As someone who was forbidden to sport the punk looks of the 1980's, I like to let my kids enjoy them – up to a point. Temporary hair colors. No permanent tattoos. No gauges. I dread the day one of them comes home with a piercing, but at least you should be able to remove whatever studs you put through the holes. I don't people to get the wrong idea about my kids, you see. I don't want them not to get jobs based on bad-but-permanent fashion statements. I don't want them hassled by cops because they look like they ought to be stealing things. What white people don't get about the Trayvon Martin…

  I moved to Columbia from Michigan as a “gifted and talented” high school junior. The school I left had no Advanced Placement (or International Baccalaureate, if that was a thing then) classes. Academically speaking, over the following several months at Oakland Mills High School, I got my butt kicked on a daily basis. Go Scorps! And it was good. I graduated with enough AP credits to finish undergraduate school in three years and mitigate the cost of my ironically out-of-state education at Michigan State. Go Spartans! When my kids entered the Howard County public schools 10 years ago, I knew …

"My daughter hasn't come home from school," my friend told me on the phone last week, a note of panic in her voice. Our 9-year-olds go to school and play together. We both deplore the fact that kids today don't enjoy the freedom to wander that we did. But neither of us was extolling the virtues of "free-range parenting" at that moment. The daughter, it turned out, had stopped longer than usual at a friend's house on her way home. She was fine. Recent incidents of strangers approaching kids in Howard County underscore the fact: we're afraid of harm befalling our kids when they're out of our …

When my oldest son was five or so, he came home from pre-K wanting to know when we would be getting our kinara out to celebrate Kwanzaa. "Son," I said, "we don't celebrate Kwanzaa." "Why not?" he asked. I expected to have to explain a lot of things to my kids about race in America - white privilege, slavery, discrimination. It never once occurred to me that I was going to have to explain Kwanzaa. "Okay, so you know how we don't have a menorah at Christmas time?" I asked him. "Uh, Mom, what's a menorah?" "It looks like a kinara, it's got candles in it." Great, I thought, now he's going to …

This is the first year that my 9-year-old daughter hasn't put any toys on her Christmas list. (I would say it's our first toy-free Christmas in 14 years. Technically, however, the PS3 my husband and sons have requested is considered a toy.) The girl has asked for sets of books she wants to read and an art kit along with some Wacky Packages stickers. Nothing I can object to there. This is the first year in a long time that she hasn't asked for a makeup kit, and I can't object to that either. My daughter has been drawn to makeup for years now. As a play-time activity, applying makeup is right …

Our Christmas tree is in the corner of our living room. That might sound like we're ready for Christmas. But the tree is folded up in a plastic tub with two boxes of ornaments and holiday décor on top of it. The shopping is partly done. None of my Christmas crafts are anywhere near finished. I am losing hope that the nine year-old will still even like Miley Cyrus by the time her Miley Cyrus comforter is finished. We dug out the Advent wreath – in the second week of Advent. It's missing a candle still, but we won't technically need the fourth one until next Sunday anyway. The 9-year-old cares …

  Two things I do well: speak Russian and sing. Two things my kids cannot bear to hear me do: you guessed it. Seriously. They howl in pain and what I can only describe as mortification when I burst into song or attempt to address them in the language they speak with their grandmother. Even when no one is around to witness their shame. Lest you doubt my self-awareness, I have external validation for that “do well” part. I have a rating of “advanced professional fluency” in Russian (speaking and reading) from the federal agency that employs me. As for the singing, you can ask the public at …

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Gratitude is a great thing to celebrate, there's no gifting requirement, and it's an excuse to invite people over for dinner. When I was single and living overseas, presiding over my own Thanksgiving was a great way to keep homesickness at bay. The American guests shared Thanksgiving memories and traditions. The local guests politely essayed pumpkin and turkey. In the first few years after we came back from overseas, Thanksgiving was an extended family affair. I loved hosting Thanksgiving dinner for parents, siblings, and grandfather and great-…

My Patch editors occasionally suggest that I opine on topics of current local interest. This week they asked me about "freak dancing," a sexually provocative form of movement, at school dances in response to this piece in Eldersburg Patch. It could be that I have a teenager. Or maybe my Patch superiors have hit on a way to make me focus. In any event, it so happens that I do have an opinion about dirty dancing in our schools. Here is my opinion in the form of five questions that I think are way more important for parents and teachers to consider than whether or not schools should allow …

Today my daughter's elementary school is participating in the National Mix-It-Up Day program. The kids will be wearing mismatched clothes and changing up their usual lunchtime seating arrangements. The goal is to promote "inclusive school communities" with activities aimed at encouraging tolerance and new perspectives. I'm not sure anyone will be able to tell that my 9-year-old is specially dressed for the occasion. My girl's personal style is, well, dissonant. As she proudly tells anyone who asks, "I don't like things to match." I, in turn, will proudly tell anyone who asks about this …

The "Choose Civility" forum on bullying October 5 in Howard County coincided with the kick-off of National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month in October. This event has already generated several days of nationwide media focus on workplace and schoolyard aggression. I thought about looking up my tormentor from sixth- and seventh-grades on Facebook and submitting an interview with her for Salon's "Interview With My Bully" series. Then it occurred to me that there might be people wanting to interview me as well: my younger siblings, for example, or maybe the girl I targeted with a cycle of …

This time 11 years ago, my younger sister was just starting to grow her hair back after chemotherapy and radiation treatments to combat Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. On Oct. 1, she led a team of her friends and family as part of the Light The Night walk in Maple Lawn. The walk and others like it throughout the U.S. raise funds and awareness for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society to fight blood cancers. Kelly Kesler, 36, lives in Columbia with her husband and three kids. She’s a Salary Mom and a commuter like yours truly, only she’s a better parent and doesn’t blog. Considering the number of times I’ve …

The British novel I Don't Know How She Does It features a married Salary Mom named Kate who overcomes office politics, domestic chaos and sexual temptation to achieve a happier professional and family life. You can see how this had a certain escapist appeal for some of us. The parallels between Fiction Kate and Patch Kate (that would be me) are pretty simple to draw. We're both our families' primary breadwinners. We both have husbands who earn decent salaries in their own rights. She has a nanny for her kids; I have the help of my live-in mother-in-law. On the other hand, Fiction Kate wears …

I'm a carrier of a virus that rarely kills anyone on its own but is strongly corelated with a disease that affects millions of people. It's a disease that has been linked to serious developmental problems in children. I was diagnosed during a routine test while I was pregnant with my daughter. They administered IV antibiotics to me during her delivery to prevent her from acquiring the virus. Sounds dramatic, doesn't it? Happily, I am only talking about strep. There are many forms of streptococcal infections. Some cause the strep throat we're all familiar with. Others cause skin rashes, …

I was stunned last week to get an e-mail from my daughter's elementary school suggesting that kids wear red, white and blue on Friday, Sept. 9, to honor the memory of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001. I knew the 10th anniversary of 9/11 was coming, of course. It's no surprise that the deadliest foreign attack on U.S. soil should be an occasion for reflection and study at any of my kids' schools. I'd be upset if it weren't. But the red, white and blue are celebratory colors. And this anniversary was no occasion for celebration. Sure, we got Bin Laden. We also defeated the Japanese in World War …

My kids have been in the loving embrace of the Howard County Public School System for 10 years now. Here is what I have learned about the first few days of school.1) Don’t overload the kids with supplies. * As my friend Erica Washington points out, “Don’t send ALL the supplies to school at once unless you just want to supply the whole class.” Send just what will fit in a backpack on the first day. It will be easier (and less embarrassing) for you to drop off your kids if they fit through the school door.2) There is no joy in repetition. This year I had the foresight to make multiple copies of…

I am ready for my kids to go back to school now. I have purchased all the supplies and fashion updates they require to begin the academic year. But that is not my point. I am ready for them to go back to school because Holy Mackerel, they are driving me crazy. And I'm not even home during the day. The last two weeks of summer break are the best argument for year-round schooling imaginable. The good news is that my 14-year-old is going out for JV soccer in the weeks before he starts high school. After a summer of lazing at home, he is being worked into exhaustion on a daily basis. The bad news…

I can tell it’s time to get ready for the coming school year. My middle schooler posted his supply list as his status update on Facebook last night. I used to love shopping for back-to-school supplies as a kid. I still love buying new clothes and office supplies for work, just like I enjoy seeing my kids delight in their new outfits and backpacks. But school shopping for and with kids? Not so much. My main beef is the supply lists. First of all, I don’t remember carrying my body weight in school supplies when I showed up at the school door on day one as a child. Buying a few folders and …

My oldest son will be 14 in a little over a week. We got him a new cell phone for his birthday. He was so embarrassed by the “Flintstones” aesthetic of his old flip phone that he often pretended not to have a phone at all. But his 11-year-old brother was glad to inherit it. Yes, the boys have entered cyberspace. That is, they have Facebook accounts and they text their friends. Our daughter, 8, is still content with Club Penguin and GirlsGoGames—for now. I am ambivalent about the kids being on Facebook. For one thing, they’re not old enough to use the social network according to its stated …

This Saturday was my 11-year-old son's last meet for the season. He swam in the Columbia Neighborhood Swim League's All-City Swim Meet on Saturday afternoon at the Phelps Luck Pool.Feeding my kids at swim meets has been a challenge all summer long. There's a reasonably wide and cheap selection of reasonably priced food and drink--that's never the problem.The problem is that my younger kids both have food issues.The boy has pronounced milk and wheat sensitivities. The girl is a resistant eater, and there are just seven or eight dishes she will eat.As many as 8 percent of all kids nationwide …