Some people discount extremists like the Human Barbie mom who gave her daughter a credit for liposuction for Christmas. But I am more apt to see those people as a sign of our cultural times.

I don't think it is normal to give a child a credit for a future plastic surgery, but the fact that the story is dominating our news cycle is a clue to what we hold dear in our society. It's gross, and yet we want to hear more.

It's the same with Toddlers and Tiaras. We love to hate it.

It's January 3, 2012, and how many resolutions have you broken? It is like a domino thing: once you've broken one resolution that has to do with a bag of Miss Vickie's chips, then the rest all hit the ground. (That is just an example of course.)

Do you set resolutions for yourself? Or, just for others, so you have no hope of filling them? Like resolve that your husband will book a restaurant for date night once in a while or that your kids will say please and thank you all the time without a hint of irony or resentment?

I know that I could resolve to:

My daughter's birthday is Christmas Eve. She hasn't quite figured out that kind of sucks yet. She thinks it is very special.

Whenever she tells someone about her special day, people say "you were your mother's Christmas present." As if Christmas was a good day to have a baby.

Parenting a tween is like being in suspended animation. You are constantly dancing between the: "He is so adorable still" and the "OMG, do I need to worry about the behaviour? He is almost a teen."

I consider my almost 12-year-old still pretty innocent. It is hard for me to imagine that we will soon be negotiating all those too-icky-to-even-mention topics. I think that we do a pretty good job of keeping the lines of communication open, of being relatively non-judgemental and letting him be independent. We aren't perfect, but we are just cynical enough to know that the lives of teens are filled with moral choices that seem more complicated than when we were young.

When toddlers learn to walk it is with slow steps that slowly gain speed. Their bodies can not stop themselves from taking those first steps. And as a parent you stand idly by, encouraging them, nervously laughing, proudly clapping. They toddle, they waver and off they go - their first steps away from you. And then they fall and return to your arms. But soon they are taking longer walks away from you until one day you blink and they are a stinky tween begging to go downtown to hang out at the mall.

I'm standing in the schoolyard surrounded by five grade six boys with pleading eyes, cell phones in hand. Please can we take the subway to Dundas Square?

All kids are difficult and different in their own way, but some kids are truly unique. One of my kids is a square peg. He doesn't dress differently or look different. But his mind and the way he interacts with the world is not the same as other kids.

It's hard to watch a square peg trying to shave off their corners and fit themselves into round holes. It's frustrating watching a kid negotiate the world without understanding the rules that other kids seem to innately get.

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. 

Helicopter parents are getting blamed for everything these days. First they are stunting their kids emotionally, and now they are making their kids clumsy and fat.

Researchers were studying playground design by observing how kids interact with the equipment, and the one thing they noticed was that the parents kept getting in the way. The researchers realized over the seven-week study that whenever the parents were around, kids were only half as likely to engage in active behaviour.

Is weight one of the taboo topics along with drugs and sex? Are we too afraid to discuss weight with our kids?

Yup. I would even go a step farther and say that I am more comfortable discussing sex than weight with most people, including my kids.

I am but I didn't realize that until I started watching this video (below). But it's true, talking about weight with your kids is so laden with concern of triggering an eating disorder that we avoid it or we panic.

My kids lie. If they were cartoon characters, their noses would be extremely long and their pants would be on fire.

The lying concerns me because my 11-year-old is doing it with some considerable ease these days - from lying about the time to where he puts his brother's DS game. As he gets more used to it, it is harder to detect. Meanwhile, when my 5-year-old says Mr. Nobody drew on her dresser it is pretty easy to figure out who is fibbing.

Luckily, I found out that lying is okay, in fact it is even a good sign. It shows that my kids are very intelligent as they are able to master higher thinking.