Picking up on those Facebook games that ask others to describe you in three words, we imagined what our husbands might come up with if posed such a question. (Although Nicole cheated and actually asked hers. Maybe it's better left to our imaginations.) How would your significant other describe you? Which words would you prefer? Comment on our Facebook page.

E-mail accounts are getting out of hand, aren't they? It's so easy to start new ones, and then all of a sudden you're checking all over the place and missing mail because you forgot passwords. We checked in today to count up how many accounts we've accumulated, and how much in need of consolidation we are. Share your own e-mail overload on our Facebook page.

The Tony Awards is this Sunday (go Hamilton!) and we'll be live-tweeting the ceremony and probably some red-carpet action beforehand. Since we have Twitter on our minds, we thought we'd share some of our favorite entertainment tweeters, in case like us you get an appreciable amount of your pop culture by reading tweets about it. Among those mentioned:

Hamilton: Especially @Lin_Manuel, but also @LacketyLac, @ChrisisSingin, @DaveedDiggs, @leslieodomjr, @Anthony_Ramos1, @OakSmash, @phillipasoo, @reneeelisegolds

Pop Culture Happy Hour: @nprmonkeysee, @ghweldon, @idislikestephen

Extra Hot Great: @taraariano, @tomatonation

Writers: @sepinwall, @TheFienPrint, @fuggirls

Actors: @joshmalina, @mindykaling

Too many handles to handle? Just follow Terri's entertainment list for all these and more.

After all that twittering, we checked in with So You Think You Can Dance (from which we would like to see no more bare-skin costumes, no more vomiting children, and no more dancing moms) and then moved on to our Parks and Recreation marathon, which this week included the Season 5 episodes "Bailout," "Partridge," "Animal Control," and "Article Two." For next week, we'll be finishing up Season 5 with "Jerry's Retirement," "Swing Vote," and "Are You Better Off?" Also, if you're following along on our West Wing watch coordinated to the West Wing Weekly podcast, watch "Lord John Marbury" for next week. And don't forget to follow us in our live-tweeting Sunday night!

When it comes to youth sports, it turns out that two of us were accomplished young athletes and two of us were clever shirkers of organized sports. Listen to find out who skied and skated and swam and who conscientiously defended the part of the soccer field with nobody in it, then share your own sporty exploits on our Facebook page.

Have you heard that food nutrition labels are changing, in ways that make them easier to read and somehow more judge-y about your devotion to PopTarts and Cheetos and Oreos. Do you welcome this nutritional kick in the pants, or will you be covering that box with your hand every time you pour yourself some Cap'n Crunch? Share your strategies on our Facebook page.

Pro podcasting tip from Terri: If you're trying to podcast and people can't seem to hear you, check the mute button on your microphone. It's that thing that's flashing in your face. After a false start due to self-made technical difficulties, we come to you without a scintillating eyebrow discussion but with some other topics of interest. Here's your road map to our conversation:

0:43 Intros and What's New With You — So we're a little slap-happy, but it's a Friday. What better time? (If Amanda's mention of slapsgiving makes you want to go watch How I Met Your Mother clips instead of listening to this podcast, we understand.

4:00 School Traditions — It's the time of year for graduations and field days and other events that schools schedule at the least convenient times possible just to stick it to working parents one last time.

14:31 Party Permutations — Speaking of celebrations, an article on "dadchelor" parties had us shaking our heads — dudes, just make the baby shower coed already. But it got us thinking of some more valid variations we could totally get behind.

22:18 Interview of the Week — Pediatric OT Meghan Corridan chatted with Catherine about manipulative toys. No, not toys that secretly manipulate you into buy more — they're talking Legos and all of the many alternatives.

35:52 Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda thinks you should all go buy her books The Everything Kids’ Learning Activities Book and On-the-Go Fun for Kids so you have a million things to do with your kids this summer AND keep them learning; Catherine has some "Summer Activities for Bored Kids" on her verywell site; Terri recommends taking a look at our Tumblr page for listening and looking at pullquotes; and Nicole has an article of interest on accommodations and modifications.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

As Amanda puts it, "We go from cozy to yummy to hip to really kind of scary" in our list of things we've won in raffles or tricky trays or other low-stakes games of chance. Have you won anything noteworthy or beloved? Comment on our Facebook page.

Sometimes we do things that embarrass our kids, and sometimes we just embarrass ourselves. But always, on the spur of the moment and with Mom adrenaline coursing through our veins, it seems like a good idea at the time. Have you done something silly for you kids (or "to you kids," as they may feel)? Share in the comments on our Facebook page.

This week's episode marks our transition from talking about Dancing With the Stars to talking about So You Think You Can Dance. But the first episode of the new kiddie version of the dance competition has us so disheartened and uncomfortable that we spend most of the podcast talking about the huge number of trailers we watched for upcoming fall and midseason TV series. We hope you like time travel, because that's the "designated completely random theme that a whole bunch of shows independently settled on" for this season. Also, apparently stay-at-home dads are still hi-larious, which makes us think somehow we've time-traveled into the past ourselves. If you'd like to take a look at what we're talking about, we followed the links to trailers from this Entertainment Weekly page, though you can play the winner for "Most Tear-Jerking/Least Comprehensible Trailer" above. Traveling back in time even further, we continued our Parks and Recreation marathon with the Season 5 episodes "Ann's Decision," "Emergency Response," "Leslie and Ben," and "Correspondent's Lunch." For those marathoning along with us, next week brings "Bailout," "Partridge," "Animal Control," and "Article Two."

News that Twitter is making some changes — hooray for graphics no longer taking up character space! — got us thinking of other improvements we'd like to see in our favorite succinct social-media source. If you have some improvements to recommend (or just want to co-sign our cry for editing capabilities), talk to us in the comments on our Facebook page.

We talked about Chewbacca Mom in this week's group chat, and one of the things we most related to is having your fun toys and other personal objects of value appropriated by your kids. So for today's Speed Round, we made our report of offenses against our personal property rights, including appropriated pens, cosmetics, and toiletries. Of course, disrespect for personal property can go both ways, right? If your kid's absconded with your stuff (or vice versa), tell us about it in the comments on our Facebook page.

A parent support group and a parent people can't stop laughing with inspired our topics this week. Here's a road map to our conversation for your fast-forwarding convenience.

00:35 Intros and What's New With You? — This week, we've been keeping busy not winning the Hamilton lottery, not being very successful at public speaking, and not remembering to keep our lengthy Facebook discussions to the hours when Nicole is awake.

05:43 How Important Is It for Your Kid to Have Friends? — And is it important to your kid, or to you? We consider the problem of kids having no friends, kids having the wrong friends, kids caring not enough about friends or too caring much, until really we all just have to lie down in a dark room with a wet rag over our eyes. It is too much.

15:36 Chewbacca Mom — Fortunately, the Internet erupted this week with just the right thing to cheer us up: a mom laughing with unbridled glee at the Chewbacca mask she bought entirely for herself. We wonder what it is that caught everyone's imagination about this thing, just how for real it is, and why we can't seem to go viral like that. C'mon, listeners! Do we need to put on masks for you?

26:52 Interview of the Week — Terri talked with Robert Rummel-Hudson about another thing with the potential to make parents either smile or lie down in a dark room: getting kids with special needs involved in extracurricular activities. The result is often a successful inclusion experience with large dollops of cringeworthy not-wonderfulness.

29:42 Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda has an article on "8 Multisensory Techniques for Teaching Reading"; Terri wants you to visit her blog Parenting Isn't Pretty, which may or may not have a new post today; Nicole shares a Q&A on inclusion; and Catherine recommends Fun Ways to Exercise With Your Kids and Family, which you should just think of as ways to play.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

With a former Californian, a transplanted Canadian, a Midwesterner, and a New Englander on our panel, we thought we'd see how our tastes range in terms of liking food hot and spicy. Let's just say we're not exactly passing the sriracha. Do you like it spicy, bland, or somewhere in between? Comment on our Facebook page.

Another season of Dancing With the Stars has pirouetted away, with our season-long favorite Nyle taking the mirror-ball trophy. We come to you one day late this week so we can talk all the dancing and fabulousness and blatant filler of the deluxe two-night finale. After a mention of a Kickstarter campaign to help the Deaf West production of Spring Awakening pay for its performance at the Tony Awards, we move on to Catherine's latest book-club book, The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon, which is more creepy than she expected (maybe a good thing for some folks, not for her). We skip over our weekly Parks and Recreation marathon because we just didn't have time to watch this week, but we did take in "The Short List," the episode of The West Wing covered by The West Wing Weekly last week, and chat about it a bit. For next week, the Season 5 Parks and Rec eps "Ann's Decision," "Emergency Response," "Leslie and Ben," and "Correspondents' Lunch" are still up, and "In Excelsis Deo" is the West Wing one to watch.

Which strikes more terror in your heart: wrangling kids through an airport and a plane flight, or being stuck with them in a car for hours upon hours? We consider family travel transportation on today's speed round, and it turns out we have a lot of caveats. Share your preferred conveyance on our Facebook page.

A discussion of favorite clothing reveals that we hang onto comfortable garments long after they have started to disintegrate; we buy in bulk when we find something we like; and all it takes is a pair of Converse sneakers to make old people cool. Do you have a piece of clothing you love, maybe even beyond all reason? Confess in the comments or on our Facebook page.

Naming a favorite book on the spur of the moment comes easy to three of us, who apparently have a lot of reading time on their hands, and not at all to one of us, who can only shamelessly self-promote her own work, and why not? If you can name your favored reading material just like that, tell us about it on our Facebook page.

Today, we're fretting about Facebook. Here's a road-map to our conversation so you can tune in where you like:

00:56 Intros and What's New With You — Catherine's traveling this week, and based on her recent flight, she can share a bit of human nature: If someone is removed from a flight due to a possible heart attack, fellow passengers will waste no time trying to claim the empty aisle seat. Meanwhile, Nicole has a bug guy coming to rid her home of black widows, so there's all sorts of life-and-death drama going on.

05:58 The Facebook Police — Used to be, moms would watch the neighborhood, and you always knew that if your kid was up to mischief, it would be handled and reported. For today's moms, the surveillance detail includes social media, but we haven't quite figured out yet what you do with that incriminating information. We discuss the merits of watching, ratting out, and maintaining blissful ignorance.

19:10 Big Day — Besides feeling the pressure to monitor other people's kids, we're feeling some Facebook heat to make a grand gesture for every birthday, anniversary, holiday, and who knows what-all. Is it allowable, Facebook etiquette mavens, to just blow it off, or does that make you a bad friend/spouse/child? How much time do you have to devote to finding old pictures and writing meaningful posts and feting every friend? We're beat.

30:45 Interview of the Week — Of course, sometimes kids take a break from social media to hit the playing field, and there's plenty of ways for parents to behave badly there too. Catherine interviews Janis Meredith, author of 11 Habits for Happy and Positive Sports Parents and the website JBM Thinks, about ways to stop doing those things you know you shouldn't be doing but just can't seem to find a way around.

42:08 Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda has a new blog post up called My Kids Have Both Learning and Attention Issues and Autism, and It's Complicated; Terri has an old behavior plan on her Mothers With Attitude site that she's stll proud of; Nicole has some great articles o her own at The Inclusive Class; and Catherine will have some new sports parenting articles up on her VeryWell site sometime soon.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Get-togethers are great, but would you rather have a full house or a few friends over? Does it depend on who has to clean, who has to cook, and who you might wind up having to talk to? Listen to hear our real-world socialization preferences, and comment about your own on our Facebook page.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. We've all worn shoes that remind us with every step that we've made a bad footwear decision. For today's Speed Round, we combed our anguished memories for the Worst. Shoes. Ever. Do you recall a pair of footwear you'd give that distinction? Share in the comments on our Facebook page.

So one of our final three Dancing With the Stars contestants is a big pile of meh as far as we're concerned, and one of the folks who went home is someone whose joy we enjoyed, but all things considered, it's not been a bad season under the mirror ball. We give our thoughts on this week's dances, wins, and losses, and look forward to next week's two days of finals (look for our podcast on Wednesday). We also continue our Parks and Rec marathon with the season-five episodes "Pawnee Commons," "Ron and Diane," "Two Parties," and "Women in Garbage"; watch "Enemies" along with the West Wing Weekly podcast; and work in a quick chat about the recent slaughter of not-yet-renewed shows and the way Lin-Manuel Miranda's Twitter presence is reinforcing all our worst procrastinating habits. If you're following along on our marathons (and not procrastinating), next week we'll be watching the Parks and Rec episodes "Ann's Decision," "Emergency Response," "Leslie and Ben," and "Correspondent's Lunch," and the West Wing episode "The Short List."

Though we don't watch soap operas anymore (unless you count Downton Abbey, which we do, or all the nighttime dramas that traffic in soap-opera tropes), we can all remember which ones we spent serious time with in our youth and young adulthood. Which soaps do you remember fondly? Share on our Facebook page.

After reading a news story on the return of The Match Game (hosted by Alec Baldwin), we decided to have a little quiz of our own on the topic of our favorite game shows. Do you have a game that always has you guessing along? Share on our Facebook page.

We're down one regular podcaster this week, as Amanda has no voice to speak of or speak with, but our old friend Katherine Lee, who writes about parenting for verywell.com, kindly stepped in to give us a fourth. Here's a road map to what we talked about for your fast-forwarding convenience:

01:15 Intros and What's New With You — We've been staying up late podcasting and cleaning up after dogs and watching PBS ... and now that we're up and ready to broadcast, we're interrupted by SOS calls from school. But we'll soldier on and chat as best we can.

5:33 School Transitions — One of the things we're chatting about is those transitions that don't get as much attention: the pre-K to K, K to 1st, and elementary to middle school jumps that are probably more meaningful for parents than kids. (Cue up Track 1 on our Cry Playlist if you need to.)

16:14 Spanking — How is spanking still a thing? As Katherine has written, new research is pretty resounding in the conclusion that spanking is both harmful and ineffective. We talk about why the message is not getting through and the things the Internet does to make research look unreliable. (Watch the John Oliver segment Katherine mentions.)

28:24 Interview of the Week — We don't have Amanda in person, but we have her in a prerecorded interview with her husband, Jon, who chats with us once a month on parenting kids with special needs. Today they're talking about time management — who's good at it, who's not, and the balancing of inattention and routine.

38:53 Shameless Self-Promotion — Katherine has articles on the spanking study and how to handle your child’s mistakes that will be up on verywell.com when verywell decides, “Oh, very well”; Terri has gone forth and tumblr'd again, this time with stuff the Internet needs; Nicole reminds us that we can still take her online course on inclusive education; and Catherine shares an article on what not to say to your sports kid.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Fantasize with us today about a world where you could afford a fabulous house ... a private jet ... an international lifestyle ... a cook to cater to your every whim ... even Hamilton tickets! What would you buy if you could buy anything? Comment on our Facebook page.

Mugs. Matchbooks. Mickey Mouse ears. Snowmen. "Tiny cups." Dust. These are just some of the things we've collected. Do you have a collection you're proud of — or just unable to part with? Comment on our Facebook page.

Dancing With the Stars is starting to get real -- well, not real, like having anything to do with real life, but real like people who you wish would stay around longer are being sent home. Catherine and Terri chat about this week's dances and gimmicks and hailstorm of 10s, and then move on to a more dignified competition — the Tony Awards — for which the nominations have recently been announced. Out of a large field of musicals and plays they've never seen, they're pretty excited for Hamilton, the cast album of which Terri has played so many times that her kids are about ready to take away her iPhone. Next, they continue their Parks and Recreation marathon with four season 5 episodes — "Sex Education," "Halloween Surprise," "Ben's Parents," and "Leslie vs. April" — and follow along with the West Wing Weekly podcast by watching and discussing Season 1's "The State Dinner." If you're watching along too, up next are Parks and Rec eps "Pawnee Commons," "Ron and Diane," "Two Parties," and "Women and Garbage," and the West Wing ep "Enemies."

