On Absentee Parenting

Your kid misbehaves terribly at T-ball. He is rude and mean to adults as well as other children. The coaches and other parents have to spend an inexcusable amount of time tending to him. You would know this if you ever came to his T-ball games. No, I don't believe driving around in your minivan and occasionally parking it at the ball diamond counts as attending. I realize a minivan is more comfortable than a wooden bench or lawn chair, and yours may even have air conditioning, however, I think your son deserves an hour of your week. Hope to see you next game! ;)

On the Birds & the Bees

"When a man and woman really want a baby, they ask God for one. When God decides they are ready, he puts a baby in the woman's tummy."

Really, lady? Is that what you told your 5 year old when he asked where babies come from? When your child asks you about sex and procreation, please don't make up a "cute" story. Your child is not stupid. There is an age-appropriate way to explain everything with out resorting to falsehoods. By all means, it doesn't need to be graphic or include details, it just needs to be true.
If you tell him something untrue, your child will process it one of two ways:

• a) He will know you just made something up. Message received: lying is ok when it suits me, and/or "Mom thinks I am too stupid to understand."
• b) He will remember everything you have told him and may recite your made-up explanation at school or elsewhere. Imagine your child's feelings of humiliation when learning the truth. He may feel dumb as well as deceived.

Your explanation is possibly the most damaging explanation of where babies come from that I have ever heard. Absolutely heinous. How, then, do you explain why Aunt Sally keeps having miscarriages or is seeing a fertility doctor? What about Tommy next door with no dad? Billy with two dads? Teenage, unmarried cousin Susie with the "watermelon" under her shirt? What about the lady at church with babies imported from Somalia, Guatemala, and China? God is responsible for giving babies to women that leave them in dumpsters? God punishes couples with advanced degrees by denying them babies? (Sigh) Wouldn't it be easier to give the portions of truth that the child can understand rather than start your child's mind on the downward spiral of questioning the rationality of God?
If your "baby" is smart enough to be curious about sex, he/she can understand the basic mechanics and biology of baby making. Explain it with a science experiment. After all, what is more scientific than reproduction?  Sprout seeds, look at chicken eggs, visit a farm with baby animals. Use family pictures to show how certain traits have been passed along. If you don't know enough about any of this stuff to explain it to a small child, perhaps you better ask somebody before you're blessed with another visit from the stork!
In addition to stupid make-believe explanations, please refrain from cutesy names for private body parts. Doctors don't always cut babies out of bellies, and women most certainly don't poop them out! Little kids are able to understand real words and their real definitions from the get-go.  Stop with the baby talk, please!
Let's start celebrating the kids that care "why" and "how." Let's give them the answers they are looking for before someone else is answering their questions. Ignorance is not always bliss, sometimes ignorance is just ignorance.