The roller coaster ride that is Teen Mom just took another dip this week with more claims of abusive behavior. No, not Amber Portwood beating on her baby daddy. This time Dr. Drew Pinsky has called out April Baltierra for abusing her daughter, Catelynn Lowell.

Hey America, listen up. He just reminded parents everywhere that child abuse doesn't only mean marks on your child's backside.

Emotional abuse is damaging too, and it affects some 148,500 children every year. Want to put that in perspective? 

We're in the midst of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And that number is more than three times more than the number of women who die from breast cancer annually in the United States.

This year we made the big decision to homeschool our oldest daughter. We weren't completely unsatisfied with the private Catholic school she attended for Pre-K and K, and thankfully, she didn't have any issues or problems.
 
However, there were enough things about the school that bothered us, and after researching our other options, and figuring out what was best for our family, we landed on homeschooling. 
 
Like anything else, the sometimes single mom schedule makes everything quite a challenge, particularly when school can often be a respite. Aside from the obvious educational and social values of school, let's be honest here, many parents appreciate the time away from their kids and the subsequent break they get, whether they're stay-at-home parents or working parents who would otherwise be paying for childcare.
 
And when you're parenting solo, that time alone is extra precious. 

As we move along into the school year, you may find your child needs to take on some extra learning activities at home. Whether your kid is an eager beaver when it comes to learning or is struggling with a particular subject and needs extra practice, you can find literally millions of printable worksheets and learning games online.

We've rounded up 10 fun and FREE school worksheets and activities for your kid to do at home.

Who knew playing board games and card games with kids could not only be enjoyable but also educational? It's true. Many games are full of fun, well-disguised math problems and more.

Well, Molly Balint of the blog MommyCoddle and homeschooling mom to four girls knew this. And so today Molly shares with us her five favorite games to play with her kids. All the games on Molly's list are inexpensive, easy to find, and can teach your kids a little something.

This post is going to have you and your kids doing math and liking it playing games like nobody's business. Read on.

Amazon; $16.86Homeschooling may call to mind entire families gathered round the dining room table day after day, year after year, but a new trend cropping up among the nearly 2 million American homeschooled kids is turning that vision upside down.

Parents are taking just a year -- or sometimes just a few months -- and pulling their kids out of the public school. Then they're sending them back.

Laura Brodie, an English professor at Virginia's Washington and Lee University, has shared the story of her one year as a homeschooling parent, in a new book Love in a Time of Homeschooling. It's a memoir of the year she pulled then 10-year-old daughter Julia out of public school and away from the rigorous standardized testing regimen of the Virginia education system.

If the state of cleanliness in my 4 year old's room at this moment in time is any indication of what I can expect when she's a teen, this clean freak mommy is in big trouble.

Already she changes her outfit about five times a day, but with each wardrobe shift those clothes never make it back into the drawers or the hamper. She also likes to collect teeny things -- plastic jewels, dolls, dogs, coins, beads, stones, leaves -- and has "picnics" or builds "houses" for them all over the floor.

So cleaning her room must be performed more like an archaeological dig than a simple grab-and-toss of the big trucks, spaceships and balls in my son's room. So she moans about cleaning because she says it's "too much work." Well, yah!

Taking extra long showers is one mysterious teen trait. Now I know that having a messy room is another. There's always the exception, but I giggled at how many moms in Answers actually used the same word -- disaster -- to describe their teen's room.

Photo by Lynette

It's an understatement to say that homeschooling is often misunderstood.

We've got some amazingly smart homeschooling moms here on CafeMom that will set the critics straight and patiently answer any question about educating children in a home setting. But I also uncovered this list of gripes from the Secular Homeschooling website.

Okay, so it's a little sarcastic, but I found it funny and certainly true.

The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List

1. Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?

2. Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.