What makes for a memorable college class? Getting to make things? Meeting famous authors? Sitting in a dark room watching slides? The opportunity to memorize a ridiculously lengthy poem? for today's Speed Round, we share some college classes we still remember as special. Which ones still stick in your head? Share on our Facebook page.

Inspired by a Tweet from Shonda Rhimes suggesting that 60 percent of people have slept holding their mobile phones, we thought we'd find out if that statistic held up with our Parenting Roundabout crew. Have you ever nestled down to sleep with your cell phone? Comment on our Facebook page.

From the land of noisy trucks, stalled construction projects, deadlines, and book-completion euphoria we come to you for our weekly chat. Here's a road map to our conversation:

0:48 Intros and What's New With You — Woohoo! Nicole finished her book! Let's pretend it won't be coming back to her soon with changes to deal with and just celebrate her newfound spare time!

4:22 Our Favorite Teachers — In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, we call out some educators who have particularly impressed us, both in our ancient days of going to school ourselves and in more recent years as teachers of our children. 

14:10 What We Really Want for Mother's Day — Spreading the appreciation around a little, Sunday is Mother's Day, and we've got some ideas as to what we'd really like to get. But is this anything we can actually tell our families? And would they be able to indulge us in that anyway?

22:06 Interview of the Week — Catherine chats with pediatric OT Meghan Corridan about transitioning kids from school to summer. Have you made your summer bucket list yet?

31:31 Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda shared an interview she did for the NH Children’s Trust “My Voice Matters” campaign; Terri channeled a comments-inspired tantrum into a blog post on the R-word; Nicole has more ideas on things parents should do before the school year ends; and Catherine has articles on her VeryWell site on having an active summer, keeping bored kids busy, and preventing summer weight gain.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Don't be calling us hoarders! That there is an heirloom! Even if it does look like an ancient typewriter, or a dusty teapot, or a grizzly-bear part. Show some respect! And tell us all about your family heirlooms, in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

Summer movie season will soon be upon us, or at least those of us who haven't replaced "catch the newest release in the theaters!" with "Netflix and chill." We have a hard time getting our enthusiasm up, so maybe we need to hear from you: What should we be excited about this summer? Comment here or on our Facebook page.

On this week's entertainment-themed Round 2, Catherine and Terri chatted about the latest episode of Dancing With the Stars and Icons and Easily Confused Paddle-Wielders; continued their Parks and Rec marathon with Season 4 closer "Win Lose or Draw" and Season 5 openers "Ms. Knope Goes to Washington," "Soda Tax," and "How a Bill Becomes a Law"; and suppressed their iTunes review envy to watch the West Wing season one ep "Mr. Willis of Ohio" with the West Wing Weekly podcast. Listen along, and if you want to marathon with us next week, we'll be discussing the P&R eps "Sex Education," "Halloween Surprise," "Ben's Parents," and "Leslie vs. April," and the WW ep "The State Dinner."

Is it getting kids to brush teeth, finding lost items, forcing breakfast consumption, general sloooooowness, or getting your own lazy butt out of bed? Listen to our morning challenges and then confess your own in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

A few months ago, when Terri was engaged in her annual Lenten coffee fast, we chatted about things we could give up for a while if we knew we'd get 'em back. Today, we go hard-core and talk about things we'd have the hardest time giving up forever, and while in truth the answer would certainly be our families and maybe also wifi, that's not where our heads went in the moment. Listen to find out what immediately came to mind, and share your own never-give-it-up stuff in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

Through snow and carpooling and book finishing and bad parenting karma we struggled to bring you this group chat. Here's our road-map of what we discussed, for your fast-forwarding convenience:

0:44 Intros and What's New With You — Nicole is chewing her toast during our podcast, not chewing her toes. An important distinction.

2:19 Keeping Caregivers Informed — When we heard about Little Peanut on the Go, an app that facilitates sharing of information with babysitters and other caregivers (including grandparents, if they're app-friendly), it got us thinking about how we communicated with our kids' sitters back in the dark ages when you had to rely on whiteboards and didn't have to worry about wifi.

14:44 Keeping Schools Informed — Speaking of the free flow of information, how come schools still send you home 100 pieces of paper at the start of the school year? Shouldn't we be able to fill out forms online? And get texts and e-mails instead of handouts? And act like our kids are going to school in the 21st century? Is there an app for that?

26:55 Interview of the Week — From caregivers and schools, we move on to communicating with doctors in a chat with author and blogger Robert Rummel-Hudson about the relationships parents of kids with special needs form with our kids' doctors and specialists. (Warning: that all goes away when they become adults, alas.)

39:15 Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri mentioned a blog post about Parenting Karma; Amanda shared a colleague's infographic on the Anatomy of an Effective Email to Your Child’s Teacher; Catherine introduced the transition of her About.com site to Verywell; and ... have you heard Nicole is writing a book? It's got her kind of preoccupied. We also thanked those who've been shamelessly promoting us with iTunes stars and reviews, especially Maos and SusieMein. Keep those kudos coming, please!

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

The work being done on one of Catherine's bathrooms has made a cameo appearance on a few of our podcasts, between the noise and the reflecting on Bluetooth ceiling fans. Will the rest of us be providing similar accompaniment? Listen to our home project plans and add your own in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

Middle names: we've all got 'em, but unless you're filling out a form or your mother is mad at you, they don't get used that much. We thought we'd have a chat about what our particular middle names are and whether they mean anything more than something our parents came up with just to, well, fill out a form. If your middle name has a story, share it in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

On this week's entertainment-themed podcast, Catherine and Terri wonder why people can't just dance on a dancing show, who should be cast in Catherine's latest book-club book, when Leslie Knope's council campaign will ever be over, and why we can't all age like Rob Lowe. Want to fast-forward through some of that? Here's your guide:

0:26: Dancing With the Stars — It's Iconic Dances Night, and it's pretty clear that they're using "iconic dances" with the same air quotes as "stars." 

14:52 Catherine's Book Club Report — Catherine read The Art of Crash Landing by Melissa DeCarlo and gives us a quick review.

19:56 Parks and Recreation Marathon — This week, we discussed the Season 4 episodes "Lucky," "Live Ammo," "The Debate," and "Bus Trip." Up next week: "Win, Lose, or Draw," "Ms. Knope Goes to Washington," "Soda Tax," and "How a Bill Becomes a Law." Watch along with us!

27:37 The West Wing — We're watching along with The West Wing Weekly podcast and discuss "The Crackpots and These Women" right along with them. Up next: "Mr. Willis of Ohio."

Sure, it's fashionable to diss fast food as fatty and non-nutritious, but that doesn't stop us from wanting a really gross cheeseburger from time to time. Where do you go when you've just gotta have some fries, some tacos, some 1,000-calorie salad? Find out our fast-food faves and share your own in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

Hey, look alive! This podcast is too short to be boring. But we do talk about boring things in it — specifically, the things that make us bored. Like uni-tasking. Listening to people talk. Watching other people's video games. Sitting still. If you're still awake when we're done, tell us what bores you in the comments here or on our Facebook page..

Since carpooling schedules so often interfere with our efforts to schedule podcast recording times, we thought we'd take some time today to talk about carpooling instead of doing it, and throw in some thoughts about other things we remember from our long-ago childhoods. Here's a road-map of our conversation:

01:12 Intros and What's New With You — Does the five-second rule apply to licking up delicious things you've accidentally dripped onto your electronic devices? Discuss.

02:57 Carpooling (or Unpaid Uber) — While Catherine does more carpooling than the rest of us combined, we all have traumatic stories to share about driving carpool now or riding in carpool then.

14:53 Those Were the Days — Thoughts of being squished in the backseat with kids you don't like got us remembering more pleasant things about childhood, like eating disgusting food and spending money on silly things and reading all day and generally having no responsibilities at all.

24:46 Interview of the Week — An experience with an apparently unsavory book and a determination to get kids to read no matter what inspired Catherine and Terri to use this week's segment for a little chat on whatever works. Listen to more of their conversations on pop culture on Parenting Roundabout Round 2.

35:28 Shameless Self-Promotion — Catherine has an article for you carpool fanatics on dealing with dinnertime when you're never home for dinnertime; Terri has rescued her old "Love Notes for Special Parents" messages and given them a home on her Mothers With Attitude site; Amanda suggests grabbing her book On-the-Go Fun for Kids and bringing it on your next carpool adventure; and Nicole invites you to visit her Instagram account.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Given the convenience of online correspondence, we're getting less and less interested in dealing with paper and envelopes. Is snail mail still a major part of your friend-contacting and bill-paying? And if so, can you lend us a stamp?

When teens and young adults have setbacks in getting a job or keeping a job or tolerating a job, parents need some sage advice to help them stay the course and understand that this is what it's like to be a grown-up, kid. But maybe you need something a little more meaningful than that? We share some words of work wisdom, and welcome yours in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

We've got four shows to discuss on this week's entertainment episode of Parenting Roundabout. In case you want to fast-forward over stuff you don't watch or care about, here's a road map through the episode:

0:27 Dancing With the Stars — It was Switch-Up Night on DWTS, and also "Can't anybody do their dang job?" night, as pros failed to choreograph their assigned dances, judges forgot how to hold up the correct paddle, and producers forgot that if you don't even pretend that the scores aren't predetermined, people are going to catch on.

11:54 The People v. O. J. Simpson — So we're a little late in following up on Catherine's initial review of this with a final opinion on the whole thing, but we no longer live in a pop-culture environment where time has meaning, right?

16:19 Parks and Recreation marathon — Our viewing continues with the Season 4 episodes "Operation Ann," "Dave Returns," "Sweet Sixteen," and "Campaign Shake-Up," continuing the generally campaign-centric second half of the season that Terri feels decidedly meh about. The campaigning continues in our episodes for next week, "Lucky," "Live Ammo," "The Debate," and "Bus Tour."

22:35 The West Wing — We're also watching episodes of The West Wing to keep up with the new West Wing Weekly podcast, and so we took a moment here at the end of our ep to chat about "Five Votes Down" and look enthusiastically forward to next week's "The Crackpots and These Women."

We're all lucky enough to work at home, as freelancers or remote-based workers, and that's all kinds awesome when it comes to being able to wear comfortable clothes and tend to your kids and record podcasts. But do we ever miss anything about an actual defined workplace that we could go to and come home from? Listen to our list of things we still long for a little, and share what you miss or would miss in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

It's no secret that the four of us spend way too much time hanging out on the Internet, enjoying the excellent procrastination opportunities that social media affords us. But what about our spouses? Are they similarly Internet-friendly? Or are they resolutely unplugged? We give our answers and you can too, in the comments here or on our Facebook page..

Can parents ever stop worrying? Ever, ever, ever? And should we be worrying about not having friends to worry with? And why does Catherine's bathroom fan need bluetooth? These and other questions occupy us on this week's Parenting Roundabout group chat. Here's a road map of our conversation:

0:54 Introduction and What's New With You — As you may hear from the periodic pounding in the background while we were recording, Catherine's having some work done in her house. And it turns out the reason you need bluetooth in the bathroom fan is because it has speakers in it. We live in an age of wonders.

5:44: Is There a Parenting Finish Line? — A tragic story from Terri's old hometown got us thinking about the fact that you can never stop worrying about your kids, no matter how much you want to. Is there ever a moment where your child is successfully delivered to adulthood and you can retire from parenting? We'd like to think so, but we have our doubts we'll ever break that tape.

15:53 Friends IRL — As four friends who met online and mostly interact there, we wonder whether non-virtual friendship is something people still do ... and why, since you've probably already read everything your friend has to say on Facebook.

28:24 Interview of the Week — Amanda called in sick to the podcast last week, and this week she chats with her husband, Jon, about that particular parental hell of having the entire family sick at the same time. Of course, having kids with special needs only up the degree of difficulty.

38:57 Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri shared a blog post on "Inclusion's Chris Traeger Problem"; Amanda has some parent-child behavior contracts for you; Catherine wrote about adventure parks; and Nicole is promoting an online course for people who want to say yes to inclusion and mean it.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

When things aren't going well, sometimes all you need is a little chocolate to make things right. Or a pedicure. Or maybe a latte? We share our go-to feel-better strategies on today's Speed Round. (And if you didn't get the Tom Haverford reference, this YouTube clip will explain. Seems like maybe you need to join our Round 2 Parks and Recreation marathon, too.) Share what cheers you up in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

The Internet is all about the should, and goodness knows we try to be trendy, so when Catherine saw a Tweet from About.com Health that asked, "Name one healthy food you know you should eat, but you just don't like the way it tastes,” she thought that would be a fine Speed Round question too. Is there something healthy you abhor? Comment here or on our Facebook page.

On this week's entertainment episode of Parenting Roundabout, we've got four things to talk about. In case you want to fast-forward over stuff you don't watch or care about, here's a road map through the episode:

0:30: Dancing With the Stars — It was Disney week, which meant lots of princesses, cool costumes and props, 8s and 9s all over the place, and Nyle in a loincloth shaking his butt at the camera. So a satisfying night all around, then.

11:20: Zootopia — Catherine went to a movie! Specifically, Disney's latest animated offering. She and the 11-year-olds she went with give it a thumbs up.

17:24: Our Parks and Recreation marathon — Up this week: the Season 4 episodes "Citizen Knope," "The Comeback Kid," "Campaign Ad," and "Bowling for Votes." For next week, join us in watching "Operation Ann," "Dave Returns," "Sweet Sixteen," and "Campaign Shakeup."

24:20: The West Wing Watch We've been watching Season 1 of The West Wing along with the West Wing Weekly Podcast, and the most recent episode was "A Proportional Response."

Apologies for the background noise partway through. Catherine has learned her lesson not to sit under an air vent.

Yesterday we talked about our clutter problems in our actual physical homes, but what about clutter on that desk that lives your computer screen? Is it buried under icons or emptier than any real surface in your house could ever be? Listen to our desktop confessions and then tell us about your desktop in the comments or on our Facebook page.

Mold? Mildew? Clutter? Dust? What aspect of housekeeping causes you the most trouble? Wipe off your computer screen, clean the lint out of your mouse, and press play. Then tell us what housekeeping you hate most in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

Appropriately for an episode on which we discuss illness, we have a podcaster down this week with laryngitis. We miss you, Amanda! And we've all done our best to talk more to fill your shoes. Here's a road map through our conversation.

0:49: Intros and What's New With You — Maybe you've heard, Nicole is writing a book? And writing and writing. And stressing. And blaming Terri and Amanda for not warning her. Which we totally did.

5:31: Parental Pride — A new survey from TIME For Kids and KidsHealth.org tells us that children who feel their parents are proud of them more often have positive relationships with their parents and exhibit more positive behavior traits. We took that survey as a jumping-off point for a chat on whether saying “I’m proud of you!” is the answer to all our parenting problems, whether it's okay to say "I'm proud of you!" to a grown-up, and whether we believe in surveys anyway. We're proud of you for making it through the podcast this far!

16:26: Sick Days — Something we're not so proud of is the way we have drastically misinterpreted our kids' actual significant health emergencies, from appendicitis to ulcers to a broken wrist. Sometimes, apparently, "Stop complaining and go to school!" is not, in fact, the right answer. We're proud of our kids for somehow still being alive.

27:52: Interview of the Week — In honor of spring finally being here (maybe ... is that snow in the forecast?), we're replaying an interview Catherine did last year with pediatric OT Meghan Corridan on the importance of outdoor play and some good ways to make it happen.

39:47: Shameless Self-Promotion— Nicole's too busy writing something that she will eventually shamelessly self-promote (have we mentioned that she's writing a book? She is!) to shamelessly self-promote now, but Terri mentioned her Special Needs News Twitter account @SNNewsTweets and Catherine shared a fun piece on how to get more out of playground visits.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

In our years of podcasting together, we've learned a lot about each other, but we've never talked about where we're from -- not California and Wisconsin and New Jersey and Maine, where we live now, but where our families came from before that, and our spouses' families. Listen to our family heritage and share yours in the comments here or on our Facebook page. Were our ancestors neighbors?

