Blog Posts by Parentables

Kids and politics.
Our family got involved in our state legislature years ago. We just felt like we needed to get in there and serve and do whatever we could in our community to make a difference for our children's and our grandchildren's future. We feel like it is a privilege in our country to have the freedoms that we enjoy.

We don't take for granted the fact that we can vote for the people who we want to put in office that represent our values. And we've explained to our kids that this isn't always the case in the rest of the world. I don't think we should take that as a right; it's not. In our country people have given their lives for this freedom that we enjoy, and that's what we want them to understand when it comes to politics and voting.

Read More from Michelle: Remembering Grandpa Ruark

Our kids have always been interested in politics and some of them were able to see the state legislature process firsthand. When Jim Bob was in the Arkansas House of Representatives, they would go into

A sleepy toddler.The end is nigh. I just know it. But in my mind's eye, I light incense and offer up the dregs of my daughter's food -- crushed Cheerios, half-eaten veggie hotdogs and glue-hard mac and cheese -- to the mysterious forces that hold sway over my child's sleep patterns. Please, Toddler Sleep Gods, preserve this two-hour nap for just one more day, I silently plead after I close the door to my now-3-year-old daughter's room.

Read More: 10 Tips for Getting Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night

I get that after the age of 3 kids' naps begin to fall off the slumber map, and most quit them altogether by age 4, but so far we're still hanging in there. And now that I've read a new study about the long-term emotional well-being that's tied to getting enough sleep as a toddler, I'm lighting even more candles to the Toddler Sleep Gods.

Just One Missed Nap Can Spell Mutiny
According to Futurity.org, Monique LeBourgeois, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Colorado at

The cast of In its 3rd season on ABC, Modern Family takes a look at all the trials and tribulations parents go through while raising kids. No stranger to controversy, the show continuously pushes the limits and tries to think outside of the box. And tonight's episode is no different.

Same-sex couple Mitchell and Cameron (played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet) are with their adopted daughter, 2-year-old Lily, when she lets loose her first curse word. And one anti-profanity group is up in arms about it.

McKay Hatch is the founder of the No-Cussing Club, and he is calling on ABC to pull the episode from the air. Barring that, he's hoping to get word to ABC that this is inappropriate and "people all over the world don't want to have a 2-year-old saying the 'F-Bomb' on TV," according to CBS News.

Read More: The Day My 5-Year-Old Dropped an F-Bomb

Steven Levitan, co-creator of the comedy, maintains it's a valid story line to show on the air, because it's something a

Caution tape.I've argued before that the first rule of parenting should be "judge not". And yet from tragic accidents to rioting children, there's no doubt that parental behavior influences children's safety, wellbeing and behavior.

So what are we to make of news, coming via an opinion piece by radio host Dom Giordano at Philly.com, that suggests Philadelphia's Mayor's widely-reported response to the shooting death of 3 kids was a thinly-disguised attack on parents:

MAYOR Nutter stunned many in comments he made about last Tuesday night's shooting that left three teenagers dead. After criticizing the shooter and calling him "a dog," the mayor had harsh words for Philadelphia parents, telling them not to be "idiots and a-------."

Many were outraged that the mayor took a thinly veiled shot at the parents of the three dead teens, questioning why those kids were out of the house at night looking for a fight. Some called into my show, wondering how the mayor could criticize

Kids doing chores.
In a large family like ours, keeping up with the chores is just a fact of life. We have different chores, or jurisdictions, that our kids are responsible for, and we have a chore chart to keep track of all of them. Our daughter Jessa (19 years old) is such an organizer in our family (and I'm so grateful for these different children who have all these different strengths in different areas). Every once and a while we'll change up the jurisdictions, and Jessa distributes new chores to the kids for me because I've been so busy.

Read More from Michelle: How Our Chores Work, with Pickles and Praise

So the other day Justin (9 years old), came into my room with his clipboard and his little pencil and was just diligently working. And then he looked up from his clipboard and said, "Mama, did you brush your teeth yet?" And I said, "Well, nope but I was just getting ready to." And he said, "Oh, okay, good." And he walked off with his little clipboard in hand and then I looked at my

Lilia and Adeline Grover.
As soon as we started telling people we were having a second child, the advice started rolling in.

"Be prepared to get nothing done."
"You thought one child was difficult? You just wait."
"Oh, don't worry. The second one is a breeze compared to the first."
"A second child? Are you crazy?"
"A second child? It's the best thing we ever did."

Opinions seemed to split down the middle regarding the difficulty of it all. And I am now realising why - they were all right. It's every bit as hard as we were warned, and yet in many ways it is simplicity itself compared to the somewhat terrifying experience of first-time parenthood.

Read More: Siblings: No Two Are Alike

As Monica argued in her post on 5 reasons to have a second child, there are many joys in expanding your family. And as we've already gone through it all once, for us there's definitely been less stress and neurosis the second time around.

While we kept checking on

Doctor treating an earache.Last week my son crawled into bed with us at 1 a.m. complaining of an ear ache. At five and a half years old, we've reached the point where when he complains about an earache, particularly following a cold, I know he has an ear infection. I was also sick so my husband took him to our pediatrician's walk-in hours the next morning to confirm the ear infection, and the pediatrician prescribed antibiotics but put the prescription on hold so that we could see if it would heal itself and he would be comfortable with a standard children's pain relief medication. Luckily, this course of action worked and we didn't have to put him on the antibiotics, but it made me wonder: Should I even bother taking him to the doctor for ear infections anymore?

Read More: Runny Nose or Really Sick? When to Keep Kids Home From School

I'm quite content to not put my children on antibiotics. I understand the danger of them, and while I am a believer in modern medicine, I'm not the type to pop so much as

A girl doing homework.My daughter is too young yet for tests and homework, but she gets a daily sheet from day care outlining her day and she comes home loaded down with various art projects she completed in her class. I make a point of looking at everything she brings home with her. And it seems this is a good habit for me to get into seeing as one Georgia elementary school is in big trouble for the content of a third-grade math homework assignment.

Read More: Some Schools to Restrict Assignments: The Battle Over Homework Continues

Some observant parents noticed some startling questions on their children's work last week. The subject: slavery, beatings, and cotton-picking. According the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, four third-grade classrooms at Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Gwinnett County were given math problems that featured these questions:

• Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?
• Frederick had 6 baskets filled with cotton. If