It may seem unimaginable, or it may be one of your worst parenting nightmares: your pre-teen or adolescent getting into serious trouble at school or trouble with the law. Read my Parents and Kids article,  ”Kids in Trouble: Strategies for Resolving Children’s Legal Conflicts or Troubles at School”  for some strategies to follow if this should happen to your family.

The Family Law Prof Blog reports on a fascinating (and disturbing?) case out of the U.K.:

A recent case out of the U.K. has brought renewed attention to the issue of whether morbid obesity in children is a sign of abuse and neglect, such that the parents of those children should lose custody.

The latest case to make headlines concerns a Scottish couple who lost custody of two of their six children on the basis of what was, their lawyer claims, a failure to reduce the kids’ weight following warnings from Scottish social services. The couple lost their Oct. 14 appeal in a case that is far from clear-cut — representatives of Dundee City say they would never remove children “just because of a weight issue.” But obesity appears to be the primary reason South Carolina mom Jerri Gray lost custody of her 14-year-old, 555-lb. son in May. She was arrested after missing a court date to examine whether she should retain custody after doctors had expressed concern about her son’s weight to social services. The boy is currently living with his aunt, and his mother is facing criminal child-neglect charges.

Several other cases in recent years — in California, New Mexico, Texas and New York, as well as Canada — have garnered attention because a child’s obesity resulted in loss of custody. “It’s happening more than the public is aware of, but because these cases are usually kept quiet [as a result of child-privacy laws], we have no record,” says Dr. Matt Capehorn, who sits on the board of the U.K.’s National Obesity Forum. The issue of whether parents should lose custody of their obese children took center stage two years ago with a British television documentary about Connor McCreaddie, an 8-year-old who weighed more than 200 lbs. and was at risk of being taken from his mother by authorities. She eventually weaned him off processed foods and retained custody.

Read the full Time article here.

According to the ABA Journal:

“A ruling last week by a divided Ohio Supreme Court in a pregnancy discrimination case is igniting controversy on the Internet.

“Although the court didn’t reach the key issue of whether an employer violated a state law barring discrimination against pregnant women, its final dismissal of the claim brought by LaNisa Allen over the unauthorized 10 a.m. bathroom break she took to pump breast milk for her baby is nonetheless being seen as a blow to working moms, according to the Columbus Dispatch and the Juggle blog of the Wall Street Journal.

“The court found that Allen didn’t follow the proper procedure in seeking accommodation for the bathroom break she said she needed at 10 a.m. after starting work at 5 a.m. Hence, the issue of whether her Cincinnati-area employer was required to allow her to take a breast-pumping break at that time wasn’t reached, the articles explain.”

Source: http://www.abajournal.com/weekly/mom_loses_case_over_unauthorized_10_a.m._breast-pumping_bathroom_break

Marriage is going stronger than ever, reports a recent article in the New York Times.

“Despite strong social riptides working against it — the liberalization of divorce laws, the vanishing stigma of divorce, the continual online temptations of social sites like MySpace or Facebook — the marriage bond is far stronger in 21st-century America than many may assume. Infidelity is one of the most common reasons cited by people who divorce. But surveys find the majority of people who discover a cheating spouse remain married to that person for years afterward. Many millions more shrug off, or work through, strong suspicions or evidence of infidelity. And recent trends in marriage suggest that the institution itself has become more resilient in recent years, not less so,” authors Benedict Carey and Tara Parker-Pope report.

“[O]ne of the most commonly cited statistics about marriage is that half of marriages end in divorce,” the article continues. “But that number reflects the expected lifetime divorce rate of people married in the 1970s…The story is different for more-recently married couples. A comparison of 10-year divorce rates among college-educated men married in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s shows that divorce is becoming less common, said Dr. Stevenson, the Wharton researcher. Among men who married in the 1970s, for example, about 23 percent had divorced by the 10th year of marriage. Among similar men married in the 1980s, about 20 percent had divorced by the 10th year. Men married in the 1990s are doing even better — with a 10-year divorce rate of 16 percent.”

Whatever we may attribute the decreasing rates to, I like the outcome–here’s to stronger marriages everywhere!

Two little words are wreaking havoc on the public school system in Massachusetts: budget cuts. For many superintendents, school administrators and teachers, planned cuts in funding mean some significant changes in the upcoming school year. But what do they mean for parents?

Read my article, Academic Year Outlook in Parents & Kids Magazine for the experts’ opinions on the changes you’re likely to find in the 2009-2010 academic year.