How do you start off your day? With bacon and eggs? Cereal with milk? Or just cooooffffeeee? On today's Speed Round, we share how we handle that opening meal, and how disturbing we find others' choices. Share your own morning menu in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

Dancing With the Stars Week 3 involved the "stars" recalling and dancing to something at least vaguely related to their most memorable year. Sometimes the connection was strong, as with Kim Fields's The Facts of Life dance, and sometimes not so much, as with Von Miller celebrating his recent Super Bowl win with a song that makes Terri think of Miami Vice, a show that was on so long ago there were phone booths. The removal of a phone booth was significant to one of Terri's most memorable Parks and Recreation scenes, as the vacant patch of concrete it left behind became the site of an adorable little park and the adorable reunion of Ben and Leslie in "Smallest Park," one of our P&R marathon episodes for this week along with "End of the World," "The Treaty," and "The Trial of Leslie Knope" (click links for more memorable scenes). Finally, we checked in with the West Wing episode "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc" and the West Wing Weekly Podcast episode that discussed it. (If you're keeping up with our Parks marathon, next up are Season 4's "Citizen Knope," "The Comeback Kid," "Campaign Ad," and "Bowling for Votes.")

Apologies for some technical glitches and basically inferior sound. Our podcast editor is on vacation, and this is what you get with unskilled labor.

Travel with us back to the '70s, when Terri wore crushed velvet hot pants and Amanda blended in with her couch. Or to the days when ladies wore hats, or way back to when men wore high heels (although come to think of it, that could be the '70s too). Or look around right now, where short short short shorts are a thing but perfectly comfortable jeans shorts are dissed. We're all about the fashion or lack thereof this week. Share the trends you'd like to see again or never again in the comments or on our Facebook page.

Netflix is making it all too easy to watch our favorite grown-up fare from the comfort of our own sleep-inducing couches, so maybe that's why we have not exactly been keeping up on the latest flicks in the theaters unless they're children's movies, blockbusters, or the ... third Hunger Games? Fourth? It's hard to keep track, isn't it? Whether you are a regular theatergoer or a slacker like us, share your most recent viewing in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

Speaking of peer pressure, among the things we've pressured one or the other of us to do this week are get up super-early, tell lies, and figure out something we've done that's worth sharing. But parent-to-parent peer pressure is a topic for another week. Here's a roadmap to what we talked about this time around:

0:32: What's New With You? — As we recorded this, Nicole was a day removed from yet another act of violence in her California community, Catherine was dealing with cross-country-traveling kids, Terri was worried that maybe she accidentally hit the mute button on her mic, and Amanda was coping with non-snowy snow days.

3:46: Peer Pressure — And of course, every day is a good day to worry about other kids pressuring our kids to do stupid and dangerous things. And, come to think of it, our kids pressuring other kids to do stupid and dangerous things. Let's everybody just do what feels safe for you, okay?

17:23: Two Truths and a Lie — Since this podcast drops on April Fool's Day, it seemed like a good time to play some tricks of our own. Each of us took a turn telling two true things about ourselves and one false one, and letting our fellow podcasters guess the fib. Play along at home!

27:01: Interview of the Week — Terri chatted with Robert Rummel Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster and blogger at Fighting Monsters With Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, about those teenage milestones that we both long for our kids with special needs to accomplish and fear deeply that they will. Driver's license, anyone?

39:36: Shameless Self-Promotion — So maybe we don't have anything specific to promote this time around. You should still seek out Amanda's work at understood.org, Catherine's at About.com Family Fitness, Nicole's at The Inclusive Class, and Terri's at Mothers With Attitude. Terri also wants you to check out the West Wing Weekly podcast, if that sounds like your thing, and a quote she loved from a Fortune profile of Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Whiteboards are trouble, y'all.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

We talked recently about giving your children constructive criticism, and since one of the topics that causes tension for many moms and daughters is makeup, we asked ourselves today whether there are cosmetological philosophical differences in our households. Do you have strong feelings about makeup? Comment here or on our Facebook page.

Even in these days of endless Internet distractions and Netflix, we try to make time to read actual books now and then. And what's on our e-readers and audiobook-players and night tables at the moment? Here's a short list of what we're reading now and next:

+ The Rosie Effect and The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
+ The Murderer's Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman
+ All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
+ The Art of Crash Landing by Melissa DeCarlo
+ The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins
+ You Look Like That Girl by Lisa Jakub

Are you reading anything more tha Facebook posts at the moment? Share your own current reading list here or on our Facebook page.

For this week's Round 2, we not only watched the Parks and Recreation episode that introduced Donna and Tom's annual day of self-indulgence (it's the best day of the year!), but we treated ourselves to another sparkly episode of Dancing With the Stars and topped it off with an ever-so-satisfying West Wing pilot rewatch inspired by our new favorite podcast, West Wing Weekly. Treat yo self to a half hour of listening to our opinions, and then treat us to your own thoughts in the comments here or on our Facebook page. And if you're watching along on our Parks and Rec marathon, cue up four of Terri's favorites for next week: the awesome little Ben-and-Leslie arc of "End of the World," "The Treaty," "Smallest Park," and "The Trial of Leslie Knope."

On today's Speed Round, we share those silly little traditions our families have built that make us unique, from punning together to guessing celebrity birthdays to including the dog in group hugs. What weird little things does your family do? Confess in the comments or on our Facebook page.

In an earlier Speed Round, we talked about what exactly we haul our stuff around in, but now it's time to take a closer look at the stuff itself, including extra fast-food napkins, multiplying tubes of lip balm, and emergency granola bars. What do you never leave home without? Comment here or on our Facebook page.

We'd love to give this episode some sort of click-baity title like "10 Ways to Give Your Kids Constructive Criticism That They'll Really Listen To," but we're afraid we haven't exactly figured that out yet ourselves. (Have you? Do tell!) Instead, we lament our failures in that area as well as other things that freak us out. Here's your road map through our conversation:

1:28: What's New With You — Nicole's book-writing is coming to the end of the "Hurry up and write it, we need immediately!" phase, and moving soon into the "What? Oh, yeah, that's in the queue. We'll let you know when anything's going to happen with that" phase.

3:44: What Scares You? — Fear of book deadlines is pretty rational. Fear of losing your temper in an embarrassing way? Rational enough. Fear of flying? Fear of bats in the house? Yeah, you may have a point. Fear of being in a swimming pool alone because of Jaws? All right, now you're just being silly. (Nicole's got a $10 bet riding on whether someone else shares that fear, though, so if you're not afraid to admit to such a thing, step on up.)

12:52: Now, Don't Take This the Wrong Way — Aw, who are we kidding. There's no way our kids are ever going to take our well-intentioned observations as anything but proof that we hate them and everything they do. Even when we mean well, and it's important, and other people are going to judge them, and there are social and physical consequences, it doesn't matter. It's all bad ...

27:45: Our Comeuppance — ... and we know that because we are also daughters, and we have also heard our share of motherly commentary, and we have also resented the heck out of it. For proof, we submit a segment of an episode from last year in which we made the very same complaints our daughters would be making now if they had their own podcasts.

35:56: Shameless Self-Promotion — But because we do actually know a thing or two, we pass on some sites you may want to check out: Amanda suggests an article on 9 Tips for Having Difficult Conversations With Your Partner, Terri points out that you can find our colorful pull-quotes on Canva.com, Nicole continues to recommend her online workshop, and Catherine invites you to find About Family Fitness on Facebook and also read an article about how to talk to your teen about weight issues.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Nicole's son is going to Japan for an internship, and it made us wonder where we'd like to go if we could go anywhere. Europe? Asia? South America? A remote mountain cabin that somehow still has wifi? Listen to our dream destinations, and share yours in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

We've talked about our kids' extracurricular activities, but today we see if we have some music lessons in our past. We've got history with the flute, clarinet, piano, organ, and voice. Time to get a band together and go on the road? Tell us what instrument you can contribute in the (sometimes unreliable) comments here or on our Facebook page.

Dancing With the Stars is back! And the season is actually looking promising. We're happy to see the return of Len, not so happy to see the return of Mark's ridiculous hair stylings, but overall encouraged by a field with no obvious ringers and few obvious train-wrecks. Our early money is on Nyle and Wanya, but there are plenty of dancers we're happy to see in action.

Meanwhile, on our continuing Parks and Recreation marathon, we watched "Road Trip," "The Bubble," "Li'l Sebastian," and "I'm Leslie Knope" and said hello to Entertainment 7/20, Ron's first ex-wife Tammy, and Rob Lowe's unfortunate haircut; goodbye to Li'l Sebastian; and hello and goodbye to Ben and Leslie as a couple (if only for the moment). On the agenda for next week are the Season 4 episodes "Ron and Tammys," "Born and Raised," "Pawnee Rangers," and "Meet and Greet."

Finally, we mentioned another marathon we're going to be going on courtesy of another podcast -- West Wing Weekly, on which Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway will be watching WW episodes one by one and talking about them, sometimes with guests. While we won't be doing a full-on chat about the eps, since we'll both be watching and listening, we'll probably have a thing or two to say here too. Why not watch/listen along?

It's always spring break somewhere this time of year, and that means it's time for family travel, whether to a fun location or to all the appointments you crammed into the week. Today we share our stories of spring break adventure, and ... wow, Nicole totally wins. Share your own best family spring break in the comments here work) or on our Facebook page.

Amanda's been traveling for work, as is her tendency, and she's developed a certain sequence of activities when she enters her new "home" for a night or two. She was curious about whether the rest of us had such routines, and it should surprise no one that what came first to our minds was plugging in our Internet-connecting devices. What do you do after checking in? Comment here if you can or on our Facebook page..

If you notice that we seem to be talking VERY LOUDLY in today's podcast, it may be that we're all just sittin' too close to our mics, or it may be that today's topics bring out the rant in us. In real life, we cringe silently; in podcast life, we get our yell on. Here's a road map to what's riling us up this week.

00:48: Intros and What's New With You -- It doesn't help that most of us need a nap. Yet we soldier on, podcasting through our hacking coughs, headaches, neck aches, Daylight Saving jet lag, epic carpool hangover, sleep deprivation, and deadline stress. Would have maybe been a good week for some nice, quiet, friendly topics.

03:20: Being Embarrassed by Other Parents — Instead, we start out talking about those parents, the ones who ruin it for everyone, the ones who are the reason we can't have nice things, the ones that make us want to wear a T-shirt that says, "The opinions of other parents are not shared by me," or maybe, "I'm not with stupid." What can we do, besides passive-aggressively snark and eyeroll?

14:39: Nude Selfies? Yikes! — And speaking of mortifying things we feel powerless against, we now have to worry about our kids sending out naked pictures of themselves, or seeing naked pictures of their friends (or Kim Kardashian), or finding naked pictures on their teacher's phone, or having such a bad body image that they feel unfit to take naked pictures ... could people stop making parenting teen girls even MORE complicated, please?

27:57: Interview of the Week — All right, calm down. Grandparenting expert Susan Adcox is here to talk about families and sports, and although you might expect a grandparent to get snappy about the way parents today do things, she's actually quite supportive of our drive to be at every single sports event every one of our kids participate in.

39:47: Shameless Self-Promotion — And now, for the kind of shamelessness we can get behind: Terri touts the Round 2 entertainment podcasts she does with Catherine, on which they'll be covering a new season of Dancing With the Stars while continuing a Parks and Recreation marathon; Amanda shares 4 Hard Questions I Asked Myself After the 2016 LDA Conference; Catherine has advice on What Not to Feed Your Child Before They Play Sports; and Nicole really wants you to take her online workshop.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Update: The story about the teacher was in South Carolina, not North Carolina, and the kid who stole the picture has since been arrested, which as parents of teens who sometimes do stupid things does not necessarily make us feel better.

Not only is St. Patrick's Day this month, as Nicole says in our intro, but if we've counted correctly when loading these mini-podcasts, it is This Very Day! Happy St. Patrick's Day to ya, then, and answer us this: "Do you feel lucky? Well, do you?" Comment here (if you're fortunate enough to find the comments feature working for you) or on our Facebook page.

Sometimes, it's a project like a chocolate taste test, or a well-thought-out Ellis Island simulation, or a living museum, or something that brings delicious sugar cubes into your home. And sometimes, school projects just ain't that creative. We share some of our favorites, if we can think of any, on today's speed round, and would love to hear what your kids' schools are doing. Comment here, if it works, or on our Facebook page.

On this week's Round 2, we had three — count 'em, three! — topics, and in case you're only interested in one or two of them, we thought we'd provide you with a little fast-forwarding guide:

0:27: Dancing With the Stars — We talk about the cast for Season 22, who will hit the dance floor on March 21.

11:58: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr — Catherine read this 500-page tome for her book club and then was not able to attend, so we thought she could get a chance to talk about it somewhere.

18:23: Parks and Recreation marathon — Up for discussion today are the Season 3 episodes "Soulmates," "Jerry's Painting," "Eagleton," and "The Fight."

Next week, we'll start bringing you DWTS recaps and continue with four more Parks and Recreation eps: Season 3's "Road Trip," "The Bubble," and "Li'l Sebastian," plus the Season 4 opener "I'm Leslie Knope."

Need some ideas for a great new baby gift? Amanda, Nicole, and Catherine have got your back. Terri? Well, maybe you can give some ideas to her. Share your go-to baby gifts in the comments here if they work, or on our Facebook page.

Those of us who live in a place where you spring forward did so yesterday (and if you didn't, surprise! That's why you're late for everything today). There's certainly lost sleep and dark mornings to complain about, but when asked what's good about daylight savings time, we all turned out to have the same answer (even the dog). Do you have strong feelings about DST? Comment here if you can, or on our Facebook page.

None of us is podcasting from her car this week, and it's a good thing, because judging from our conversation, that's the least of the trouble Nicole might get into. Here's a road map to our actual non-automated conversation, in which we try to stay in our lane and only honk at people we're unlikely to see in real life.

0:40: Introductions and What's New With You? — As we prepare to podcast today, we're spilling tea on ourselves, tearing ourselves away from romance novels, preparing to meet people we've only known virtually, and being amazed that it's raining in Southern California. (Break out the hot chocolate!)

5:23: What's Your Driving Personality? — Terri remembers a Disney short about driving from her high-school years (that is indeed on YouTube), and its Jeckyll and Hyde storyline isn't too far removed from what we feel when we get behind the wheel. Only a touch of the road rage, so as not to scare the children, but boy, could we go for some full-fledged lose-your-bleep catharsis.

16:25 Our Favorite (and Least Favorite) Social Media Sites — We're all about the social media, yo, but some spots are more comfy than others. Do you prefer text-based services like Twitter and Facebook, or visual patchworks like Pinterest or Instagram? Do you tumbl or SnapChat? Do you believe that there are now college courses in social media, and do you feel like you could use one? See how we come down on these important questions of the day.

26:10 Interview of the Week — Most parents would be happy for their kids to put down their social-media devices and get a job already, but for parents of kids with special needs, that's complicated. We talk with Robert Rummel Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster and blogger at Fighting Monsters With Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, about that transition where our kids start wanting to work but employers (and parents) aren't quite ready to deal.

