It’s 12:00 a.m., and when most children are all snuggly buggly wuggly in their widdle beds getting lots of shuteye for their big days at school tomorrow, mine is still awake.

Apparently, her class got in trouble today for excessive chattiness and in a brazen show of authoritative take-that-ness, her teacher slammed them with — wait for it — 60 definitions and 60 sentences. On top of science homework and algebra equations, Girl Child’s whole night has been spent with her face stuck in a dictionary and a marble composition book leading up to now, the stroke of midnight. I am not amused.

When you were a kid, were you squirreling away mental notes about what you would and would not do when you became a mom based on what your own mother did? I sure did. I had a running list of no-nos forged from all the things my mama did to pluck my nerves and swore up and down I wasn’t going to put my own daughter through such agony.

I, for example, was going to let my little girl wear whatever she wanted because my mom stifled my fashion creativity. In the 80s no less, when you could basically put anything on and still be hip. I mean, wearing jellies with socks seemed like a fun, easy way to transition my favorite summer sandal into the cold, winter months. I vividly remember fighting for that look and silently vowing to be the coolest, most style-conscious mom ever when she shut me down. 

While I was blearily going over the news this morning, I saw that rapper 50 Cent wrote an an-bullying themed book -- semi-autobiographical. Cool, I thought to myself. My own 10-year-old has been the victim of numerous bullies over the years. I've never figured it out -- why my kid gets bullied by numerous others while others eke by unscathed.

It breaks my heart every time it happens. He's a sweet kid. It's BS that he gets hurt just as I once did. But I got to thinking (a very scary proposition when you're me) about the things that bullies can teach us.

Once upon a time, when I was fresh out of college and didn’t yet know what I wanted to do, I became a substitute teacher in Baltimore public schools. (I’ll pause for your head shakes of sympathy and collective awws of pity.) I avoided middle school — my own child was still little but I knew even back then that that tween attitude was for the birds — so I focused on elementary and high school classes.

You’ve all been in school yourselves, so you remember exactly how you behaved (or didn’t) when the sub handed out a worksheet to go along with a super boring video on, like, photosynthesis or the Bill of Rights or conjunctions or something. It was a set-up for chaos back then and it still is. But if you’re a fly on the wall, it’ll show you exactly how your kid really acts when the authority figure in their classroom is new and all deer-caught-in-headlights. Are they a helper or a hellion?

Ah, the comment box. Between the three blogs I contribute to, I always get a heap of input — sometimes heated backlash — about the stuff I post. I dish it, so of course I can take it. One post sticks out in my mind. A reader couldn’t focus on the point I was trying to make in my writing for being distracted by the way I was writing it. My language choice was stereotypical and offensive to my people, she balked.

I blog exactly how I talk in real-life conversation, much to the chagrin of that commenter and others who’ve corrected my grammar, apparently. It’s not that I don’t know the straight-laced, more formal way of expressing my thoughts — I have a degree in English (gasp!) and I’m a writer and editor by trade. But Ebonics is the way my family and plenty other black folks talk. It’s familiar and comfortable. That’s why I think it’s appropriate not only for blogging, but teaching black students. 

Do you dress to the nines to drop your kid off at school? Do you slip on your Prada jacket over your $400 jeans and teeter along in your Christian Louboutin pumps (making sure all the other moms see a flash of those tell-tale red soles) before handing over your son or daughter's backpack and kissing him or her goodbye?

Yeah, me neither.

I just got back from dropping off my kid at school, and you know what I wore? The same not-terribly-clean pair of jeans I wore yesterday (no time to do laundry) and a T-shirt that has to be at least 10 years old under a hoodie, topped off by the fleece my husband had left lying on the chair closest to the front door. Oh, and a pair of slip-on sneakers I snagged last season on sale for $10.
 
Is my crappy drop-off fashion sense unusual?

Most school dress codes are the same -- nothing overtly revealing, no gang symbols, and some even have uniforms. All these dress codes have one goal in common: to avoid distraction or allow anything harmful to interfere with our kids' day.

But what if your child's school decided their dress code applied to parents, too? That you couldn't set foot at their school -- even just to stand outside your car waiting to pick your child up -- if you were wearing a tank top or pajama pants? Worse, what if they claimed they'd make your child find an alternate way home if you chose to wear something that didn't fit 'the code'?

This is the reality for one school.

Most of us — except folks who don’t have to empathize with anybody because they’re just that wealthy and powerful — love an underdog story. So here’s one that isn’t vying for headline space alongside Amanda Knox or the Wall Street protests, but is no less important.

I know a single father who’s trying to send his daughter abroad for an exchange student program but just can’t seem to get the money together to do it. She, being a none-the-wiser kid, doesn’t know that her dad is struggling behind the scenes. Like most children, she thinks it’s as simple as putting in a request and waiting for her parent to make it magically happen, some way, some how.

This isn’t like a pricey ticket to a hot concert or a $100 pair of Air Jordans. It’s a life-changing experience. Traveling is the greatest gift any mom or dad could give to their kid. It’s just the paying for it part that’s such a bummer.