While You Were Busy (volume 2)

All the news parents can use. . . . . this week.

1. This is the greatest explanation for why your kid's math homework looks different than your math homework.

2. Boys may be meaner than girls. As someone who spent 8th grade being tormented by a group of boys every day in social studies class, while simultaneously being bad mouthed and excluded by the girls she thought were her friends, I'm not sure what to think about this. Except that I dread my kids going to middle school.

3. More bad news about middle school. Kids need to move and play; even if they don't consider themselves "kids" anymore. An adult tried to survive a day of middle school and found herself falling asleep and not being able to focus; I could barely stay awake the first time.

4. Alfie Kohn, one of the first and best people I read when I went back to school for teaching, has a great blog in The Washington Post about how we're killing our kids' love of reading. It's long, but if you skip to the end you can read his suggestions for how to fix it. Basically, let your kids choose what they read and don't enforce a time limit.

5. The Huffington Post did a nice summary of 10 things we learned about kids' health this year.

6. This is older, but I just read it so I'm including it. It's basically a guide on how not to be a dick if you notice a child who has a difference of some kind.

7. Okay, this doesn't have anything to do with kids. It's each state according to Google auto-complete and it's pretty awesome. Though I'm not thrilled with the "bad" descriptor for New Jersey.

8. Your parenting style does not affect your child's IQ. Or so one study says. Of course, a high IQ doesn't guarantee success anyway.

9. Does your kid lie? Time magazine has suggestions on how you should handle it. Let it be stated, though, that while their methodology worked with our older two kids, it completely failed with Hugmonkey.

10. If you don't understand why people are protesting, or somehow believe race has nothing to do with the recent deaths of young African-American men and boys, then please read this mother's perspective.