38:52: Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri shares a blog post about cameras in the classrooms that maybe she still hasn't quite written; Amanda has a blog post on the documentary 2e: Twice Exceptional; Nicole is excited about an upcoming online inclusive education course; and Catherine offers some spring activities for family fun.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

We all ended up as writers, but today we talk about the roads not taken, and how we did not indeed become lawyers, geologists, or medical researchers. Did you have childhood ambitions that never came to pass (thank goodness, maybe)? Leave your youthful dreams in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

Valentine's Day was not quite a month ago, and maybe we're still in the mood for love, because our thoughts today are turning to how our husbands popped the question. Our stories may not be full of romance-novel tropes, but hey, they worked for us. Listen to our tales (plus one "no comment"), and if you've got a good one of your own, leave it in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

Aw, buck up there, Downton Abbey fans! You'll always have recaps and discussion boards and blog posts and podcast episodes like this one to nourish your obsession going forward. We stayed up late on Sunday so that Catherine could discuss the end of one of her favorite shows while the loss was still fresh. Then we moved on to our four episodes of Parks and Recreation for the week — "Indianapolis," "Harvest Festival," "Camping," and "Andy and April's Fancy Party" — which like the end of Downton, also included a wedding, though one significantly less formal. Want to join in our Parks and Rec watch now that you have a whole extra hour on Sundays? Next up are the Season 3 episodes "Soulmates," "Jerry's Painting," "Eagleton," and "The Fight." Those episodes include romantic mishaps, cultural snobbery, disapproving upper-crusters, and runaway alcohol consumption, so, just like your British show then!

Watching Rattled and Married by Mom and Dad with her daughter made Terri wonder if we couldn't come up with some better ideas for reality shows than that. Listen to our proposals for reality TV about IEPs, Canadian immigrants, skate moms, and neurons gone wild, and share your own ideas in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

In the wake of recording delays caused by Amanda declaring she had a free day and immediately having that day fill up with commitments, we chat about those things we never say for fear of jinxing ourselves, the bits of wisdom we cling to, and the things we must constantly say to prevent bad things from happening. Superstitious much? Share your beliefs and habits on our Facebook page.

Oh, hello. We're interrupting Nicole's paying of bills to bring you this podcast, on which we talk about other painful topics, like exercise and life without wifi. Aw, c'mon, join us, it's okay. We promise plenty of laughter with those tears. Here's a roadmap of our conversation.

0:58: Intros and What's New With You — Nicole may be paying her bills as we podcast, but Terri and Amanda are working hard to ignore their large piles of tax-preparaton documents.

5:00: What Type of Exercise Can You Stand to Do? — Well, we like to walk ... and do yoga maybe ... but mostly walk ... does sprinting across an airport count? ... and also walking on treadmills. Walking's good! So is a review by Catherine of Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin, which may help you understand your personal exercise habits or lack thereof.

15:28: What Can Your Family Not Do Without? — Wifi, of course. That's obvious. Electricity for charging things. But also books. Distractions. Routine. Heated seats. Goofy dogs. Canadian food? Yes.

22:50: Interview of the Week — Catherine talks to pediatric occupational therapist Meghan Corridan about drawing your child into drawing, using tools like Ed Emberley's book Goody Gumdrops and the apps Dipdap and Draw Along with Stella and Sam.

34:22: Shameless Self-Promotion — Catherine shares her whole entire website, About.com Family Fitness, which is full of exercise ideas; Terri plugs our Round 2 Parks and Recreation marathon and her new tumblrs IEP-izeit, Too Old for Cool., and, hey, Parenting Roundabout; Nicole touts our new Instagram account @prpodcast (which in fact appears as all lower case on Instagram and therefore does not require you to think of us as an oddcast); and Amanda shares the three-part series PlayerFM did about us cool and wise women.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Recently, Amanda got to go to Universal Studios in Orlando and experience Harry Potter World for the first time. It made us wonder, what other fictional world would you like to visit? Something from fantasy? Something romantic? Something out of Stephen King? Listen to our picks and share yours in the comments or on our Facebook page.

Inspired by last week's Speed Round question about how SFW our music collections are, we chatted today about that one particular song we can't get enough of that our families can't turn off fast enough, including a certain Record of the Year and a song that inspires dancing. What song are you alone in your appreciation of? Share in the comments here or on our Facebook page.

We started this week's entertainment podcast with a look at this year's extremely lengthy Oscar ceremony -- the speeches, the dresses, the atrocious choices in music cues, the Girl Scout cookies, the presenter who should have to go sit in show-bis time-out for a good long while, and the attendee who appears to have had the best time at the ceremony, from the red carpet on. (For more of our Oscars impressions, view our live-tweet.)

From one marathon to another, we continue with our viewing and discussing of Parks and Recreation episodes, this week taking on "Flu Season" (one of Terri's favorite eps), "Time Capsule," "Ron and Tammy: Part II," and "Media Blitz." If you're watching along (and why aren't you?), next week we'll be chatting about "Indianapolis," "Harvest Festival," "Camping," and "Andy and April's Fancy Party."

A slideshow on the Parenthood site listing "28 Reasons Children of the 70s Should All Be Dead" reminded us of the pre-safety days of our '60s and '70s youth when seatbelts and helmets and good sense weren't as much a requirement as they are today. What did you do as a kid that would horrify parents? Confess in the comments or on our Facebook page.

After Amanda expressed some disdain on Facebook for Lego's new lumberjack/hipster/stay-at-home dad minifig, we thought maybe we could help the toy manufacturer out with some better ideas. Listen to our product-development proposals, and comment here (if the comments work for you) or on your Facebook page to propose your own product extentions..

It's a week of looking forward at the responsible young adults our kids are becoming and looking back at the really bad TV they (and we) adored in the past. Here's a road map to our conversation:

0:49: What’s New With You? — We’ve got dogs, we’ve got scorpions and tarantulas, we’ve got illicit lizards, and we hope we don’t have bedbugs.

4:22: Big-Kid Milestones — While there's no equivalent of a baby book to enter them in, teens and young adults have plenty of firsts that parents rejoice over. We celebrated Terri's daughter's first solo call to AAA with remembrances of other older-child triumphs.

13:20: TV-Show Resurrections — Hey, have ya heard, there's an update to Full House hitting Netflix today! For kids who grew up loving the Tanners — like Terri's and Amanda's daughters, who have been counting down the days — Fuller House is a major TV event. But what about the family TV of our youth? When will we get our update on the Bradys, the Partridges, the Keatons, the Bradfords? (Though honestly, the less we hear about the horrifying children's TV Nicole grew up with in Canada, the better.)

25:14: Interview of the Week — Amanda talked with her husband, Jon, about IEP tag-teaming. Let's see one of those family sitcoms do that. (For more on IEPs, listen to an interview from last April with Robert Rummel-Hudson.)

36:03: Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri shared her shiny new tumblr blog, Amanda shared "10 Ways to Help Shy Children Self-Advocate," Catherine passed on her water-bottle organizing tips, and Nicole shares actual links to those Canadian TV shows she mentioned, Mr. Dress-Up and The Friendly Giant. Watch at your own risk.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

After talking about tardy students in yesterday's Speed Round, we thought it was a good time to assess our own personal promptness. The results may leave you surprised that this podcast usually gets delivered on time. Where do you fall on the early on time, late, or really late scale? Tell us on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

An article about a school that visited the consequences of student tardiness onto the parents by making them put in volunteer hours sparked our discussion of whether this is really a good way to either address lateness or get volunteers. Mostly, we're glad we don't live in that district. Do you think this is a good way for schools to improve student behavior? Weigh in on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

We've got TV current and past this week, as Catherine reviews FX's The People v. O. J. Simpson and Terri is pretty sure she had enough of this story the first time around; and we continue our Parks and Recreation marathon, chatting about "Telethon," "The Master Plan," "Freddy Spaghetti," and "Go Big or Go Home," and look ahead to "Flu Season" (one of Terri's all-time faves!), "Time Capsule," "Ron and Tammy Part II," and "Media Blitz." Also, Terri's dog barks quite a bit. Everybody's a critic.

Catherine has a birthday coming up, by the way, and so she's thinking about how people like to celebrate their special day. With family rituals? With passive-aggression? With Parks and Recreation clips? Listen to our traditions and then share your own on our Facebook page.

After learning that her dentist's unpackaged-seeming waiting-room music was in fact his iPod on shuffle, Terri was led to wonder whether she'd feel safe just randomly shuffling her own music collection out to the public, and whether her podcast-mates could do that either. Listen to our not-safe-for-waiting-room confessions, and go to our Facebook page to tell us what's on your iPod.

We know, we know -- your Facebook feed is full of politics, you have to block half your friend list, Twitter is becoming a minefield. We don't like talking about politics either. Our interest for today, though, is what to do if your kid is not so careful about the topic. If even that makes you nervous, use this road map through the episode to fast-forward right on past it to the topics that follow.

0:30: What's New With You? — Nicole is coming to us live from a fabulous ... soccer field full of Canadians in Las Vegas. Terri, meanwhile, is in parenting-expert limbo as her time as About.com's Parenting Special Needs expert comes to an end.

5:26: Kids and Politics — Inspired by a Boston Globe article that parodied talking to your kid about politics (or one politician in particular), we thought we'd chat about that for real. How do you get your kids to agree with your politics without pushing them there, and how do you keep them from barreling into school saying "My mom says ..."?

18:49: Job Options — Catherine's book-club discussion of what jobs they imagine doing led us into a chat about what work we'd do if we weren't doing the work we're doing now. Or maybe we could just skip right to retirement?

27:48: Interview of the Week — Catherine talks with grandparenting expert Susan Adcox about the big scary issue of money, and the conflicts that arise between parents and grandparents over financial assistance.

39:58: Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri is dustin’ off her old site, Mothers With Attitude; Amanda recommends using her book On the Go Fun for Kids: More Than 250 Activities to Keep Little Ones Busy and Happy--Anytime, Anywhere! to distract your kids from politics; Nicole hopes you're looking forward to her book, which she's working on when she's not hangin' in Vegas; and Catherine takes a stand on the issue of standing desks for kids.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

We spend a lot of time making podcasts, but do we listen to anything other than our own? On today's speed round, we share some favorite podcasts (Pop Culture Happy Hour,Extra Hot Great, and How Stuff Works), mourn some that have stopped making new episodes (The Inclusive Class Podcast and Firewall and Iceberg, RIP), and wonder whether just listening to one-offs from time to time counts. Do you have some podcasts you want to recommend -- besides this one, of course? Share in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat

Terri's annual habit of giving up coffee for Lent (shh, tiptoe around her, this is a dangerous time) got us thinking about sacrifices with an expiration date. What would you give up for 40 days if you knew you could have it back after that time? Share your give-ups with give-backs in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

We watched the Grammy ceremony, all three-and-a-half hours of it (well, Catherine might have fast-forwarded some) to bring you our thoughts from late Monday night. It was a good night for music Terri likes, anyway. We discuss the musical numbers, the hairstyles, the Broadway incursion, and of course, the Tweets. Then we continued our Parks and Rec marathon with four Season 2 episodes, "The Possum," "Park Safety," "Summer Catalog," and "94 Meetings," as the April/Andy/Ann triangle builds and we await the arrival of Adam Scott and Rob Lowe. Those things will all progress with the episodes we have on deck for next week: "Telethon," "The Master Plan," and "Freddy Spaghetti" from Season 2 and "Go Big or Go Home" from Season 3. Watch along with us!

These Speed Rounds have been a great way to learn little tidbits of info about our podcast mates. Like whether we use our nightstands to hold more than alarm clocks and tissue boxes. Do you also keep unexpected things in your nightstand? Share your answer in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

Sometimes we're thrilled to see a follow from a friend, colleague, or person we admire. It's a joy to return the follow then -- but what if it's an anonymous person with an egg for a Twitter avatar and a string of spammy posts? We talk about who we will and won't follow and why, and hope that we're still on each other's lists at the end of it. What are your follow criteria? Comment here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

We're tired, we're crierd, and we stink at self-improvement. Good thing we have friends to get together and commiserate with (or snark with). Here's your roadmap to our festival of self-recrimination and venting:

0:53: Intros and What's New With You — We recorded this the day before Terri gave up coffee for Lent. So really, what was her excuse for being so snippy?

4:11 Insurmountable Challenges — If you've ever tried to make a major change in your life and failed miserably, you'll feel for us as we share our stories of washing out of the Infomagical Challenge, Yoga Camp, Vegan Before Six, and making friends in new neighborhoods. (How could anyone not immediately want to be buddies with Nicole?)

17:53 Volunteer Fatigue — Kid stuff does not run without parent volunteers, and Catherine's about had it. Are you one of those parents who barely pulls your weight? Duck.

28:51 Interview of the Week — But wait. It's okay! We didn't mean to exclude you from the conversation! Pediatric OT Meghan Corridan makes us rethink all our sniping with a review of the children's book Be a Friend by Salina Yoon and a reminder that Valentine's Day is the ultimate inclusive holiday.

40:52 Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda shares an older article on ways to volunteer without actually being in the classroom, Terri shares a new article on the 20 Questions You Really Want to Ask at an IEP Meeting, Nicole shares a plea to including everyone in the class when it comes to writing Valentine cards with your kids, and Catherine shares some fun games and activities for Valentine's Day.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

After talking about Terri's husband's cooking and meal-planning in a previous episode, we thought we'd see what the division of labor is in everybody's household, including the contentious issue of who exactly is allowed to load the dishwasher. (Note: Amanda mentions our group chat on parenting styles tomorrow, except what she really means is last week, because recording things ahead of time is confusing.) Share who does what around your house in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

So you make sure your kids see the doctor regularly and get things looked after, but how about you? Do you take care of your own health? We compare our personal conscientiousness about health care and wonder whether we should just have Nicole look things up for us on Web MD instead. Share your own health routine in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

For today's entertainment chat, we stayed up after the Super Bowl to talk over the ads that we loved, hated, never want to see again, and expect to be seeing again and again as memes and hashtags. Also in the Super Bowl discussion are Lady Gaga's anthem, the colorful halftime program, the coming triumph of Twitter as our Super Bowl humor delivery system, and .. oh yeah, apparently there was some football played?

When we've had enough of that big event, we move on to a big event for this podcast, which is our ongoing Parks and Rec marathon. This time around, we chat about "Leslie's House," "Sweetums," "Galentine's Day," and "Woman of the Year," and look forward to next week's lineup of "The Possum," "Park Safety," "Summer Catalog," and "94 Meetings." Watch with us, won't you?

In yesterday's speed round, we stole an idea from schools and proposed things we'd like to celebrate 100 days of. Keeping with that 100 theme for one more day, we wondered what we might have 100 of in our house. What do you have 100 of? Share your answer in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

Schools celebrate the 100th day of the school year, and it got us wondering whether similar celebrations could be designed for landmarks of grown-up life. Do you have a 100th day of something you'd like to celebrate? Comment here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

Hey! Welcome! We know technology is scary, but don't be afraid! Listening to a podcast is easy, and it doesn't require you to learn anything new. Just press play, and here's what you'll be listening to and when:

1:28: What's New With You? — Amanda thinks she's found a new system that will help her cut down on multitasking and focus on one thing at a time. Ha! Good luck with that. Meanwhile, Terri's focused on finding a human being on the Macy's customer-service phone line, and not having much success with that either.

6:20: Teaching Old Dogs New Tech Tricks — A forced conversion to Outlook is making Amanda cry, Catherine's still hiding out with in Yahoo! mail, Nicole just can't with this magazine website redesign thing, but Terri's willing to embrace the new even if it fries her phone.

16:18: Our Parenting Philosophies — We've been asked if we all share the same parenting philosophy or if we have disagreements, and what we mostly agree on is that there are as many right ways to parent as there are parents and children and families. Also, that the article going around about no rules making your kids creative is questionable (and reminds Terri of a West Wing scene.)

25:25: Interview of the Week — Robert Rummel Hudson joins Terri and Amanda for a chat about the value to parents of reading other parents' stories and learning from their experiences, even the bad and wrong and embarrassing ones.

