Bobby Montoya has been identifying as a girl since the age of two, despite being born with "boy parts". His family has always supported him whether it was his choice in toys or clothes, hairstyles or what he wanted to do with his time. When he wanted to join a Colorado Girl Scout troop, however, the group wasn't so understanding and turned him down.

How much do you think you have spent on Halloween so far? Once I started adding up the numbers it was very scary!

The American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a revised policy last week saying that kids under the age of two should have NO exposure to screens. No TV, phones, tablets - nothing.

The AAP goes one step further saying that adults should not have TV on in the background while their kids are around.

Great, it's too late for my kids. They had lots of screentime as babies and toddlers. I used to watch TV while feeding my babies. What else do you do at 5 a.m.?  And occasionally, Oprah was on in the background as I played Hot Wheels for the 1000th hour in a row.

I signed my two younger kids up for a learn to skate program. It is also a hockey program so we dress them up in the full equipment, including those adorable shoulder thingies and hit the ice.

It says 'Learn to Skate' in the program guide and yet most kids get on the ice and skate quickly and aggressively around the rink.

My kids immediately fall down - again and again.

I wonder if new mom Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has had a cigarette yet. She famously broke some taboos when she said one month before the October 19 birth of baby Giulia that she was desperate to smoke again.

From the sounds of it, she will be joining the ranks of other smoking moms. 

Help me resolve a dispute between my husband and I. It's about money.

Specifically, the kids' money. (If you want to resolve our money disputes I think we might need a weekly one-hour appointment.)

I believe that allowance should not be tied to chores but should be used as a teaching tool on how to save and budget. I also think that as members of the family the kids get a small share in the family's money. (A lesson in sharing that will serve them later in life, in case one of them earns substantially less than the other. If you get my drift...)

You should, must, read this: Notes from a Dragon Mom from the New York Times.

It is an essay by Emily Rapp who is mother to an 18-month-old, Ronan, who will die somewhere around his fourth birthday. Ronan has Tay-Sachs, a rare and incurable progressive disease that kills at an early age. 

The American Association of Pediatrics have revised their guidelines so that kids as young as four can be diagnosed with ADHD. They are expanding the range from four to 18, which is a much wider age spread than the previous recommendations of six to 12.

There is no definitive test for ADHD. The diagnosis is still dependent on purely observational means. So I can only imagine that parents all over are now obsessively watching their preschoolers' totally normal behaviour such as repetitively climbing up and down from their chair at mealtimes or running around the living room in circles knocking over the lamp.

I spent my formative years in a house of women. My parents split when I was five, and my mother and sister and I spent the next six years watching One Day at a Time and The Muppet Show together. It was the mid-'70s and I didn't realize at the time that we were ostracized; since then I have heard that some parents didn't want their kids to come over and play at our house because of the divorce.

Things have changed dramatically since then. Do we even bat an eye at a divorced couple anymore? Even same-sex couples carry little stigma in my neighbourhood. But is there one kind of family that we still judge - secretly or not?

Writer Kate Roiphe is a single mom to two children; her second child was born outside of marriage - a love child, so to speak. On Slate.com she wonders if our culture shames women who choose to have babies on their own. Ask yourself: do you think women who have babies on their own are crazy?

Kids love playing sports and parents love having their kids in sports - especially if they show some glimmer of talent. But being active in competitive sports comes with an element of risk.

And that risk keeps increasing. There is a national discussion going on about head injuries in youth sport and now we can add knee injuries to the list as well.