Once again, Brain, Child had a compelling issue, which I read cover to cover. I was enthralled by this debate: "Should you talk to other parents about your tweens and teens sniping at each other?"

"Jamie Roberts" -- she used a pseudonym -- said no.

While I'm sure that it can't feel very good to be insulted by your former best friend in a public forum, Derrick seems to be handling it. Just like he can now handle tying his own shoes or fixing a simple snack for himself, Derrick is capable of negotiating these choppy social waters. (For example, he points out that he's in an advanced math class, and asks why Tobias bothers commenting if he truly doesn't care.) My job as a mother isn't to shield him from the painful or irritating or wearying parts of life; it's to teach him how to get through them. You teach a boy to fish, and he'll form his own good comebacks for the rest of his life.

Because I'm on Team Derrick. Forever. Even when he's wrong -- and he has been wrong before, you'll be shocked to learn -- my natural inclination is to understand Derrick's perspective. Forget fairness and neutrality. Even as I sometimes pretend to be otherwise, I'm all about family solidarity. The problem with getting other parents involved relates directly to this family solidarity. Any parent worth her salt is on her kids' team, and if you'd like to experience an exercise in frustration, please do call that other parent. You'll get an earful of why Special Snowflake is acting the way he does. You might find yourself trying to get the other parent to understand your little darling's point of view. It all makes for plenty of compassion, genuine or otherwise, between the parents, but the kids don't really care why a given situation is happening. They just know that the parents got involved and now they -- or just the one on the offensive -- must be sneakier.

I see Roberts's point, especially on the importance of teaching children how to problem-solve, but also not coming out and accusing a parent of Precious's behavior. This is a lesson I learned -- not in middle school though -- when my kindergartner was complaining about a girl in his class. I was concerned about him being bullied, and almost brought it up to the mother.

The girl's mother actually approached me, in the way of a playdate. We went out for ice cream, and the tension between the two kids melted. It was a much better way of dealing with the situation, than my initial, knee-jerk reaction, which was to lay out all the things her daughter had said to Ari. The mother turned it on me and pointed out all the things Ari had done to upset her daughter. Then she proposed the playdate, which was our principal's suggestion. (Good one!)

But as Brett Stanwick, the mom who argued the "yes" side of this debate, pointed out, there are probably circumstances in which parents' involvement is crucial. Think of the case of Phoebe Prince, the Massachusetts girl who committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied.

Of course, a lot of how this conversation goes depends on things like how well you already know the other parent. Calling up someone you've never shared more than a parking lot greeting with is a whole lot harder than sitting down over a cozy cup of tea with a friend, especially if what you're saying is likely to make them uncomfortable or defensive. But there are ways, honestly. Most of them are related to making sure the other person knows that you're sharing information, not calling them out on what a crappy parent they are, that your kid has done his or her share of similarly dubious things, and that the goal is to figure out how to get everyone back on track....

It might seem like tattling, but when you talk to another parent, you're modeling for our own child. Lessons the kids can take away: how to report stuff to authorities (the other parent being their nemesis's authority), when to recognize that there are problems that you can't solve alone, how to defuse a tense situation, as well as maybe how to nip in the bud another Phoebe Prince case. You're also setting the example that this is what mature adults -- what the kids aspire to be -- do. If two people are having a problem, no one has to suffer in silence. As a parent, you engage as much as you can in coming to a solution, and if you can't find a solution (because, say, the other parent is an asshole), only then should you feel okay walking away. Just because the kids are fighting doesn't mean parents should stop thinking of each other as allies.

What do you think? Have you ever contacted other families about bullying?

If you haven't been to BrainChildmag.com lately, definitely check it out. This issue is good. I want to highlight one more article from the magazine: "Guilty as Charged."

In it, writer and professor Bridget Kevane was arrested in Bozeman, Montana, for leaving her three children and two friends alone at the mall. The two oldest children -- girls -- were aged 12 and they were left in charge of an 8-year-old, a 7-year-old and Kevane's youngest daughter who was 3 at the time.

In case you missed it, Brain, Child magazine ran a feature essay by an adoptive mother who is trying to preserve her son's Vietnamese heritage.

I thought it could provoke a conversation on how far should an adoptive family go to preserve their child's heritage and what advice they have.

At these moments, I’m sure my husband Rob and I are doing something right. Like many international-adoptive parents, we work hard to incorporate our son’s birth culture into our lives. For years, we’ve followed the formula for what’s sometimes called “culture keeping”: celebrating the main holidays from Nick’s birth culture; buying ethnic artwork, clothing, or food; spending time with other international adoptive families, perhaps going to a “culture camp” for a few days each summer.

Some would say I take it to extremes. I enrolled in a Vietnamese language class the year before Nick’s adoption in 2002. Last fall, I signed up for another course that meets five days a week. At the same time, I found a Vietnamese tutor for Nick.

In December, Rob and I took Nick on a trip to Vietnam, his first visit back to his birth country. But just weeks before we left, we found ourselves with a child melting down, who was terrified we’d leave him there, afraid we’d be disappointed if he didn’t like it. “I don’t want to go to Vietnam!” he howled. “I don’t want to go to Vietnam! I…don’t…want…to…go…to Vi-et-nam!”

It was then that I thought maybe I’d gone too far. Was I doing this more for myself than for Nick?

Adoptive moms, what say you?

Brain, Child, my favorite parenting magazine, just arrived and as usual I read every word of it. I was especially delighted to see that our Stacey wrote the cover story. (From one fellow MT editor to another: Thank you, Stace, for mentioning us in your bio!)

The story, on so-called "multi-level marketing" firms preying on moms who want to work from home, is worth a read:

Welcome to the world of multi-level marketing. Boosters of MLMs claim that their business model provides advantages that few others do. Among them: the ability to “be your own boss,” to “determine your own future,” “set your own hours,” and “work from the comfort of your own home.”

For many women with young children, the claims made by organizations like Herbalife are nearly irresistible. It’s one of the abiding truths of our time that mothers are deeply torn over their work/life balance. No wonder MLMs come across as the Holy Grail of modern mothering: a way to make money and be home for the kids.

Today’s MLM companies are well aware of their appeal to mothers, and they’re taking full advantage of it. According to the Direct Selling Association, a lobbying group for the MLM industry, more than eighty-five percent of participants in MLM companies are women. Websites like themomteam.com, for example, feature photographs of women hugging and playing with small kids surrounded by text that promises to solve financial problems—saving for college tuition or getting out of debt, for instance. But they make little mention of the actual work required.

Billion-dollar companies like Herbalife, Mary Kay Cosmetics, and Arbonne International, to name just a few, are structured on the MLM model.

I felt bad for the moms in the story who were swindled out of thousands of dollars and now have additional financial and marital burdens on top of the full-time day jobs they want to leave. And as Stacey pointed out, this could happen to anyone.

I remember as a kid my mom buying Mary Kay products from an elderly neighbor. I had no idea as to the company's questionable business practices until I read this story.

Over Christmas break, my parents who have been slammed by high gas and food prices, tried to sell us some Goji juice, as part of an online pyramid scheme -- an MLM business -- a friend hooked them on. They swore that the friend made hundreds of dollars simply by selling the juice to everyone he knew and making them salespeople as well. The juice, which was in a fancy glass bottle, cost $130 and tasted terrible.

I told my mom that pyramid schemes may be illegal, to please drop this business venture and that we would help them. She hasn't mentioned it since so I hope they got out. If it's too good to be true, it probably is. But that is an easy thing to overlook when you are facing a tough time.