37:47: Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri shared an article on "When Parents of Kids with Special Needs Are Each Other’s Worst Enemies"; Amanda: shared a checklist of "Questions to Ask Before and During Your Child's IEP Meeting"; Nicole was too busy working on her book to share, but you should check out her website The Inclusive Class anyway; and Catherine shared an article on getting your kid to drink more water.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Are we rockin’ minivans or SUVs? Or have we been able to downsize the size of our ride as our kids have gotten their own? Listen as we chat about our current vehicles of choice, and share what's getting you around in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

When traveling with kids, not just any hotel room will do. For today's speed round, we talk about those things we look for when traveling with the family, from refrigerators to wifi. Listen in, and share your own lodging must-haves in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

Last week, we recorded a Round 2 not once but twice, and both times it got lost somewhere in Dropbox-land and never made it to our editor. Fortunately, we were able to salvage one of those recordings, and we've embedded it into this week's super-long episodes, which now includes two 4-episode installments of our Parks and Rec marathon as well as our impressions Grease Live. We hope this podcast is live now, too, something we're never going to take for granted again. (If you're following along in our marathon, this podcast contains last week's eps, "Kaboom," "Greg Pikitis," "Ron and Tammy," and "The Camel," as well as this week's, "Hunting Trip" (see video), "Tom's Divorce," "Christmas Scandal," and "The Set-Up." Coming up next week: "Leslie's House," "Sweetums," "Galentine's Day," and "Woman of the Year.")

It'll be Valentine's Day before you know it, and in honor of this month of romance, we chatted about our own personal love stories. Listen in, and if you've got a good how-we-met story of your own, share it in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

During last week's group chat, Amanda and her husband, Jon,  talked about birthday parties and kids with special needs, and that inspired us to talk more generally about some of the more over-the-top children's parties we've had the privilege of dragging our children to. Do you have a big-birthday-party tale to tell? Comment here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

It's been one of those weeks here in Parenting Roundabout land (an enchanted place that now spans four timezones), and so we come together for our group chat with a shorter attention span and a more meandering style than ever. But that's where your brain's at too, right? Here's a road map of this week's conversation:

1:43: What's New With You? — Join is in a moment of silence for Nicole, who has just had her parents in her house for FIVE WEEKS. And a moment of thanks for OnStar, which saved Terri from a very awkward conversation with a parking-lot attendant.

5:44: That Storm Was How Big? — You might have heard, it snowed a li'l bit on the East Coast last weekend. We talked about what counts as an OMG STORM! in our various parts of the country. (Visit the French Toast Alert System and a Facebook message from the Bangor Maine Police Department to laugh along with us.)

17:44: What's for Dinner? — A mention in last week's episode of Terri's husband's old-school paper-based meal-planning system inspired us to talk more about how food gets on the table in our houses. Debates over the appropriateness of breakfast for dinner, leftovers for breakfast, and calling ham Canadian bacon ensued.

28:50: Interview of the Week — Amanda chatted with her husband, Jon, about the various complicating factors of going to birthday parties with your child with special needs. (Like, should you go? And should you stay? And is it okay to give homework as a gift?) For more on over-the-top birthdays, listen to Amanda's earlier chat with Lexi Walters Wright on the subject.

39:46: Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda shared an article on helping your child cope with taste sensitivity; Nicole shared an article calling for people to share their inclusion resources; Terri shared an article on 8 Ways to Make Parents of Children With Special Needs STOP Listening to You; and Catherine shared an article on active party games for kids.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

We've noticed some contentious opinions online about the inflammatory issue of wearing shoes in the house. Are we shoe people, slipper people, sock people? Is it permissible to bring your own slippers to other people's house, or refuse to expose your socks to their floor? Share your shoe preferences and phobias in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

You see them all over the Internet, and in piles on bookstore tables. Adult coloring books are having a moment just now, but can you color us interested? Listen in as we share our coloring habits, and give us your own take on the adult coloring trend in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

Yesterday we talked about bedtime routines, and today the subject of our quick chat is the stuffed animals or other comfort items our kids go to bed with -- and we lose or leave behind at our peril. Listen in, and tell us about your child's indispensable object in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

In a recent speed round, Amanda suggested that she would like a Fast Pass for her kids' bedtime, which inspired us to have this quick chat about what our kids' bedtime routines are like and what's particularly weird, wonderful, or time-consuming about them. Is there a notable bedtime routine at your house? Comment here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

Since we know that our listeners don't have much time to read because of all of their grown-up responsibilities (though we do hope you've found 45+ minutes to listen to podcasts), here's a quick roadmap of this week's chat:

1:49 What's New With You: Finding gifs has become a major pastime for us, but one out of four of us hasn't quite mastered the art of pasting the right one in.

6:38: Topic 1—Do You Still Read?: After blowing past quite a number of efforts to seque by Amanda, Terri finally gets the message to start our first topic, which asks: Do we make time for book readin'? Do we think it's important? Do we make it a priority for ourselves, or are we so busy finding gifs that we never get to it?

15:49 Topic 2—Do You Have What's Required to Be a Grown-Up Adult?: Jumping off from a Buzzfeed listicle on the things you need to be a grown-up, we talk about what we've got, what we're missing, and what being an adult really means. (If you like the sound of Terri's in basket, it's on the Really Good Stuff site.)

27:18 Interview of the Week: Catherine chats with grandparenting expert Susan Adcox about kids and concussions, and shares lots of great information on how to recognize your child or grandchild has one and what parents and grandparents can do about it.

39:51 Shameless Self-Promotion: Amanda shares an article on "How to Help Your Tween Get the Writing Bug"; Terri selflessly promotes Barnes & Noble Readouts, which delivers book excerpts and a serialized novel to your Nook or Nook app; Nicole shares her site The Inclusive Class; and Catherine shares some articles on concussions: "What I Learned From My Own Kid's Concussion"; "Concussions - Symptoms and Signs"; Cognitive Rest; and "Safer Soccer: No Headers Before High School."

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and most especially for our spiffy new in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

We are there for you, for all your procrastination needs. But if endlessly listening to our podcast is not quite filling your work time sufficiently, we have some other black holes to leap down, including word games, Web MD, food videos, and of course constantly refreshing Facebook. What do you do to keep from doing those things you're supposed to do? Share in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

The family that plays together ... probably gets annoyed at each other a fair amount of the time, especially if Monopoly is involved. We talk about our favorite and most hated board games, card games, and other family amusements. Are you a game-playing family? Share in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

On this week's entertainment chat, Catherine reports in on The Martian, the box-office success and Oscar contender, which she watched in a hurry after her husband checked it out On Demand. Then Terri gives her take on The Last Five Years, the blink-and-you-missed it musical that she was inspired to seek out after a discussion on the Try it You'll Like It podcast and was happily surprised to find newly added on Netflix, for a rare "hey, the movie I'm looking for is actually on there!" search victory. Finally, they chat about the next four episodes in a Parks and Recreation marathon ("The Stakeout," "Beauty Pageant," "Practice Date," and "Sister City"). If you'd like to join in that marathon, up for next week are four more episodes from Season 2: "Kaboom," "Greg Pikitis," "Ron and Tammy," and "The Camel."

We all have one, right? A wish list of things that would make Facebook so much easier and more pleasant to use? A politics blocker? A suggested-friend limit? A hoax-buster? An auto-liker? Join us as we fantasize about our most-hoped-for Facebook features, and share yours in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

In the time between our recording of today's Speed Round and releasing it this morning, it seemed like there was a new celebrity loss every day. We chatted about some past celebrity deaths that have been particularly unsettling, including Robin Williams, Philip Seymour Hoffmann, Natasha Richardson, and Princess Diana. What celebrity deaths have been milestones for your family? Share in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

We swear, we manage to get through this episode on swearing without violating our clean podcast rating, though we have to bleep ourselves plenty. Here's your bleepin' roadmap for this week's chat:

1:55: What's New With You?: And what are you wearing? Most of us made it out of our PJs for this recording, so yay us!

6:19: Topic 1 — Do you swear in front of your kids? Inspired by an article on the Scary Mommy blog, we have a bleepin' good conversation about the topic (and appreciate an article claiming that people who curse are bleepin' smart).

17:32: Topic 2: Powerball! — By now we know we lost, those of us who played. But it's still fun to think about what might have been. Recording studios! Private jets! Homes with the right lighting for video chats!

27:04: Interview of the Week — Terri and Amanda chat with Robert Rummel Hudson about whether and how parents of kids with special needs should write about their kids, which is a bit of a thing at the moment.

38:08: Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri shared a substitution she'd like to make for that "cut and paste to support kids with special needs" meme going around, along with a list of more meaningful things to do; Amanda shared a series of pieces on “How to Say It: Responding When Kids With Learning and Attention Issues Are Frustrated”; Nicole shared her blog www.theinclusiveclass.com; and Catherine shared ideas for Valentine’s Day party activities and activities for the 100th day of school.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and most especially for our spiffy new in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Are you a purse person? A backpack lugger? The tote bag type? Since the four of us rarely see each other in person, scattered across the country as we are, we don't have a daily chance to check out our bags of choice, so we took this Speed Round opportunity to confess our favorite modes of stuff transportation.

After Amanda told her story last week about meeting Dan Rather in an airport, last week, we thought we'd all tell our tales of seeing stars. Listen to this quick discussion for our brushes with Lindsay Lohan, Woody Harrelson, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and the cast of Modern Family. 

We didn't quite manage to watch the Golden Globes, though that doesn't keep us from having an opinion on the dresses. (Shoulders back, Kirsten Dunst!) Catherine hasn't quite kept up with her Downton Abbey viewing, but she's finding recaps (from the Fug Girls, Tom and Lorenzo, and the NY Times) at least as much fun  as the actual show. Terri hasn't managed to get to the theater to see the latest Star Wars, but she knows the biggest spoiler about it since Undateable went ahead and blurted it out on Friday's episode. One bit of pop-culture viewing we did take seriously, though, was our Parks and Recreation marathon, which we kicked off with the first and last episodes of Season 1, "Pilot" and "Rock Show," and the first episode of Season 2, "Pawnee Zoo" (the start of which, in the video above, particularly tickled Catherine). If you'd like to watch along with us, for next week we'll be continuing on with the next four Season 2 episodes, "The Stakeout," "Beauty Pageant," "Practice Date," and "Sister City."

After a trip to DisneyWorld, where you can FastPass your way to the front of the line for up to three attractions a day, Amanda reports that coming back to the real world was brutal. Why can't we have FastPasses for all those things we have to wait for in our non-theme-park existence? We imagined all the things we'd like to go to the front of the line for, and you don't have to wait at all to find out -- just press play!

To kick off a new week of Speed Round episodes, we took a cue from an article on Terri's About.com site and planned out some appropriate New Year's resolutions for people and situations we think could use some improvement. Who do you think could use a few resolutions? Add your picks in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience. And while you're at it, check out our Round 2 entertainment resolutions.)

Don't be fooled by our fabulous new intro music — this is still Parenting Roundabout you're listening to. We've done some format-tweaking for the new year, with a longer group chat that includes some introductory conversation, two topics, an interview with one of our regular contributors, and some shameless self-promotion. Here's your roadmap through this week's episode.

1:38: What's New With You? — We've been doing some traveling this week, and some book writing, and some writing avoidance.

11:42: Topic 1 — Are we the kind of moms who find it easier to spend money on and do nice things for our kids than for ourselves? (Hey, we really wanted socks for Christmas.)

24:15: Topic 2: Current Events — We discuss an article about "aspirational parenting" that got our backs up. Of course, we're not aspiring for our kids to be members of the power elite so much as just make enough money to buy us really nice socks.

39:03: Interview of the Week — Catherine talks with pediatric occupational therapist Meghan Corridan about good educational apps for kids. Find links to the apps and companies Meghan mentioned on her blog, MAC&Toys. The app Catherine recommended is Mathmateer.

51:11: Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri shared articles on questions to ask about your child's lunch and recess on her About.com site; Amanda shared a blog post she wrote for Matan called "Without Exclusion, We Wouldn’t Have to Talk About Inclusion”; Nicole shared a blog post she wrote for Disability.gov, "Not Just One Story of Successful Inclusion"; and Catherine shared an article from her About.com site on how to set family goals for the New Year (or how to drag your family into your New Year’s resolutions so you might actually keep them!).

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and most especially for our spiffy new in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

We should be coming to you today with a new full-length group chat, but our best-laid plans of recording after Amanda comes back from a business trip were foiled by flight delays. So Catherine, Nicole, and Terri recorded a speed round with their own bad travel stories in solidarity, and to give you your daily dose of Parenting Roundabout. Listen today to Nicole's terrible Canada-to-California journey, Catherine's father's ingenious way of getting car-rental people to pay attention, and Terri's crisis of career faith aboard a grounded plane, and keep an eye out later today or tomorrow for Episode 101 to finally make its arrival.

The Speed Rounds you've been listening to all week will be replacing Round 3 and 4 as you've known them -- we're tucking those mini-interviews into our group chats starting January 15. So the end of our anniversary week seemed like a good time to look back on our favorite Round 3s, Round 4s, and even Round 2s (which will still be bringing you entertainment chat every Tuesday-ish.) If you want to listen to the full episodes after hearing us chat about them, here are the links:

+ Nicole's favorites: Round 4s by Amanda and her husband Jon; Round 2s on Dancing With the Stars
+ Amanda's favorites: Round 3 on school lunches with Lexi Walters Wright; Round 4 on IEP meetings with Robert Rummel-Hudson
+ Catherine's favorites: Round 4 on Inside Out and Special Needs with Robert Rummel-Hudson; Round 2 on audiobooks and Dancing With the Stars
+ Terri's favorites: Round 3 on kids and commercialization with Lexi Walters Wright (and that Hulk cologne pull-quote); Round 2s on So You Think You Can Dance

(If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

You talk to the same people for fifty to 100 episodes, and you learn things. Even in this speed round, we uncover a surprising height-related fact about one of our members. You might be surprised that however many surprising facts we've learned, we rarely if ever get together in person. See how many of these revelations about our past jobs and colorful vocabulary and musical knowledge and culinary preferences (one of us doesn't even drink coffee!) you've also gleaned from listening to Parenting Roundabout.

On the first Round 2 of the new year, Catherine and Terri look back on which entertainment product they consumed on New Year's Eve, how their DVR clearing is going, and what they've read and watched this week, including:

+ In Your Dreams by Kristan Higgins
+ Call the Midwife (book version) by Jennifer Worth
+ Water for Elephants, both book and movie
+ About Alex (and yes, come to think of it, as we discussed this movie's similarity to The Big Chill, we did accidentally say Phoebe Cates played the young girlfriend in that film when of course it was Meg Tilly. When you're old enough to remember The Big Chill, you're old enough to forget details, apparently.)

We're also plotting a marathon watch, probably of Parks and Recreation (and not Parenting Roundabout, as Terri initially said, although if you'd like to marathon our podcast, go right ahead!), although maybe of the first two seasons of The West Wing. Do you have a preference? Tell us in the comments here or on Facebook, or tweet at us.

If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

When you get into real conversations about parenting, it's easy to sometimes go a little to far and say something that makes you hope your child never, ever listens to your podcasts. Sometimes that's because we've said something that might be hurtful, but more likely for us we've said something that makes us want to throw salt over our shoulders lest we cause the very behavior we're talking about to blossom. So don't tell our kids about this episode, okay? We're going to just sneak it in here.

New for 2016! There's now Parenting Roundabout group chat fun for every day of the week. Tune in at 9 a.m. Monday through Thursday as we answer one quick question. Today we relive some things you should never do on a podcast, including saying things you wouldn't want your spouse to hear, confessing your winter grooming secrets, dissing your customer base, and ... um, wait, what was that ... oh yeah! forgetting your own name.

Woo-hoo! It's our 100th group chat, marking the start of a third year of podcasting for Parenting Roundabout. We took the opportunity to look back on our favorite episodes, play some clips from the past, and then wrap our heads around some numbers in the form of a fun (if somewhat slapdash) quiz. If you'd like to hear more than an excerpt from the episodes we favorited, here's where you can find them:

• Amanda chose Episode 53, "School-Lunch Drama and Scheduling Stress" 
• Catherine chose Episode 88, "Children's Books We Have Loved and Loathed"
• Nicole chose Episode 64, "Uncooperative Parents and Playground Pet Peeves"
• Terri chose Episode 65, "Feeling Anxious About Anxiety"

Throughout the episode, Terri was feverishly working to finish a by-the-numbers quiz on our longest, shortest, most popular, least popular, and otherwise measurable facts about our past episodes. Too many episodes were mentioned to link to here, but you can search the episode titles on this site to find and listen to them. Finally, we shared our 100th set of weekly recommendations: Catherine mentioned her long list of New Year's resolution ideas; Amanda kept with the 100 theme with 100 Activities to Do With Your Child for the 100th Day of School; Nicole added her 100th post on The Inclusive Class; and Terri had suggestions for making New Year’s resolutions for those who need them.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

It's almost a new year, and although Terri still has a hundred or so episodes of 2015 TV languishing on her DVR, it seems like a good time to look forward at the new entertainment we'll consume in 2016. Catherine resolved to try some new TV shows she's heard about but hasn't had a chance to watch yet, Terri resolved to read one of Catherine's book-club books (with sufficient notice), and they both resolved to get a Parks and Recreation binge-watch going ASAP. Listen to find out what other big promises we're making in our last ep of 2015, and join us next year to see if we keep 'em.

[This is an encore presentation of a Parenting Roundabout episode originally released on January 7, 2015. If you listened to it the first time, this is your second chance to follow up on all the resources and ideas mentioned that you just never quite got around to. And if you didn’t listen to it the first time -- hey, it's new to you! Either way, please listen and enjoy.]

This week on Parenting Roundabout, we talked about our New Year's Resolutions -- and whether resolutions are a good way to get yourself going toward a goal or just to make yourself feel like a failure right from the start of the year. Then we looked at some highlights of 2014, including birthday and school milestones for our kids, trips and injuries, and catching a pop-culture wave. For more on New Year's resolutions, follow these links:

• New Year's Resolutions for Family Fitness and Health
• Little Goals Can Be Better Than Big New Year’s Resolutions
• Realistic Resolutions
• Mini-Resolutions for Every Day
• Use New Year's Resolutions to Motivate Your Child
• Make a New Year's Resolution ... for Someone Else.

For other stories mentioned, read about gluten-free Girl Scout cookies on the Mashable blog, follow Terri's dog on Twitter, and meet Catherine's black dogs on Instagram.

It's hard to talk about entertainment this week without addressing the latest Star Wars installment. It's also hard to talk about Star Wars without breaking spoiler protocol. Catherine was one of those first-weekend viewers who now knows the film's secrets, but she tried to keep her review spoiler-free and focused on general enjoyment. After discussing something new, we looked back on older holiday fare that we often revisit this time of year, including Love Actually, Elf, Home Alone, To Grandmother's House We Go, and the "Noel" episode of The West Wing. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

With the holiday season in full swing, we wanted to talk about that modern addition to Christmas tradition, the Elf on the Shelf. Where do we stand on that little spy? Catherine and Terri take a pass on shelf-elf wrangling (and really, house decorating of any sort short of the last minute), while Nicole's and Amanda's families have adapted the concept to their own creative purposes.

It's not like "toy elf mover" was ever part of any job description we expected to have in our lives. As we reminisced about old employment for our second topic, however, we found that our past employments have included such duties as crushing rocks, scooping ice cream, editing greeting cards, and memorized the names of every county in the state in alphabetical order. We're just happy to be able to add podcasting to all our resumes.

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Catherine mentioned an article on her site on healthy New Year fun; Amanda revealed the Facebook page for the Yeti on the Shelf, her family's elf-substitute; Nicole liked a Forbes article on preparing your teen for getting a summer job, which it is apparently not to early to get started on; and Terri suggested tweaking your traditions to tailor the holiday experience to your family's needs.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episodes and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Susan Adcox, who writes about grandparenting for About.com, joins us on the third Wednesday of every month to chat with Catherine about grandparenting issues. This time, they spoke about holiday traditions and celebrations, especially adapting them for new circumstances and family members of different faiths. Find out what new traditions Susan is a big fan of, and one she thinks might be a little bit harder for her to get on board with. The book Catherine mentions is Dear Santa, Love Rachel Rosenstein. Happy holidays to all! (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

With Christmas just a certain number of days away that Terri refuses to acknowledge, it seemed like a good time to take a look at some TV and tunes of the season. Combining both those things is Netflix's A Very Murray Christmas, in which Bill Murray and an appropriately random gathering of celebrities put together exactly the kind of offbeat Christmas special you'd expect to be directed by Sofia Coppola. Thanks to the generosity of her podcast-mates, Netflix newbie Terri was able to watch it instead of just listening to Catherine describe it, and they give it two thumbs up, with particular kudos to performances of "Fairytale of New York," "Alone on Christmas Day," and a George Clooney-enhanced "Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin'." They then moved on for a chat about holiday music in general, what we're hearing on the radio and TV, and what constitutes a "contemporary" Christmas song. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

It's bad enough getting your child ready to go out the door and to school every morning. Then they have to keep moving that finish line, with delayed openings and early dismissals and half-days and snow days and days with alphabet letters and alternate hours. We gripe about the scheduling creativity that seems to be commonplace these days, while appreciating how useful the extra time is for teachers and wishing there was a high-tech way to get us coordinated.

If such school shenanigans make you nostalgic for your childhood when everybody went to the school at the same time every day, our second topic -- on whether our kids still watch TV or even believe us when we talk about how we used to watch -- will keep you looking back to those olden days when cartoons were only on Saturdays and you had to get up to turn the dial. We chat about your kids' screen habits and our own, and probably get the Love Boat theme stuck in your head too.

Finally, we share our recommendations for the week: Catherine likes a cute new PBS Kids show called Nature Cat, which she reviewed for her site; Amanda wants to point people to the site Angela’s Clues, from Angela Santomero, the educational consultant behind shows like Blue’s Clues and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood; Nicole passes on a guide to finding streaming shows on Netflix; and Terri thinks you might enjoy her Special Needs Christmas Carols.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

[This is an encore presentation of a Parenting Roundabout episode originally released on June 10, 2015. If you listened to it the first time, this is your second chance to follow up on all the resources and ideas mentioned that you just never quite got around to. And if you didn’t listen to it the first time -- hey, it's new to you! Either way, please listen and enjoy.]

With a summer full of superheroes and superhero merchandising ahead, Lexi Walters Wright chats with Amanda about the challenge of getting through a supermarket or a Target without accumulating a cart-full of pricey licensed items that really do not have superpowers no matter how much your kid believes. They talk about the lesson kids learn about advertising when the branded stuff disappoints and the financial challenge of finding the name-brand stuff your kid just has to have, and recommend these sites for parents fighting the good fight against licensed everything:

+ Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood
+ Commonsense Media
+ Center on Media and Child Health

If you're reading this someplace without hyperlinks, visit http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Since Catherine was busy all weekend watching her daughter's synchronized skating team compete, we thought we'd step away from our screens and consider the entertainment that energetic youngsters put forth on the ice, and the sometimes puzzling choices their coaches make on their behalf when it comes to costumes and music. Can you guess which popular song popped up the most? What a costume for a Casablanca-themed skate would look like? What late-night show inspired a team's theme? Or what carbonated beverage? Listen in for a mom's-eye view of the competition (and watch the video above to see what kind of skating we're talking about -- come to http://parentingroundabout.com to do that if you're reading this somewhere else). 

It’s that time of year when all the people have all the feels all the time, isn’t it? You're extra-busy, it’s dark all the time, it’s cold, maybe your kids are starting to have academic and behavior problems at school. And so you visit your social-media channels for a little dose of good cheer, and instead you get socked all over again. We have a good gripe session about how our social-media interactions affect our moods, how seeing certain topics in our feeds make us sad or angry, how certain friends appear to not know us at all, and how we have to learn again and again to NOT READ THE COMMENTS. (By the way, to all our friends who listen to the podcast, we're not talking about you. No! Of course not! Someone else entirely. You know, that person. Please don't write nasty posts about us.)

Next, we stop grumbling for a minute and celebrate those things we've learned in the process of being parents. Like how to make a competition-approved bun for an ice-skating kid using only our own two hands and a ton of hair gel. Or all the words to every heavy-metal song there is. Or how to score $300 worth of uncut keys and uncoded transponders online. Or who was on which lifeboat of the Titanic. Just like we recently said "Thanks, Podcasting" for a libsyn promotion, we now say "Thanks, Parenting!"

Finally, we share our recommendations for the week. Catherine directs us to her list of active toys for kids and her Round 3 with more suggestions from pediatric OT Meghan Corridan; Amanda thinks we should all go read Pew Research's "Psychological Stress and Social Media Use"; Nicole has a way to prevent that by studying up on ways to hide annoying Facebook posts; and Terri follows up on an earlier podcast with a checklist on when it's time to fire your pediatrician.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episodes and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

In a special Round 4, Nicole Eredics, founder of The Inclusive Class and a member of our weekly Parenting Roundabout group chat, shares her experience yesterday in the vicinity of the shootings in San Bernardino, California. Although her family was thankfully not caught up in the violence, they did have to deal with the lockdowns and the manhunt that accompanied it. We talk about how events unfolded for her family, as well as whether students should have to take tests the day after a for-real lockdown, how we get our news in this age of social media, and how our kids have survived their lockdowns and lockdown drills (and we adults waiting nervously at home too). 

Each month Meghan Corridan, a pediatric occupational therapist, joins Catherine to share some of the toys and activities she uses with her clients and her own 5-year-old daughter. This time, they talk holiday gift-giving, because Meghan has a huge list of ideas for kids and tweens on her blog MAC&Toys. You can also see Catherine's suggestions for active toys at her site. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience).

Thanksgiving weekend is a great time to let entertainment flow over you. For this week's post-Thanksgiving episode, Catherine and Terri start with a chat about the gigantic balloon hovering over the holiday, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, discussing live vs. home-viewing options, the fun Broadway show snippets, the possibility of heating the area where Broadway performers in skimpy costumes perform, and the certainty that whatever you are doing and wherever you are going at this point in history, you will surely hear Shawn Mendes singing "Stitches" at least once while you are doing it. Then we left the NYC hoopla behind to talk about houses that would probably fit inside some of those balloons and floats. Catherine watched a lot of Tiny House programming -- who knew there was so much? -- and reports in on how FYI and HGTV are making a big splash with little living. (If you're watching this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Was your Thanksgiving happy? Did you eat a lot of traditional family foods? Did many of them involve cream-of-mushroom soup, marshmallows, or Jello? To start off this week's group chat, we run through the many possibilities for turkey-day cuisine and draw the line at the things we will not eat. Or will, enthusiastically! It's like the battle of the Tootsie Rolls all over again.

Next, we move on to the other big activity of this holiday weekend: trying to find good deals on holiday gifts. Do we rush out and elbow folks at the Walmart for the best deal on a big-screen TV, or do we hide at home with our computers and cybershop? We discuss the merits of online versus standing-on-line shopping, strategies for holiday cards and gift cards, how early in the year it's acceptable to care about this stuff, and the impossibility of shopping for spouses.

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Catherine suggests consulting her Round 3 podcast with grandparenting expert Susan Adcox on gift-giving issues; Terri mentioned our episode of Libsyn's "Thanks, Podcasting!" podcast; Amanda recommended an article on "8 Ways to Help Your Child With Food Sensitivities Enjoy the Holidays"; and Nicole enjoyed reading about how sweet-potato casserole came to be.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episodes and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Yesterday Catherine and Terri chatted about the first day of the Dancing With the Stars finals, and today they follow up with a quick review of the second day -- a two-hour show that offered approximately 105 minutes of padding, 10 minutes of competition, and 5 minutes of award-giving. But who's complaining? There were lots of slick pro numbers, video retrospectives, the return of defeated contestants, musical selections, and Victor Espinoza popping up like he was in some sort of giant Whack-a-Mole game. We chatted about the long-predicted winner, the gracious losers, and who they might scrape up ... that is, recruit for the next episode coming in the spring. Did you watch along with us this season? How do you feel about the results? Share in the comments here if they're working, and if not, find us on our Facebook page. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Dancing With the Stars has finally made it to the end, and we're one show away from someone hoisting the mirror-ball trophy. After watching Night 1 of the finals, Catherine and Terri discussed their favorites and predictions, the freestyles they liked and didn't, what constitutes a gimmick, how hard a lift is, and how enjoyable a show can be when you don't pack it full of unprepared non-professionals trying to learn too many dances. They'll be back tomorrow to discuss the winner, but in the meantime, they took a moment to chat about Netflix's new series Master of None and Terri's new favorite Undateable Live, which she finally got Catherine to watch. The verdict: thumbs up on both, but if you think Undateable's 8 p.m. timeslot means its safe for the kids, be warned that it very much is not, as the above clip will illustrate. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

It’s been a rough week out in the world and in our own little worlds too. We started with a gripe session about a pair of issues most parents have faced: a child's health crisis, and a doctor's clueless attitude that makes said crisis so very much worse. From prescriptions given to mollify mom to casual announcements that "It could be nothing, or it could be a brain tumor," we tell our bad doctor stories and praise the white-coats who really seem to get it. 

A scary story that's been on our minds this week, especially when it comes to how to explain it to children, is of course the tragedy in Paris. Where once we only had to worry about giving our kids the gentlest possible understanding of a horrific event, now we have to factor in what they're going to see on social media and what they're going to say on social media. Should they change their profile pictures in solidarity? If they make a post or a comment, will their understanding be peer-appropriate? Are social-media gestures in these situations like the Instagram likes of the news world, done more to fit in than to make a statement? Do we need to worry about that? We think back nostalgically to the days when you could just hide the newspaper and turn off the TV.

Finally, we share our recommendations for the week: Catherine liked blogger Rebecca Woolf's post on dealing with worldwide heartache; Amanda recommended a PBS Parents article on "How to Help Kids Feel Safe After Tragedy" and one from the Washington Post on "Don't Let the Paris Attacks Infuse Your Parenting With Fear"; Nicole appreciated Terri's article on the dreaded wait-and-see; and Terri passed on articles about choosing the right pediatrician.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episodes and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

For this week's Round 4, Amanda once again recorded with her husband, Jon, our audio engineer and blogger at My Happy SAHD Life, to talk about one of the many not-so-easy pieces of special needs parenting—PTSD. Like many parents of kids with autism, they have a kiddo who has meltdowns, not tantrums. There's a difference and Amanda really, really wants people to understand and thus recommended this hugely popular article, "The Difference Between Tantrums and Sensory Meltdowns." (Yes, she wrote it, but, yes, you should also read it.) So, Amanda and Jon worry more about the “when-ifs” of a crisis occurring than the "what-ifs." They talked about how that affects their parenting: How do you keep calm so you don't create a crisis with your own reaction? How do you tag-team when both of you are feeling panicked and one person needs to at least appear calm? And how do single parents of tough kids handle all of the "when-ifs"?

Amanda and Jon share their experiences, frustrations, and strategies in a podcast that will have traumatized parents of complicated kids nodding in agreement and sympathy. And if you're not one of those parents, listen in to see what it feels like! (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience).

Susan Adcox, who writes about grandparenting for About.com, joins us on the third Wednesday of every month to chat with Catherine about grandparenting issues. This time, they spoke about some of the sticky situations that come with holiday gift-giving, from cousin rivalry to value clashes to what to do about those thank-you notes. They also have some gift recommendations for you that might help:

+ Gifts for Grandchildren of All Ages
+ Inexpensive Stocking Stuffers for Grandkids of All Ages
+ Active Toys for School-Age Kids
+ Active Toys for Toddlers and Preschoolers
+ Active Toys for the Whole Family
+ Board Games with a Healthy Twist

(If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

On a new Round 2, Terri and Catherine chat as usual about Dancing With the Stars, which this week included three dances for each star, a withdrawal due to illness, a number involving a rope and a nearly invisible bodysuit, another involving a box and another rope with a lightbulb on it, and a fake-out non-elimination that was really kind of mean. We chatted about this year's likely winners and how the show could be improved in the future, if the producers would just listen to us and people who write on Internet forums. Next, after discussing the problems with asking a 17-year-old to dance dirtier, we turned our attention to shows that ask kids to do other unlikely things, including fashion designing and cooking with unusual items. Catherine shared her thoughts on Project Runway Junior, Terri did the same for Chopped Junior, and they joined Catherine's dog in strategizing other possible reality-show permutations. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

A mention last week of a teen social-media queen's exposure of the falsifying of images and plea for kids to get real led us to talk more today about all the new-tech ways adolescent girls now have to feel bad about themselves. Teen actress Zendaya complained when a magazine doctored images to trim a little bit off her body, but apparently many girls are happy to do that to themselves on Instagram and other popular photo sites, and the falsification even goes so far as paying for "likes" and the status that goes with them. We compared notes on how our daughters are doing with this new opportunity to feel judged and inferior, and wondered what the equivalent was back in our day. 

We then gave some likes to the topic of regional expressions, drawing on our geographical distance from one another to create a collection of our own New England New Jersey Wisconsin California Canada Australia lingo. Listen to find out more about E-ticket rides, SIG alerts, sassy and wicked, thongs and rubbers, babies getting nookie, the right way to say "ayuh," the wrong way to order coffee, and what you call that carbonated beverage.

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Catherine appreciated a New York Times Motherlode blog post on why kids love Snapchat and why that’s OK for making her feel better about her parenting; Amanda thought the Jezebel article "Trying to Change Your Regional Accent Is Practically Impossible" was wicked good; Nicole passed on a fun article about the fake vs real side of Instagram; and Terri had some articles from her site about the danger of using figures of speech with kids who have issues with language or literal thinking, and a good book for teaching those confusing expressions.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episodes and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Each month, Amanda gets together with Lexi Walters Wright to talk about the things that come up when you have younger kids. This week, what came up was a lot of agita and complaining. In particular, Lexi and Amanda had a lot to say about what it's like to feel exhausted, like you're messing up all over the place and missing those mom moments you're supposed to be around for.

When they weren't complaining, they did talk about how their husbands and support systems should be getting more credit than then advertisers would have us believe, as noted in this article, Lowe's and LG's Poor Portrayal of Dads Says We Still Have a Long, Long Way to Go. Skeptical? Check out the Lowes ad itself on YouTube after you listen to Amanda rant about it! (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience).

This week's Round 2 started as it has for the past many weeks with a chat about last night's Dancing With the Stars, which reveled in its live status by not knowing until the very last minute whether one of its stars would even be able to make it onstage to dance. But Tamar Braxton didn't let a little pneumonia keep her out of the race for the mirror-ball trophy, arriving from the hospital just in time to avoid automatic elimination. Did we mention this show is live? Tom Bergeron did, a lot. Also live: the NBC sitcom Undateable, which Terri is going to be talking about a lot until you watch it (or at least Catherine does), and the unfortunately titled Best Time Ever, also on NBC, which is maybe not the best time but still a good time and full of the kind of completely random entertainment moments you don't see that much of anymore. Catherine ended the episode by reporting on a re-watch of the movie Big with her son. Listen and see if the scene that got the biggest laugh in her house would get the same in yours. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

This week, the arrival of standard time and the influence of the Bloggess threw us into a tailspin of dark days and mortifying memories. After a brief opening chat that included the discovery that the "OJ Chase" is not something you can refer to and expect your teenager to know what you're talking about (it's what brought us the Kardashians, kids!), we compared notes on how we're surviving the change of time and light, and most especially the juxtaposition of the time change and Halloween, which is great for parents of teens, not so great for parents of tots who wake up at the crack of dawn demanding candy. (Where's that coffee IV when you need it?)

Next, inspired by a Twitter stream of mortifying events shared by followers of @thebloggess, we were moved to share our own misstatements (like saying "Love you!" at the end of conversations even when it's wincingly inappropriate) and missteps (like the one that sent Nicole sprawling on the floor of a Las Vegas casino). We wondered, among other things, why the sound in a room always drops just when you're yelling that embarrassing thing, and what the statute of limitations is for blaming farts on your kid.

Finally, we sought to redeem ourselves by sharing our recommendations for the week: Catherine introduced us to Minecraft Story Mode; Amanda liked a video called Taking Back Time that turns the time change into a disaster movie; Lexi passed on an article about long lines for story times; Nicole thought a video about a young woman exposing social-media deception had a worthwhile message, even if it made Terri grumpy (that video has since been removed, but you can get the gist from this one); and Terri shared an article of hers about time-change-related bad behavior (your child's, and yours too).

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music (and for being a live studio audience for part of the podcast). If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

[This is an encore presentation of a Parenting Roundabout episode originally released on April 1, 2015 as a Round 3. If you listened to it the first time, this is your second chance to follow up on all the resources and ideas mentioned that you just never quite got around to. And if you didn’t listen to it the first time -- hey, it's new to you! Either way, please listen and enjoy.]

Involving special-education students in IEP meetings is an important step along the road to self-advocacy, but one which parents may reasonably feel carries the risk of detonating a landmine. Terri chatted with Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster: A Father's Journey with His Wordless Daughter and blogger at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, about that treacherous transition; how his daughter, Schuyler, now 15, is handling it; and how he's handling including her in an often hurtful and antagonistic process. We considered the power of a kid handing over an iPad with a question to be asked; our suspicions that the barrage of test scores that opens an IEP meeting is just there to break parents down; and how really lousy it must feel to sit in a room where people are saying things about you that you don't understand but that don't sound good. For more on IEP meetings, read Robert's recent blog post on IEPs and meet the players in Terri's IEP team article. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, please come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Each month Meghan Corridan, a pediatric occupational therapist, joins Catherine to share some of what she's learned from her clients and her own 5-year-old daughter. This time, they talk about rainy-day activities that can help kids be creative and independent, but have fun too. Read more of Meghan’s indoor play ideas at her blog, MAC&Toys, and see Catherine's activity suggestions and board game ideas at her site. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience).

This week's Dancing With the Stars left us a little underwhelmed, with poorly filmed dance-offs, uncomfortable baby-gender-revealing gimmicks, unnecessary lying on the floor in a fancy dress, and the departure of good-guy Andy. With hopes that perhaps the competition will step up a bit in the weeks to come, we moved on to a reality cooking show Catherine's been enjoying, My Grandmother's Ravioli, and then a more general discussion about whether we care as much as Terri's husband does about the lack of reality in reality shows, or whether we just want the food to look pretty, the houses-hunted to look interesting, and the dancers to look like they're having fun. Terri also encouraged everyone to get with a show she's starting to watch faithfully, Undateable live, and follow all the many, many Periscope segments the folks involved are doing. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

If you’ve had any exposure at all to social media this week, you will have heard the announcement from the World Health Organization that processed meat (especially and specifically BACON!) is cancer-causing. How seriously are we going to take this information? Not so seriously, as it turns out. Amanda is still clinging to sweet memories of a trough of room-service bacon; Catherine's buying her kids BLTs; and Terri has heard too many scare stories about favorite foods to take one about something so delicious seriously. We wondered at the difference between "raises your risk" and "causes," winced at the idea of how much snootier vegans will be now, and planned to listen to Jim Gaffigan's bacon monologue and take bacon as seriously as Ron Swanson (if that's even possible).

Next, inspired by Terri's nearly two hours in a traffic jam with her daughter in charge of the radio and her husband in full "These kids today with their rap and their dirty lyrics" dudgeon, we asked: How much does today's music enrage/amuse/bore us? Uptown Funk got our thumbs up, Selena Gomez's current hit our thumbs down, and the repeating repeating repeating of the same songs our thumbs in our ears. We wound up reminiscing about the old days when MTV played music videos and we could still believe that 17-year-olds know about heartbreak. (We were that young once, right?)

Finally, we moved on to our recommendations for the week: Catherine shared an article she wrote about how to add more vegetables to your family’s daily diet (with advice for beginner, intermediate, and expert levels!), Amanda passed on a Wired article delightfully titled "Bacon Causes Cancer? Sort of. Not Really. Ish," and Terri offered some assistance for your next great dietary dilemma -- what to do with all that Halloween candy.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

[This is an encore presentation of a Parenting Roundabout episode originally released on June 24, 2015. If you listened to it the first time, this is your second chance to follow up on all the resources and ideas mentioned that you just never quite got around to. And if you didn’t listen to it the first time -- hey, it's new to you! Either way, please listen and enjoy.]

Halloween, when horror movies rule, seemed like a good time to revisit a chat Terri had with Kathy Ceceri, who writes about homeschooling on the All About Homeschooling Facebook page and her site Crafts for Learning, about kids and scary movies. Is it a societal contradiction that we worry about kids playing alone outside but don't mind them sitting in front of shoot-'em-up video games for hours? Should Lego be making playsets for movies that kids aren't technically allowed to go to? Are making-of documentaries a good way to introduce kids to scary fare or just a way to ruin all the fun? What's more scary, slasher movies, zombies, or Fraggle Rock? Listen in for some thoughts on whether horror movies and other scary fare are going to break your kids or help them get into film school. You can find Kathy's article on a birthday-party horror spree on Wired; if you're reading this someplace without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout for the full recap experience.

It was Halloween theme night on Dancing With the Stars, as well as team-dance night, which provided lots of opportunities for the costume, hair, and makeup folks to show off. (Or not: what WAS that thing on Bindi's head in the group dance? Andy's contacts for his couples dance were indeed fantastically freaky, though.) We then moved on to other unsettling things -- like news of Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globes and Chris Rock hosting the Oscars; or doing a sitcom live every week; or watching an actor you like in a show you hate. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlnks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com. And if you're interested in watching Undateable Live, it's on Fridays at 8 p.m. on NBC, as I should have remembered to say on the episode.)

Parents who think their children's activities give them a second time around for childhood too are getting us hot under the collar this week. Nicole is particularly steamed at parents who turn a kid's Halloween costume into a family affair, and even have the nerve to get in on the trick or treating. Catherine thinks parents who want to make their kids' sports all about them need to bench themselves. And Terri's worried that maybe her enthusiastic support of her daughter's marching band crossed the line.

Speaking of parents needing to change their ways, we chatted a bit about the habits and traditions we can't quite let go of, from Christmas PJs to driving kids everywhere to hanging on to work habits more appropriate to a college student than a creaky old mom. Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Catherine suggested you check out her article on 10 Things You Can Do to Fix Youth Sports if you're bugged by those over-involved parents or might be one; Nicole advocated for submarine parenting rather than the helicopter variety; and Terri wondered whether you've tried The List App (follow her @mamatude if you have).

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Susan Adcox, who writes about grandparenting for About.com, joins us on the third Wednesday of every month to chat with Catherine about grandparenting issues. This time, they spoke about fitting in fitness as part of their everyday routines, as well as some interesting recent news about aging with a positive attitude. Listen in to find out how they're getting in their daily activity — and how technology fits into the mix. Plus, lots of links for further reading:

+ Why Seniors Should Choose Water Exercise
+ 5 Fun Fitness Activities for Grandparents and Grandchildren
+ Why Grandparents Should Stop Complaining About Aging
+ Safe Routes to School
+ Shine Activity Tracker Review
+ Win Prizes with Your Fitness Tracker

(If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Famous dances of some sort or another were the focus of this week's Dancing With the Stars, and Catherine and Terri found both the dances and the judging to have no particular rhyme or reason. They chatted about the dances they liked and didn't, the scoring they liked and didn't, the readiness of Paula Deen to go home, and the unfairness of low-scoring anyone who has to dance with a snake. They quickly moved on to something a little more respectable -- the two stage shows Catherine managed to see in one week, Kinky Boots on tour and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Timeon Broadway. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Screen content is usually the domain of our Round 2 mini-podcasts on entertainment topics, but for this week's group chat we wanted to revisit the question of screen time for kids in the context of a recent announcement from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The AAP is in the process of updating its policy guidelines on screen time for kids (which both Catherine and Amanda have written about), changing it from a hard line of no screens at all for kids under 2 and two hours a day max after that to a wavier line that seems to accept the fact that parents just do not want to go there. We chatted about whether there should be a guideline and how it should be determined, whether your personal pediatrician really cares one way or another, whether anybody in Canada is making these kinds of rules, and how many moms must have beat the AAP about the heads with iPads to inspire this change.

Jumping from the world of pixels to printed paper, Amanda had us wondering whether there are any book characters we wish we could be, and why. Listen to find out who wants to move into that little house on the prairie, who longs to be snoopy little Encyclopedia Brown, who wants to leave her kids home to frolic with the Cat in the Hat, and who thinks the cool mom of Henry and Mudge is about her speed. What book would you like to move into? Share in the comments or on our Facebook page.

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week. Catherine mentioned being interviewed for the National Alliance for Youth Sports website; Amanda touted 4 Surprising Benefits of Video Games (and Terri mentioned some surprising benefits of TV watching to go with it); Nicole liked an article about managing your child's screen time; and Terri invited you to Scream Into the Void.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

The Insufficient Ice Incident of September 2015 prompted Catherine to take a closer look at sports superstitions. So in this week’s Round 4, she and Charlie Zegers discussed the difference between superstitions and rituals and how they work, both in the major leagues and in youth sports. Charlie writes about sports and also about parenting kids on the autism spectrum. He is also proud to say that he's able to watch major sporting events from any seat in his living room without fear. (If you’re reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, visit http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

[This is an encore presentation of a Parenting Roundabout episode originally released on May 13, 2015. If you listened to it the first time, this is your second chance to follow up on all the resources and ideas mentioned that you just never quite got around to. And if you didn’t listen to it the first time -- hey, it's new to you! Either way, please listen and enjoy.]

Fresh off hosting 75 people for a four-year-old's birthday party with a theme of "Space, Ranbows, and Superheroes," Lexi Walters Wright chats with Terri about present protocols, color-coordinated superhero cupcakes, backyards vs. bowling alleys, how birthday parties have changed over the years, and why you won't find a pinata at her house. For more advice on birthday parties, read Lexi's articles on Understood.org:

+ 3 Reasons Kids May Struggle With Birthday Parties
+ 8 Ways to Make Your Young Child’s Party a Success
+ Common Party Pitfalls for Grade-Schoolers With Learning and Attention Issues

(If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

It was switch-up night on Dancing With the Stars, and also "Judges say what?" night, because the scoring was all the heck over the place. We talked about the dances we liked, the conspiracies we wondered about, and the partnerships we wish could stay switched. Then, we moved on to our promised discussion of Fox's Grandfathered and The Grinder, although neither of us completely did her homework and watched all eps of both. Still, we liked what we saw or heard enough to try again to watch and chat next week. Other fall TV we've been consuming? Mostly stuff from last season still on the DVR and whatever Terri's husband happens to be watching when she walks through the room, but we're working on it. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

It's October, which brings a lot of change in the parenting world. Along with the seasons changing, and the settling in to the school year, we have Halloween anticipation ... or dread, as the case may be. We discussed our favorite candies to steal from our little trick-or-treaters, our costuming issues, the transition from plastic pumpkin pail to pillowcase, and whether anybody ever comes to our house.

Of course, Halloween isn't the only thing we love and/or hate about this time of year. The weather is changing (at least for some of us); the back-to-school honeymoon is over and teachers/kids are starting to complain; and cheerful reminders are popping up on Facebook that Christmas is coming. We lamented the tragedy that is fall in California when you're used to actual seasons; the onset of child activities that suck up all family time; the cost of wool socks; and the season of East Coast hurricane hysteria. But there are pretty leaves! (And superhero wool socks!)

