There've been times when I've had the urge to use a taser on my son. Oh, have there.

Like last night when I told him to go to his room after he batted his sister in the head with a light saber and he matter-of-factly said, "No. No, thank you, not happening," cloaked in that irritating 6 year old attitude of his ...

But I can't imagine I would ever really do that ... or even ask a police officer to!

An Arkansas mom did! Last week, on Veteran's Day, she called police after her 11 year old daughter refused to take a shower. She gave the responding officer permission to "tase" the unruly girl if necessary, according to a report in the Huffington Post.

The officer did tase the 11 year old girl -- a quick pop on her back -- but only after the girl kicked him in the groin when he tried to take her into custody.

My oldest child is in first grade, so I'm new at this, but I think I understand pretty well the term zero tolerance. It means that schools take guns and weapons super seriously. No second chances. You bring one, you're out. Seems fair enough.

I didn't realize that zero tolerance was the result of a 1994 law in which public schools accepted money from the federal government in exchange for automatically expelling all students who brought guns on the property.

As we know, schools have taken things to the extreme. Kids who are involved in non-gun offenses that were once considered normal childhood behavior or simply the result of bad judgement are wrongly getting suspended, expelled and even arrested in the name of the policy.

Remember the 6 year old suspended for bringing the Boy Scout fork to school?

Crazy things like this happen all the time. Which is why all eyes are on a better system that's currently being used in a school district in Georgia ...

Yesterday I reported that most bullying surprisingly takes place in the classroom, lunchroom, and other supervised locations of the school.

A lot of us wonder why teachers and administrators just don't make it stop. So I asked CafeMom beanielips, a public high school teacher, who explains that it's not always as easy as it sounds.

Your thoughts on this new research? Is the classroom really prime bully territory?

I am not surprised at that result. There is a lot of bullying that happens in supervised locations at some schools. Some are worse than others. It is also important to know that what used to be thought of as "kids will be kids" is now classified as bullying. I am sure that it was just as bad when we were growing up, but it was not tolerated because it was not acceptable in the culture of the school.

If the state of cleanliness in my 4 year old's room at this moment in time is any indication of what I can expect when she's a teen, this clean freak mommy is in big trouble.

Already she changes her outfit about five times a day, but with each wardrobe shift those clothes never make it back into the drawers or the hamper. She also likes to collect teeny things -- plastic jewels, dolls, dogs, coins, beads, stones, leaves -- and has "picnics" or builds "houses" for them all over the floor.

So cleaning her room must be performed more like an archaeological dig than a simple grab-and-toss of the big trucks, spaceships and balls in my son's room. So she moans about cleaning because she says it's "too much work." Well, yah!

Taking extra long showers is one mysterious teen trait. Now I know that having a messy room is another. There's always the exception, but I giggled at how many moms in Answers actually used the same word -- disaster -- to describe their teen's room.

It's stories like this that make me wish I could home-school.

By now you've heard about the first-grader who was suspended for 45 days for bringing a fork to school.

It all turned out okay. The public school educators reconsidered and will allow the kid to come back to school next week. But this whole mess could have so been avoided if school officials just used some of those critical thinking skills they feel are so important to teach our kids.

It was a Swiss Army Knife for goodness sakes. I'm all for zero tolerance policies in the proper context -- a kid who knowingly violates the policy, who intends to threaten or do harm. Yes, anything to prevent another Columbine. None of those cases apply here.

This sweet little boy was excited to join the Cub Scouts and wanted to bring in his Swiss Army gadget to eat his lunch with. That's it. His mom should have been more on top of things, but oh well.

Jennifer Connelly explains to Jimmy Kimmel that she lets her kids (Kai, 12, and Stellan, 6) curse—but not in public. CafeMoms had a similar conversation about whether they let their kids swear in the house...

Photo by amaranthleewolf

Big kids feel even more grown up when they get to sit around the table chatting with their parents, aunts, uncles, and family friends. Some CafeMoms prohibit this practice and shoo their kids away to play. They don't feel that tweens or even teens should be allowed into adult conversations, partly because of the potential topics (sex, money troubles, death). They grow up too fast already, they say. Also, it's just not their place.

A conversation going on in the private group Heated Debates (over 100 comments so far) is hashing out the pros and cons of letting adolescents into adult talk circles.

"When I was younger it was a no-no, you were not allowed to sit under adults while they were talking, and you were not allowed to be part of the conversations," says guess_who_wit_6. "I am the same way. My children are not my friends nor are they my equals and they have no place in adult convos unless they are specifically asked a question."

Perhaps the person who wrote about the Banana Split Cake isn't the ideal source for talking about how to get kids to trade in their hot dogs, French fries, and chicken fingers for more nutritious food. But I did find these great tips for getting kids to stop eating junk food (and I promise I only had a tiny piece of that cake!).

Photo by JacknJill

By this point I'm pretty accustomed to toys, clothes, kitchen utensils, sporting equipment and everything else tossed about the place. That's just life with kids. But the one place I like to keep clean and orderly is my own bedroom. The other day I walked in to find evidence of intruders.

A yellow rain boot filled with stuffed animals sat in the middle of the floor.

My nightstand drawer was hanging open ready to fall, disemboweled, with my iPod, asthma inhaler and other assorted (personal!) stuff strewn about the bed.

Someone dragged my husband's ankle weight all the way across the room by the door. It was 10 pounds, so this culprit was very strong. But it caused me to trip and stub my toe, which is why I got so mad and wrote this post.

Ordinarily, we'd expect our teenagers to (at times) be moody, mouthy, and disrespectful, or to have an attitude. But lots of moms say their tweens are exhibiting disrespectful behavior, and they're wondering what to do about it...