At what age do children understand what it means to be suspended from school? (Mark Gail - THE WASHINGTON POST) From elsewhere in The Post: At what age is a student too young to face suspension?

“Some researchers and critics question whether children in the early grades should ever be suspended. The goal should be teaching appropriate behavior, they say, not sending students home,” writes Post staff writer Donna St. George in an article on the frequency and merits of suspending children.

“A Washington Post analysis of data for 13 of the region’s school systems found that last school year more than 6,112 elementary students, from pre-kindergarten through grade 5, were suspended or expelled for hitting, disrupting, disrespecting, fighting and other offenses.

The total includes 433 kindergartners, 677 first-graders, 813 second-graders and 1,086 third-graders. More than 50 pre-kindergartners were suspended,” says St. George.

The terrible revelations that have been spilling out of a Charlottesville courtroom about the troubled and violent relationship between two University of Virginia undergrads is a wretched backdrop to what’s been deemed Teen Dating Violence Prevention and Awareness Month.

The Congressionally recognized month comes just as George Huguely V, a Chevy Chase Lacrosse player, began his trial for allegedly murdering his sometime girlfriend, the achingly innocent-looking Yeardley Love.

Prosecutors in the trial have described several violent episodes that gave friends pause.Once, an acquaintance saw “Huguely aggressively holding Love down in his bedroom,” according to the Post account of the trial.

At another point, Huguely sent Love an e-mail that read, in part: “I should have killed you.”

In retrospect, it’s incidents like these that make escalating violence seem so obvious. But in real time, it’s hard for teens and young adults to understand what’s happening.

(Hadley Hooper - For The Washington Post) From elsewhere in The Post: A 12-year-old girl has taken a relaxed approach to showering. It’s not a daily activity for her, and she’s also not a fan of taking care of her hair. She hardly washes it and winces when someone else brushes it. Her stepparent turns to advice columnist Marguerite Kelly for help.

“My stepdaughter has told us that she waits several days to bathe at her mother’s house, where she lives most of the time, and that she doesn’t change her underwear from one shower to the next. When we see her, which happens once a week and every other weekend, she often tells us that she hasn’t bathed since we saw her last,” says the parent.

“Her mom thinks that this is just a phase and has jokingly told us she has “given up” on getting her daughter to brush her hair and, presumably, to bathe.”

Nagging won’t get this girl to change, says Kelly, but there are other ways to convince her to improve her hygiene.

The art of French parenting has taken on a new and unexpected twist, or tryst.

Pamela Druckerman, the writer who set off parenting debates this week with her essay in the Wall Street Journal, “Why French Parents Are Superior,” (which was an excerpt of her newly published, “Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting,” Penguin) has just involuntarily launched another discussion.

It turns out that in another essay a few years ago for the magazine Marie Claire, she revealed that she had planned and engaged in a threesome with her husband.

Slate’s Rachael Larimore discovered the piece called, “How I Planned a Menage A Trois.” It is filled with excruciating details about what she writes was a gift for her husband’s 40th birthday. It culminates in a paragraph that would make anyone viewing it in their own rearview mirror — let alone a writer who is now selling a parenting book — wince:

“Finally, they tire themselves out. There’s a sweet moment at the end when the three of us lie together under the covers, with the birthday boy in the middle. He’s beaming. I’ll later get a series of heartfelt thank-you notes from him, saying it was as good as he had hoped.”

It’s coming up on the third birthday for one of the most popular and addictive parenting blogs — if you can call it a parenting blog. STFU, Parents is sort of the Onion of the genre.
The Web site STFU, Parents pokes fun at moms and dads who share too much information about their kids on social media. (Justin Sullivan - GETTY IMAGES)

If you have not yet heard of STFU, Parents, I warn you that it’s the sort of site that will eat up your day. (Though, be careful. Many of the posts are not appropriate for viewing at work.) It’s a compilation of the most self-absorbed and offensive social media postings from parents, sent into the site by outraged friends.

Examples:

The mother who complains on Facebook about not receiving an “after- home baby gift.”

The too-much-information posts on placentas and potty-training.

The mother responding to a Facebook friend who had just written that he had a tough workout:

“Imagine, if you were a woman, you would have done all that, cooked three meals, did 5 loads of laundry. mow the lawn, wash the dog, weed the garden .... and you still wouldn’t sleep well because one of the kids would be up sick all night!!! Just sayin’!!”

Taken together, the site provides a glimpse of modern parenting at its narcissistic worst. It also provides a guide of what not to post about pregnancies, childbirth experiences and kid’s lives.

The blog founder, who perhaps not surprisingly does not have children (yet, she says), talked with me about why she launched the site and what she’s learned about modern parenting since. She asked I protect her identity since she, so far, has kept private.

Here’s our Q&A: