Just like potty accidents and a bag of spilled Goldfish crackers, bad playdates happen. Kids don't get along, toys break and worst of all, parents disagree.

Whether or not we want to admit it, our kids, and more likely we parents, are the cause of many bad playdates. 

The upside is that there is nothing as satisfying as doing a debrief with a like-minded mom about a bad playdate. Just like the post-mortem after bad dates, picking apart the threads of what happened can be hilarious and a needed ego boost.

Tony Hawk is a skateboarding legend. He can do things while standing on a board that I can't do standing on my feet. He would obviously be the coolest dad in the world. 

But even legends hit speedbumps and Hawk came under fire this week after posting a photo on Instagram. He is seen swinging his shoeless four-year-old daughter while riding his skateboard in his backyard skateboard park. Problem is, neither of them are wearing helmets.

My parents split when I was five. For the first years, I didn't know any other families who were divorced. I don't think I even knew the word "divorced".

I can't think of a TV character or book that provided a model for me. Those eventually came, but much later. Now divorce is much more common and my kids talk easily of their friends who shuffle between their mom's and dad's houses.

Sesame Street is one of the few constants linking my childhood to my kids, so imagine my surprise to know that they haven't really touched the divorce topic until now.

We are having a little trouble around here with the truth. I ask my daughter, "Did you see my iPad?"

"No," she answers. Then I find it in her room. 

"Did you brush your teeth?"

"No."

The lies are ones that can be easily found out. And yet, I never call her a liar, or tell her she is lying. I am afraid of those words because lying is one trait that I truly despise. And I do not want to label her and have her self-define herself as a liar - it'll only breed more lies. 

So I just do work-arounds so that she knows I know. I assume this is a phase, not a defining character trait. 

Here is what the experts say:

Princesses are having a hard week -- the newest and littlest Disney princess is being called out for not being ethnic enough. And then a Supreme Court judge tells Sesame Street viewers that being a princess is not a career.

Is there a parent in the world who hasn't agonized, discussed, cried and lost their mind over the sleep issue? I don't think so.

For the first few years of a kid's life, sleep dominates most conversations, thoughts and desires. But I can tell you, parents who are in the midst of the sleep panic, that it does go away. Kids do learn to sleep, or at least you learn to function with night visitors, disturbed sleep and chronic tiredness.

I do believe that different kids have different sleep temperaments to an extent. But the biggest determinator of your kids' sleep patterns is you, the parent. 

Admit it, you look at your phone when you are watching your kids play. 

You look at your phone when you are talking to your mother, or watching TV, or walking the dog.

Looking at your phone is what we do, we have lost the ability to be alone with ourselves anywhere - even on the playground. And the Wall Street Journal says that is a problem because kids are getting hurt because we parents are spending too much time texting.

A toddler pooped in the shower. That's not big news.

Most parents have lived through a bathtub incident such as this and the clean up is often nasty and at best, forgotten. But instead of getting out the rubber gloves and moving on, this father made a sign for his toddler that read: "I pooped in the shower and daddy had to clean it up. I hearby sign this as permission to use as in my yearbook senior year. Signed, Mia [last name blacked out by HuffPo]." He hung it around her neck and took a photo, including her face and then posted it on Reddit.

And it has gone viral.

I don't know anyone who truly takes parenting for granted. We all try our best but have occasional lapses in judgment, organization and even rationality. But the one thing that I try hard to hold on to is my sense of how ridiculous and fleeting this whole parenting stint is.

Granted, some mothers on the schoolyard are more invested in being perfect than the rest of us. Some parents get their kids to play piano and practice, do their homework, make their beds and speak politely to their younger siblings. Some parents never let their guard down.

And there is the rest of us.

True story (according to the Internet): a Utah woman took her potty training woes to a restaurant last week when she had her twins sitting on a potty at the table. 

According to a witness, the young mother peeled her kids' jumpsuits to their ankles and had them taking turns sitting on the potty while they ate. In public. There are photos to prove it.