My son has a cellphone and I admit that I have glanced over, maybe even scrolled through a couple of his texts to see what he was talking about. The many forms of "Whassup?" bored me though, so I haven't rushed to read it again.

But it won't always be so innocent. Cellphones, Facebook and live chats are the medium of choice for teens and we parents are scared because we can't hear what is going on in their lives anymore. So we invade their privacy and we tell ourselves it's okay because teens don't have a right to privacy due to the issues facing them in the big, bad world. And since we foot the bill, we can do what we want. But something about snooping in my kid's private life doesn't sit right with me.

My friend Tracey Ruiz is the Sleep Doula. She goes and works one on one with families so everyone can sleep a little better. She will even sleep on the floor of the baby's room to help comfort a night-waker. I only wish I met her a few years ago, and maybe I wouldn't have lost so many brain cells to sleep deprivation. I asked her if she could do a guest post for me on some of the crazy toddler antics she has seen over the years. I found non-sleeping toddlers to be way more stressful than non-sleeping babies - babies are supposed to wake up all the time but toddlers are supposed to give mommy and daddy a break.

The Sleep Doula's Five Craziest Toddler Antics and How to Get Them to Sleep

I’ve been working in the trenches with parents of babies AND toddlers for years and I have seen it all. So often my clients feel ashamed or embarrassed when they first approach me to help with their non-sleeping toddler. They say it’s acceptable for babies not to sleep but not a two-year-old. The fact is, kids will be kids and they are much smarter then we ever give them credit for. To prove my point, here are my top five craziest toddler experiences AND tips on how to overcome troublesome, yet super adorable, little negotiators. Even in these extreme situations, you’ll be able to pick up a few tips to help you too!

I am scrambling to go away for a few days with my mother and sister and I get an email from the Pizza Day coordinator at school: "Can you come for pizza lunch? We lost a volunteer."

So I did. One of the many parents at school giving up our lunch hour to dish out soggy pizza to the kids. I didn't have the time and not really the inclination, but I showed up. But I don't do much when it comes to school activities. After three kids, I'm burnt out.

School districts in Florida and Alaska are looking at mom and dad when it comes to kids behaving badly in school.

Districts recently passed laws that would make it possible to fine parents if their kids miss school repeatedly. As blogger Lisa Belkin says in a clip from the Today Show (below), people are looking for answers to why kids are failing and they are looking to lay blame. So parents are the next obvious choice.

I went to three high school formals. They were fun and full of fancy dresses, limos, drinks and music and some parts that I don't remember too well.

But they weren't proms. Proms were for suburban American teenagers and Molly Ringwald. Proms had homecoming queens and strange rules and more hype. Formals were cool dance parties. (Not that we didn't spend hours, even days, on planning the outfits, the parties and the dates.)

I do remember that feeling of entitlement - like being all dressed up meant that we owned the city. We could hang out of the limo windows, lounge around in diners and keep our parents up all hours. 

Some things change and some things stay the same. In the '80s and '90s, any fancy dress party were about big dresses and even bigger hair - kind of the opposite of what they are about now: teeny, tiny dresses and smooth hair.

Click to see my high school formal portrait: 

A town outside of Atlanta has decided to outlaw public breastfeeding toddlers over the age of two. It is part of their quest to eradicate public nudity.

The law is just bringing up a pile of questions for me. If outlawing public nudity is important then why focus on breastfeeding toddlers? Why not all breastfeeding? Have they outlawed half-naked roofers as well, because I am looking at one out my window right now and I think that is a lot more common than a woman showing off her rack to nurse a toddler. In fact, I am hard pressed to think of the last time I saw a mother nursing a child over the age of two in public and I live in a pretty crunchy neighbourhood.

Kathy Witterick and her partner Derek Stocker have made a radical choice when it comes to their four-month-old: they are not revealing the gender of the child. Storm is four months old, but only a handful of people know his/her gender, including his/her brothers, 5-year-old Jazz and 2-year-old Kio. His/her sex is not in question, the parents simply want to shield the baby from society's preoccupation with gender rules.

The family would be considered alternative by almost anyone's definition - they are unschoolers, have a giant family bed and have been allowing their kids to choose their own clothes since they were 18 months old. Their older boys already play with gender lines; picking their clothes from both the girls' and boys' sections of the store. And they love pink and purple and wear their hair long, one of them in braids.

I remember it well. I was walking past my son's room and I could hear my husband singing:

"The drunks go walking two by two, hurrah, hurrah. The drunks go walking two by two, hurrah! The littlest one smells like skunk, and they all go marching down around the town boom, boom, boom."

The fantastic lyrics went on from there and I can tell you that they are unprintable.

Lucky 13. Yesterday, was my 13th wedding anniversary. We didn't do much, life gets in the way sometimes. But I still appreciate that every year deserves a nod of appreciation (well, I actually think it deserves more than that but my husband isn't that kind of guy and I've decided to accept that.) Because marriage is hard, and as I said last year it's a decision you decide to make everyday.

Little Miss Mocha wrote a much nicer marriage post (our anniversaries are one day apart) and I appreciated her sentiments that loving your children is simple but your relationship with your spouse is more...complicated.

I had a rough couple of years in primary school. My grade three teacher disliked me (who dislikes an 8-year-old?); she had put me in the lowest reading group and routinely yelled at me for my poor handwriting.

Sounds silly doesn't it? The lowest reading group? But it wasn't silly to me - an avid and advanced reader at the age of eight. She chose to focus on the fact that I couldn't do bubble writing with hearts for dots over the "i" and said I needed help. At best it was demoralizing, at worst it made me loathe school and myself.

 The best thing that I can say about my grade four teacher was that she let us listen to "If You Think I'm Sexy" by Rod Stewart while we brushed her long, golden hair.