutely positive what’s not normal is Joann Goulet LePage, 51, slipping her 14-year-old daughter so many margaritas at a family restaurant that the child needed hospitalization. Diners at neighboring tables noticed that she was drunk, some even suspecting she was tipsy when she and her mama got to the restaurant. Mom of the Month is grooming herself a real party girl there.

Being a parent certainly has its moments. All you can hope for is that the good ones outweigh the bad.

Now, when it comes to teaching your kids all sorts of life lessons (fire = bad!), some are easier than others. A quick slap on the wrist and a loud "NO!" will suffice when your 3-year-old tries shoving a fork in the outlet on the wall. But there are a number of tough topics every parent must deal with at some point or other.

Explaining the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus to your youngsters can be fun and easy. It's the really tough topics that parents fear. Here's a look at 8 of the Toughest Things to Explain to Kids.

Car seats on front porch where McCready diedAs the story of 37-year-old country singer Mindy McCready's suicide unfolds, the already heartwrenching tale becomes even more tragic -- particularly because the most recent details concern the two young sons McCready left behind, Zander, 6, and Zane, 10 months. We're learning not only that the last several months of their mother's life were chaotic, unstable, and no doubt incredibly scary for the boys, but that they are still surrounded by uncertainty and animosity.

As of this writing, Zander and Zane are in foster care, where they were placed 10 days before McCready's death on February 17. The boys were removed from their home in a particularly ugly incident: McCready called the police because she wanted her father Tim and his wife to get out of her house; when police arrived, they believed McCready to be intoxicated and possibly a risk to her children and took the kids away.

Kids these days -- they think of everything. There's a new trend of "smokewear" or "potbling", if you will, which are bracelets and accessories that look like regular pieces of innocuous jewelry, but when reconfigured, turn into pipes for smoking the marijuana.

Parents might get a clue that their teens are getting high if they find cut-up soda cans or even a carved apple in their kids' bedrooms, but now they also have to keep an eye out for this trendy smokewear. I mean, your kid could be smoking the weed out of their bracelet right now.

It's every parent's biggest nightmare: Losing a child too soon. For Emily Bauer's family, it was almost reality after she tried a form of synthetic weed packaged as "potpourri" from a gas station, which sent her into the ICU where she went into a coma. Illegal in 41 states, the herbal mixture sprayed with chemicals is meant to create a high just like pot. Considering her parents forbade her from using the substance at home, the then-16-year-old thought it was a good substitute.

The side effects started as a persistent headache. Within four days of arriving at the hospital, Emily was a vegetable. Doctors told her family that if she regained consciousness, she wouldn't have use of her limbs. They took her off life support and thought it was over. Today, Emily is conscious. She's been transferred to a rehab hospital, eating solid food, and recognizes her family's voices.

The question: Could this have been prevented if the family wasn't so uptight about marijuana use? Answer: HELL no.

Carly McKinneySo moms (and a handful of dads), did you hear about Carly McKinney? Ms. McKinney to some of her students at Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado, “Ms. McCutie” to the cleverly flirtatious guys there? Don’t know her by face? Maybe you’ll recognize her by her booty. It is Twitter famous, after all.

How worried are you about your kids and drugs? Worried enough, say, to enroll your kid in a school where they collect samples of students' hair and send them off for drug tests?

That's the new program at a Kansas City private school, and yes, it's mandatory. If your kid is enrolled, your kid is subject to the kind of random drug testing that's nearly impossible to fool. Way to teach the kids that nobody trusts them, huh?

Last year, 17-year-old Melissa Jones had her life changed forever. After going into a convenient store to buy a drink with a friend, a drunken woman attacked the two girls, leaving them with bruises. Instead of arresting the attacker, though, police took Jones into custody saying she was intoxicated. The truth? She is autistic.

The rest of the story is a true nightmare. Her mother came to her side, telling police that her daughter had autism, ADD, and communication problems. When a doctor confirmed she hadn't been drinking, she was still held for 10 hours in a cell, fingerprinted, and charged with being drunk and disorderly.

Parents of autistic children have to overcome obstacles on a regular basis. People are constantly staring, fingers are being pointed, one Milwaukee man with autism was asked to be put on a leash inside of a Whole Foods, and now ... a teen arrested for being "drunk" in public? The rate of autism is rising. People have to get more educated.