The kid and her child-free auntieIt was the worst case of working mom guilt I've ever had. The kid was absolutely bombing at swimming lessons, and I couldn't be there to figure out what the heck was going on because, ahem, I had to work. I was left with just one option: put my trust in the swimming instructor who has no kids of her own.

In some circles, admitting that I let a member of the child-free by choice crowd weigh in on how to parent my kid is akin to blasphemy. Don't you know those people hate kids? How could they possibly know a thing about how to parent one?

Guess what. She was right about everything!

I’m always negotiating with homeless folks, and it irks Girl Child's nerves. We were picking up pizza and racing home for what turned out to be a disheartening Jets vs. Eagles game when a man approached me while I was in line.

“Hey sista,” he started — ‘cause they always hit me with the “sista” to soften the blow before they put in their request — “you have a dollar you can give me?”

I remember when folks used to ask for a nickel, a dime, a quarter. Now they’re asking for whole dollars? In southeast D.C.? Plenty of times, I barely had that much in my wallet for my doggone self, much less to be handing it out. But if my checking account isn’t running on fumes, I’m always willing to help.

"You're so gay!" "Retard!" "Spaz!" Those are some of the slurs your kids may be hearing on the playground, or so says a report released this week titled "Playground and Prejudice: Elementary School Climate in the United States."  Released by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, it paints a scary picture of what most children face in schools.

It states that a shocking 75 percent of elementary students say they're bullied and called names regularly. Also, almost half of the elementary school teachers say they think bullying, name-calling or harassment is a “very serious or somewhat serious problem at their school.” 

Are kids today really that mean?

How terrified would you be if your ordinarily active, healthy teen daughter woke up from a nap one day with symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome? How much more terrified would you be if the same thing happened to 11 other girls from your daughter's high school ... and no one could explain why? As a parent I'd be scared, no doubt about it, but more than anything else, I'd be desperate for answers and furious that I wasn't getting any.

That's what moms Melissa Phillip and Elizabeth Miller want: Answers. And I don't blame them. Phillip's daughter Thera Sanchez and Miller's daughter Katie Krautwurst are 2 of the 13 students at LeRoy Junior-Senior High School in upstate New York to develop a mysterious movement disorder, seemingly overnight. Their daily lives are now plagued with a host of tics and stuttering and outbursts that have forced them to give up all the things they used to love doing, from art to cheerleading to simply attending school.

Up until your kids reach a certain age, there's a sort of unspoken rule about playdates. They are all mommy and me. As in at least two moms and two kids hanging out just so your kid can get in their social life. Which is all well and good if you have a bunch of mom friends in your 'hood who you love. But then there are those moms, the ones who make accepting a mommy and me playdate with a new family seem like a bigger risk than letting your 6-year-old pick your outfit for the day.

Yes, it's true. I have turned down playdates because I hate the moms more than the kids. But if you saw the list of ladies I'm talking about, here's betting you'd say no too:

Sit in a room full of parents, and you're probably going to see a lot of hand wringing, and hear a lot of worrywarts. And now I'm going to give y'all something to really worry about. There comes a day when your kid is going to start making her own friends. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Trust me. We're there. We're at the point where the kiddo is in first grade and hanging on the monkey bars with all sorts of riff raff. Or so it feels.

There are tons of little tips for this motherhood thing that you can only pick up and add to your bag of tricks from experience. My latest one is a gift from Ma Bell herself: my daughter, even in all of her stealthy teen know-it-all-ness, has the volume on the cordless phone cranked up so high, I can hear every word the person on the other line is saying.

Of course, I play like I’m completely oblivious as I walk to and fro in my mom duties — cooking dinner, putting away groceries, plucking hair balls off the carpet — but if I think something’s a-brewing, I’ve got one ear to the phone, just like she does.

So I had to chuckle to myself the other day when the friend she was talking to suggested Girl Child, who was going to be staying home by herself the following evening, have a few people over in my absence.

“Your mom won’t know. We’ll be gone way before she gets home,” Heathen Pal coaxed. 

A few months ago, I hadn’t heard anything about the Amber Cole debacle until my daughter slid into the car after school on a Tuesday afternoon. “Mommy, you heard about Amber Cole?” she asked casually, noshing on a granola bar real casual-like. The way she was acting, I thought the girl was somebody I should know personally, a kid in her class maybe. Then I found out why she thought I should’ve already heard about her.

I’ve never seen the actual video of the child in action. I really don’t want or need to. I’ve known enough Amber Coles in my lifetime, and everybody who’s good and grown can piece together what happens when you get that one girl who doesn’t think very highly of herself alone in a compromising position with a horny guy. It’s been happening for longer than you or I have been around, that’s for sure. Only difference now is it can be recorded, searched, and shared with just a few mouse clicks.