Nearly 30% of children in the United States live in blended families. If you are an Other Mother of teenagers, your job as a parent can feel exhausting and hopeless. Your teenager may compare you to their biological mother, create conflict between you and their father, and say, "You're not my real mom and you can't tell me what to do!" Step-parenting a teenager is like asking you to swim laps without arms or put out a fire with just a spoonful of water. Whether your teenager's biological mother is gracious or completely awful, your spouse is supportive or distant, and your teen is a nightmare or an embarrassment, there is hope!

Here are four important principles that will go a long way towards making your task as an Other Mother less painful and more effective.

Reduce the adult confusion.

Blended families struggle with an overdose of confusion in the parenting department, and the first order of business is to get on the same page as your spouse. Talk about the roles you each

We who are parents all know that raising children is the most challenging responsibility. From the time they are born, they learn from us. As children, we teach them how to groom, how to eat properly, what to eat, and how to navigate relationships with adult, peers, strangers and family. We teach then the importance of education and ethics from our own moral codes. In short, we teach them the difference between right and wrong. And even in a culture which celebrates individuality, no one want their child to be an addict. Yet, teenage illegal drug use is growing in our culture.

Here are the stats:
20 percent of 8th graders report that they have tried marijuana.
Roughly, 15 percent of 10th and 12th graders have used amphetamines.
An estimated 1.8 million children twelve and older are current users of cocaine.
More than 60 percent of teens said that drugs were sold, used, or kept at their school. 63 percent of the youth who drink alcohol say that they

At 15, Venus Palermo has grown into her doll obsession rather than out of it. Under the screen name Venus Angelic, the London based teenager posts beauty tutorials on YouTube for fans who want to look like her. But that's not why she's the latest viral video star. It's because she looks like a living doll.

According to Palermo, you too could be a ball-jointed doll (or BJD as she calls it) with the right over-sized pupil contacts, plastic-sheen-effect powder and pure white eye shadow. Based on her 5 million viewers and the legions of lookalike fans on her Facebook page, people are taking her advice.

Video: father's extreme parenting goes viral

The modern ball-jointed doll is widely popular in Japan, a country both

By Jill Smokler
Author of Confessions of a Scary Mommy
Have you ever wondered how to tell if an unknown woman is a mother or not? Well, there is one sure-fire way to tell the mothers of the world from non-mothers of the word and it doesn't even involve checking their stomachs for stretch marks. Walk into a restaurant, alone, on a Saturday evening. Go to the hostess stand and ask for a table. When prompted for the number in your party simply respond, "One."

Watch for the hostess' reaction. You will know in an instant if she is or is not a mother herself.

The non-mother will look at you with pity in her eyes. She will wonder if you've recently split with your husband or have been fired from a job. Did your mother die? Your best friend get diagnosed with cancer? What has a grown woman done to be eating alone on a Saturday night? Poor, poor you.

She will make small talk as she escorts you to a discreet location in the back, by the restrooms. She'll ask the waitress

10 things you can do to make your life easierI'm a crappy housewife. I was bad at before I had kids, terrible when I was stay at home and I'm even worse at it now that I'm back at work. I don't even aim for clean or sparkling anymore - my goal is "not embarrassing" and I sometimes don't even get there.

So last week I asked the 28,000+ brilliant readers of Rants from Mommyland what their tips and advice were for me to make my domestic life if not easier, at least a little more manageable. I got hundreds of comments on the blog, Facebook and Twitter - enough for a 5 part series that kicks off this week - incorporating tons of great ideas and suggestions.

Here's 10 tips for helping get the chaos of a family home a little more under control:




Stop & Assess1. Stop & Assess
If you're really overwhelmed: STOP, take a moment to evaluate where you're at, and prioritize. Like a lot of you, I'm trying to do too much at once and as a result, I feel like I'm not doing a good job at any of it. For me, multi-tasking doesn't mean "very efficient", it means

The dangers of potty training too early...You've probably heard the arguments in favor of early toilet training. They train early in Europe! Toddlers are more compliant than three-year-olds! Diapers are bad for the environment! Perhaps you've even read scientific studies concluding that children who train later are more likely to end up having accidents.

As a pediatric urologist who specializes in toileting problems, I'll tell you this: Children under age 3 should not manage their own toileting habits any more than they should manage their college funds. Preschools that require 3-year-olds to be potty trained - like the one in Virginia that suspended 3 ½-year-old Zoe Rosso for excessive potty accidents - are harming kids. And infant toilet training, promoted in Mayim Bialik's new book Beyond the Sling, is just plain nuts - unless, like Bialik, you monitor your child 24/7, feed your child a high-fiber vegan diet, and home-school your child. Babies need to experience uninhibited voiding, or elimination, without the expectation