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I have always loved my Barbie and Ken dolls, since I was six years old. I remember my Barbie and Ken as if they were childhood companions. I remember it as if I was riding around with Barbie and Ken in the Barbie Ferrari, or joining them by the pool in the Barbie Dream House that I got for my 8th birthday. I know that there are a lot of people who say that Barbie and Ken are not good role models for kids. They say that Barbie especially enforces bad self image for girls. She is supposed to make them think that they are not good enough unless they are tall, thin, and blond, and always feel bad about who they are. But I say that that is all hogwash. Barbie and Ken are not meant to be role models. They are meant to be toys, plain and simple. To expect children to try to emulate their toys is absurd, and besides, every child enjoys playing make believe with his or her dolls. Barbie and Ken just allow them another way to play these fun and healthy childhood games. I can not see anything wrong with that. Can you?

Of course, now that I have kids of my own, I can see that not everyone plays with Barbie and Ken dolls in the same way. For example, my son actually has war with them. He gets ahold of my daughters Barbies and makes them fight each other. At first she did not like this, and would come to me, crying, when he was playing soldiers with Barbie and Ken, but over the years she has grown to be resigned to it, and even to like it. Now they all play war together, pitting the Barbie and Ken dolls against each other. Sometimes I even see them using the dolls to act out world political events. They will actually have Barbie doll terrorist attacks, and pretend that one of the Kens is president Bush. This shows me that the Barbie and Ken dolls are not only fun toys for the imagination, but educational as well. So I dispute what the naysayers have been spreading about some of my favorite toys. They obviously quite simply have no sense of fun at all, if you ask me. Otherwise, they would stop talking trash about these great Barbie and Ken dolls, and join in the fun themselves.

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Being a parent of a young child nowadays has its many stresses. Finding babysitters shouldn’t be something that we have to worry about, but unfortunately, too many tragic events have changed that. When I was a child, my parents didn’t worry about finding babysitters, they just called someone up. Nowadays, I would not even consider babysitters that were not familiar to me. In fact, I hesitate to even search for any babysitters at any point in time. Either my parents or my best friend watch my child, and I have not trusted any other babysitters. Of course, I have a private daycare that I carefully chose and checked out. I always want to know where my daughter is and who is around her at all times.

There have been so many sad and horrible stories of babysitters abusing children - either sexually or physically. In my community, which is more known for being a tight-knit community, in the past two years, five children have died at the hands of babysitters. In every case but one, the babysitters were boyfriends of the child’s mother. The fifth death was from a hired babysitter who suddenly got fed up with the cries of an infant and smothered her. The babysitters who were trusted boyfriends, were acting out of anger at the child’s cries or tantrums. One of the babysitters sexually abused an 8 month old little girl, hurting her so badly that he punctured many of her organs. She died the following morning. Finding babysitters is not an easy task. In some of these cases, a single mother trusted her boyfriend to look after and protect her child. The trusted babysitters ended up not only failing to protect the children but taking the life of a child who never even had a chance to live.

In looking for babysitters that are not familiar to you, take the extra time to do research. Get references from the babysitters and don’t just look at the list of names, call them. Ask detailed questions from both the babysitters and references. Find out how the babysitters handle certain situations. How do they handle disciplining a child if necessary? Find out as much about the potential babysitters as possible. Do they have any experience? Remember that the babysitters may be spending more time with your children some days than you will be. You need to know about them and what your child will be subjected to and surrounded by. I spent weeks talking to daycare centers and private babysitters before finally choosing someone. The moment that I met her, I just knew that she was who I would want being a second mother to my child. Do your child the favor of checking into their babysitters because they cannot. By doing some research and caring about your child enough to find the right babysitter, you could be preventing something from going terribly wrong. Your child is worth it.

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Before I was a mom, I was a teacher, so I always prided myself on the idea that someday, when I had kids, they would be good students. Of course I was a teacher in the days before Kindergarten homework, so I am starting to wonder if I really have to hold myself to my early teacher ideals.

I was pretty shocked when I sent my baby off to school and he came home with kindergarten homework. I am not talking about easy kindergarten homework either. I am talking about kindergarten homework that practically required a scientific calculator. My husband and I spent the whole first night of our sons first day of school trying to assemble a family tree for him to share the next morning. By the time it was finished being pasted and painted, we didnt have the energy to scrub down the table and vacuum up all the scraps of paper and glitter that littered our dining room floor.

If I thought that first bit of kindergarten homework was bad, I really shuddered the next week when his assignment was to learn about fractions by helping me with dinner. The teacher also specified that we were not to cheat and order pizza.

So we measured, we stirred, we spilled and I longed for the days when kindergarten homework only involved a few crayons or maybe a little paste. As we mixed up a pie crust and my son spilled flour all over the floor I wondered if his teacher understood who really did the work in kindergarten homework assignments.

I finally lost it the third week of school when the kindergarten homework assignment forced us to make a volcano that erupted all over my kitchen counter, floors and ceiling. I stood there in the kitchen as bits of red foam dripped from the ceiling fan onto my head. I wanted to meet the teacher that dared to assign kindergarten homework.

The next day I marched into her classroom and asked her if I could see her lesson plan for the day. Just as I suspected it was pretty tame. No glue pots necessary. Not even a pair of scissors. There were a few mentions of a phonics review, but I couldnt picture her classroom floor getting sticky reviewing phonics. She didnt even have the kindergarten standards like finger painting planned. That’s when the idea hit me. Oh, I know it was cruel, but for some reason I couldn’t help myself. I decided then and there that if Ms. Sheldon didn’t stop with her kindergarten homework from Hell, she was getting a class hamster for Christmas.

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