I am so lazy that I have yet to complete a 15 minute training video on something that I actually really, really need to know how to do. I am not even up to the 9 minute mark. This has been going on all day.

I am consistently surprised and disappointed at the lack of funding that teachers have to cover the most basic necessities in their classrooms, especially when I live in a comparatively well-off neighborhood. After sending in tissues, clorox wipes, white paper, and a variety of snacks, I've gotten to where I just give gift cards to Target. I always wonder though, if this school can't afford tissues, what are the schools on the other side of town dealing with?

During my own education, I saw teachers break up physical fights, being disrespected in all manners, reporting sexual abuse of a student, and staying late to help out the kids who needed it. Some of my teachers changed my life forever.

I have so much respect for people who dedicate their lives to this trying, underpaid, and often thankless profession. Please know that your students will be forever grateful for your sacrifice, even if they are too young or immature to fully understand it at the time it is made.

Thank you for this. This was my second Father's Day without my wonderful, supportive, loving, dedicated father and it is so painful. I wish that I had the strength to stand up at the funeral, but I did not.

My point was that sometimes parents find themselves in the middle ground. I believe in vaccinations, but also veered from the schedule. I very much lacked the support of my pediatrician in my decision.

We followed a delayed schedule with my children. What I often find in these discussions is the absence of any gray area, which I find disappointing.

My daughter has a life threatening allergy to strawberries and another to annotto, a natural food coloring. We carry epi-pens with us everywhere. One of the difficulties with childhood allergies is that there is no reliable way to test for them under the age of five. So they are often first discovered when the child has a reaction.

I found myself tearing up, anxious and overwrought before her appointments, especially because the pressure to deliver multiple vaccinations at single visit was so high. Many vaccines, like the MMR one, are no longer available in individual shots, so you must vaccinate for three things at one time.

I was uncomfortable the idea that if she had a severe reaction to a single shot, there would be absolutely no way for me determine which vaccine had caused it, leaving her at risk for additional exposure in the future. When I told my pediatrician my concerns, he responded with "well if you like getting your child a lot of shots one at a time, that's your choice." Because I wasn't comfortable with the given schedule, I was branded a Jenny McCarthy and pushed straight into the crazy parent file.

My son was an adamant head-banger from an early age. He would sit in his crib and bang the back of his head rhythmic against the side. He pounded the front of his head into walls. He threw himself onto the ground and slammed his forehead into the concrete. At six months old, I could hear him at night, from down the hall, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

This isn't always an indication of something larger going on, but it can be. We watched him very closely for other signs of autism. Every morning I would point to something to see if he looked at my finger or in the direction I was pointing. And we followed a delayed vaccination schedule. Because when I tried to follow the suggested schedule, the days after the vaccinations were so rife with head-banging that I would go outside and sit on the doorstep just to take a break from the noise.

My nephew, who is severely epileptic, is no longer vaccinated at all, at his pro-vaccination pediatrician's recommendation because several of his post-vaccination seizures left him in the Hospital.

I don't believe that vaccinations cause autism or epilepsy or head-banging. But I do believe that if a child has an underlying condition, challenging the immune system can cause that condition to flare in a way that can be difficult to control or predict. My children are now up to date on their vaccinations, we just got there more slowly than some. And my son, who is now three and not autistic, has mostly outgrown the head-banging, except when he is very sick and sometimes after a vaccination.

Deciding that your child cannot handle the schedule as it is given is not the ultimate social irresponsibility. Not every child starts in the same place health-wise, and I am wary of an argument that treats them as if they are. I didn't do as I was told and I didn't refuse to vaccinate either. And I believe that one day there will be room is this discussion for parents like me.

Wow. That was truly helpful and a little spooky.
Are the first and third cards two different people? Because I know exactly who the first would be.

I think I am going to print that out and carry it with me.
Thank you.

What should I do about this mess?

Can I nominate whoever did the reproductive system graphic for COW?

I am in the burbs nearby. I'm up for coffee sometime. I have a complicated schedule and small kids that would make a night difficult.

Yep. Heading over to Whole Foods in a minute. It sounds like bbqcornnuts is around here somewhere too.