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week. Catherine suggested "Healthier Halloween" info on About.com; Amanda wrote an article on "Halloween Challenges for Kids With Sensory Processing Issues — and How to Help" (and Terri added a plug for the simplest possible costumes); Nicole (allegedly trying to be helpful and not stress anyone out, but c'mon) directed us to Halloween ideas on Pinterest; Lexi got to speak with some smart experts about Why Your Teen or Tween May Be Frustrated With School -- and What You Can Say to Help; and Terri offered articles on Halloween help for special needs and a Halloween apology template for those class moms who just Do Not Get It with the restricted diets.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episodes and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Each month Meghan Corridan, a pediatric occupational therapist, joins Catherine to share some of what she’s learned from her clients and her own 5-year-old daughter. Now that her daughter is in kindergarten, Meghan is experiencing the joys of homework firsthand, so we talked about how to set the scene and help kids succeed with their at-home work. Find out Meghan’s pro tips for motivating kids and teaching independence (something both moms are still working on with their kids at home). To read more of Meghan’s advice, visit her blog, MAC&Toys, or the site for The Meeting House, where Meghan helps run a supportive after-school program. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

It's the most thematically uncomfortable Dancing With the Stars of the season: the dreaded Most Memorable Year episode, where celebs are asked to honor the death of a loved one with a cha cha. The mix of real-life hardship with sequins and fluff is always tricky, and this year's degree of difficulty was kicked up by contestant Alek Skarlatos's personal connection to the shooting at an Oregon college and host Tom Bergeron's absence to be with his ailing father. We chatted about our favorites, those that impressed us less, the awkwardness of judging someone who's just cried on camera, and the dilemma of having a happy personal story amongst the angst. Leaping on to non-dancing topics, Catherine gave her review of A Lego Brickumentary, and Terri bid a sad goodbye to one of her favorite podcasts, Firewall and Iceberg, RIP. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

What's your very favorite children's book? The one you read to your kid until it disintegrated? The one that got your child hooked on reading? The one you dug way more than your kid? We compared notes on kid-lit we've loved and loathed, finding many beloved books in common and agreeing to disagree (maybe) on whether the Magic Tree House books are sufficiently annoying to be ban-worthy.

Next, we considered the books that don't exist that we'd love to see -- and particularly the ones we figure we've got it in us to write. If you've ever wanted a children's book about room-cleaning, ideas of things to do while waiting in your car, or a guide to reassure you that you haven't really messed your kid up that badly, just help us find a publisher.

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Amanda suggested we check out the Banned Books Week website, and while you're there, Catherine said to check out The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks; Nicole liked Time magazine's list of the 100 Best Children's Books of All Time; and Terri offered a list of 20 Things I Learned from Reading Children’s Fiction.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episodes and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music.

As a parent of a child with special needs, you'd like to think that the transition to adulthood will be some sort of triumphant finish line to all the advocating and planning and worrying and IEP meetings. Sadly, although the IEP meetings end, the rest of that stuff just keeps on keeping on. On this week's Round 4, Terri chats with monthly contributor Robert Rummel-Hudson about being overwhelmed by the uncertainty of our kids' future and the certainty that we'll have to keep providing direction, even as there's less and less of a graceful way to do that. Come wallow with us in worry, won't you? (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Maker Faires are springing up all over, in a city or a Barnes & Noble near you, and we asked Kathy Ceceri, author of Making Simple Robots and the upcoming Paper Inventions, about what these events are all about and how you can bring some cool DIY tech into your child's life. It's okay -- you don't have to have a 3D printer in your garage or understand complicated computer functions. Kathy talks about how English majors, artists, and crafters can participate in and benefit from Maker Faire. To see some of the projects from Kathy's book when it comes out, go to the Make: site.

Football pre-empting ABC's schedule foiled Catherine's efforts to watch Dancing With the Stars this week, and if you had to pick an episode to be pre-empted in your viewing area, this would be the one. Terri gave a recap of the TV-themed episode -- which labored under the need to 1) pick only TV theme songs they could get rights to and 2) use the TV show as the theme of the dance -- and recommended Alek's, Alexa's, and Nick's as the three to watch if you also missed the ep (and previously.tv forums if you want more commentary). Then Catherine reported on her latest book-club read, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, a Swedish novel that's described on its cover as "a mordantly funny and loopily freewheeling novel about aging disgracefully." (Despite what Terri says, she hasn't read a Swedish novel --Smilla's Sense of Snow was Danish, and not loopily freewheeling at all.) Finally, we looked forward to watching Grandfathered and The Grinder on Fox tonight and discussing it next week, along with hopefully un-pre-empted star dancing. Join us, won't you?

Our group chat started off on a positive note as we shared those clever tricks we've developed over the years to solve various organizational and parenting problems. We gave ourselves pats on the back for finding new uses for pizza boxes and Book Sox, and even for remembering to put gas in the car. It's all good.

Things quickly turned bad, though, when we moved on to our second topic: those things that make us irrationally, blood-boilingly, family flee-ingly furious. Whether it's printers, phones, Windows 8, clutter, or inefficient doing of laundry that lights the fuse, you'll want to get out of the way before we blow.

Fortunately, we calmed down in time to share our recommendations for the week. Catherine gave credit to the Parent Hacks site for giving us the idea for Topic 1 in the first place; Amanda tipped us off to an Understood.org article by Round 3 contributor Lexi Walters Wright on "8 Ways to Use Color-Coding to Help Kids With Executive Functioning Issues"; Nicole followed that up with a mention of an article on "25 Easy Ways to Improve Executive Functioning Skills" on her Inclusive Class site; and Terri directed listeners to her About.com Parenting Children With Special Needs site for help with Halloween-costume hacks, clutter storage, and inciting yourself into a tantrum.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episodes and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music.

For this week's Round 4, Amanda chatted with her husband, Jon, our audio engineer and blogger at My Happy SAHD Life, to talk about the ... educational challenge of taking children with special needs out in public. Do you enlighten that judgey lady on the plane about the tic disorder that's making your kid kick her seat? Do you wear T-shirts inviting people interested in why your youngsters do what they do to look it up online? Do you politely suggest that people mind their own beeswax, or apologize afterwards for your child's alleged disruptiveness? What you can't really do is hide your kid in a closet, however much certain members of the public might like you to. Amanda and Jon share their experiences, frustrations, and strategies in a podcast that will have any parent of children who get those looks in public nodding in agreement and sympathy. And if you're not one of those parents -- maybe you need to listen and think about how it feels?

Susan Adcox, who writes about grandparenting for About.com, joins us on the third Wednesday of every month to chat with Catherine about grandparenting issues. This time, they talk about family closeness: what grandparents and parents can do to keep extended families close, what factors affect family closeness, and even whether families can ever be too close. Plus, why you should not count on either podcaster to get her holiday shopping done early. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

We started out our Round 2 this week with a look back at Sunday's Emmy Awards, which we live-tweeted with Round 3 contributor Kathy Ceceri. Since neither Catherine nor Terri watches much of the stuff that gets nominated for Emmys-- even though Olive Kitteridge sounds to be right up Catherine's alley -- we mostly talked about how Andy Samberg did, what happened to those interesting little interviews with creative types ad the evening went along, and how the critics we read who do watch this stuff felt about the winners.

Next, we chatted about last night's Dancing With the Stars,and maybe the fact that Terri accidentally called Gary Nick when admiring his unexpectedly decent foxtrot and Catherine called Alek Andy when wondering whether Terri still hates contemporary says something about the lack of memorable-ness in this field so early in the season. We said goodbye to Chaka and "shape up" to Allison and "surely you're gone next" to Victor, and looked forward to a week when the good get better and the bad get out.

Finally, we looked forward to a new TV season for which Terri at least is not ready, having so much of the old season still on her DVR. But she figures her family will try out Grandfatheredand The Grinder, Catherine is planning to sample The Muppets and Empire, and by next week they'll already be behind on what everyone else is streaming, but have a few new-show reports. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

After reading a list of 21 Cringeworthy Ways Kids Have Embarrassed Their Parents on Buzzfeed, we wanted to hear each other’s most embarrassing stories so we could feel a little better about our own. Nicole shared her daughter's deliberate efforts to embarrass Mom, Amanda recalled her mortification over a child's innocent yet racially insensitive comment, Catherine wished her kids had the sense to lie when she needs them to, and Terri confessed to being more likely to embarrass her kids than the other way around. Beyond that, Amanda and Terri commisserated over their mutual tendency to be embarrassed for other people as well as themselves, and we're all embarrassed by the crummy sound quality of much of this first portion of the podcast.

While sheer humiliation has probably not been the cause, over the years some of us have moved our kids to different schools, or wanted to. How do you know when changing schools is a good idea? We shared our school-switching war stories and road-not-taken regrets before moving on to our weekly recommendations. Catherine celebrated after-school snacks that can double as dinner (so your kids don’t embarrass you by telling everyone you never feed them); Amanda shared her article on Montessori Preschools: What You Need to Know, in case you're thinking of switching to one; Nicole passed on her list of 10 Class Rules for Teachers; and Terri suggested asking yourself five questions before advocating for your child in a way that may embarrass your kid or necessitate a change of schools or both.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episodes, and to Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

This week, Amanda talked with monthly contributor Lexi Walters Wright about a tougher than usual topic. Parenting isn't always easy, and getting to the experience of being a parent isn't alway easy either. Lexi talked about her struggle not only with miscarriages but also with how to manage there not being any protocol to talk about them. She shares how that encouraged her to become a facilitator of a local Empty Arms Miscarriage Support Group. Amanda opened up about her experience with Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) and how isolating it was to feel so ill and alienated during what should have been a happy time.

The good news, they both agreed, is that celebrity parents are making it easier to talk about these issues. From Mark Zuckerberg's public statement about his and his wife's experience with miscarriage to Kate Middleton's very public experience with HG, celebs are speaking up and helping parents like us. Lexi shared an article from Parenting about celebs who have had miscarriages and Amanda shared one she wrote for PopSugar Moms about HG. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

On this week's Round 2, we said goodbye to an enjoyable season of So You Think You Can Dance, congratulations to our mutual favorite Gaby (we love you too, Jaja!), and hooray for Jim finally getting that dance with Alex (though honestly, show, you couldn't have scared up some ballet choreography?). Then, we turn our attention the glittery world of Dancing With the Stars, where many of the contestants we don't think can dance at all. The sooner some of those trainwrecks get hauled off the better, though Catherine's daughter thinks way more of Hayes Grier than Terri does (he shall be hereafter referred to in this blog as "that punk") and DWTS history suggests that a decent dancer or two will be gone before all the wreckage is cleared. Still, there were enough non-cringe-worthy performances to suggest that the second half of the season will be enjoyable, and the least star-ry "star," French-train hero Alek Skarlatos, did respectably well for himself. Join us back here every week for DWTS chat, and if you like reading other people's snarky opinions of the show, may we recommend the previously.tv forums. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Join us for an Emmys live-tweet this Sunday, 9/20, 8 p.m. ET at #EmmyPRP!

This week's group chat starts with a look at how our kids got their names. Find out who named a kid after a U2 song, who you better not call by a nickname, whose names people willfully misspell, which names teachers shrink from, and who's the only podcaster old enough to remember the name Owen from Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law.

From there, we rambled on to our experiences with day care — good, bad, and guilt-inducing. Though our children survived, we still cringe at the memory of the day-care vacations, working just to pay the day care, dealing with people who judge you for needing their services, and getting those incident reports that dutifully let you know that things weren't all good in your absence. (And no, Terri wasn't making up that story about day-care fight club.) 

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Catherine (with a C) suggested visiting the Name Lady for all your name-related questions; Amanda (never Mandy) liked a Scary Mommy post on the virtue of giving your kids plain names; Nicole (not Nicki) passed on an article about what to avoid when looking for a preschool; and Terri (not short for Theresa) had suggestions for when that preschool is for a child with special needs.

Thanks as always to Jon (without an h) Morin for producing our episodes and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Join in the lament of parents everywhere: Back to school means back to extracurricular activities, and sometimes it’s all just too much. Catherine chats with Round 4 contributor Charlie Zegers, who writes about sports and also about parenting kids on the autism spectrum, about us how often they face the “two places at once” problem, whether homework ever gets pushed off the priority list, and how to know what we’re getting into with kids’ activities. It turns out that sports guy Charlie is not actually much of a sports dad—and he’s pretty fine with that. We also briefly revisit a past podcast on varsity letters and good intentions. You can visit Catherine’s site for more advice on managing schoolwork and sports. (If you’re reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, visit http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

It was a week before Labor Day when Terri had a chat with Katherine Lee, who writes about parenting school-aged kids at childparenting.about.com, about getting kids back to school with as little stress as possible. Most kids have made or are in the throes of that transition now, but Katherine's advice for planning, patience, and letting go of perfection can still help you through these rocky times. For more of Katherine's thoughts on a better back-to-school transition, read these articles on her site:
+ 8 Ways to Get Everything Organized for Back to School
+ 7 Things Kids Are Thinking at Back-to-School Time
+ 9 Ways to Help Your Child Beat the Back-to-School Blues
(If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

On their next to last chat about the current season of So You Think You Can Dance, Catherine and Terri chat about their favorite routines, their least-favorite choreography styles, their favorites for the win, and their guesses on what in the world the show is going to fill two hours with in its results episode. That episode will go up against the opening ep of the next show we'll be discussing weekly, Dancing With the Stars, a show that once again interprets "star" exceedingly loosely. We typecast the current lineup as Terri clues Catherine in on some of the show's traditions and tropes. Finally, we slip in a little something serious with Catherine's review of Unbroken, which was in theaters a while back and watchable at home in all its traumatic glory now. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

This week's group chat is rated E for ewwwww as we talk about all those gross things we're called on to handle as moms, from head lice to snot to diapers to a long night with four rotavirus-afflicted family members and one bathroom. If that's already more than you wanted to think about, you might want to fast-forward to about the ten-minute mark, where we switch to the topic of things everybody else thinks are great ideas and we're kind of meh about, from drinking wine in Target to lauding school attendance to kicking the kids out of the nest. Finally, we share the things we are legitimately enthusiastic about this week: Catherine gives us something new to worry about with an article on super lice from Gabby at Design Mom; Amanda wants you to know that the American Academy of Pediatrics gives no-nits policies a big meh; Terri shares a no no-nits article of her own plus some tips on smothering those bugs; and for something completely different, Nicole recommends an online presentation about adapting curriculum.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for editing our episodes, and to Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Parents of kids with special needs can get pretty cynical pretty fast -- that's what happens when people sworn to serve your kid break all of their IEP promises without breaking a sweat -- but at the very start of a new school year, it's still possible to imagine that things will go as planned, and nobody will let your kid down, and you won't have to have many many unpleasant meetings with school personnel. Terri chats with Robert Rummel-Hudson about high hopes for this school year, the future that is starting to rise up in front of his daughter, and what it will take to set her successfully on the path to the life she wants. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Each month Meghan Corridan, a pediatric occupational therapist who blogs at MAC&Toys, joins Catherine to share some of what she’s learned from her clients and her own 5-year-old daughter. This time, they talked about making the transition back to school, but we think you’ll find this episode useful even if your kids have already kicked off the year. Meghan has clever advice about how to help kids problem-solve, what to look for at the open house, and even how to create a first day (or first week) tradition. Plus, Meghan and Catherine agree on how best to get your kid to talk about school (hint: you need accomplices). Meghan works with an after-school program called The Meeting House, and you can find more of her BTS advice at TMH’s blog. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience).

Noooooooooooo! Not Jim! Our mutual favorite for the top spot made his last leggy leap as a contestant this season on So You Think You Can Dance, and while the judges didn't have a vote in that, we'll blame them anyway for swaying America with their relentless dissing of Jim as just technically wondrous and flawless and the best ever. (I guess he should be grateful they didn't make him dance like a sexy fish.) We chatted about the dances, booed (or fast-forwarded past) the "expert" critiques, and picked our faves and best guesses for the big winner. Then we turned our sights to the next dance show on the horizon, Dancing With the Stars, taking a look at the "stars" so far announced (including singer Andy Grammer, whose performance on last season's show and video for the same song you should go watch after listening to the podcast) and the differences between the shows (like the fact that if the choreography stinks, at least the choreographer gets booted along with the dancer). Finally, we peeked in on the VMAs, and decided that the less said about that self-consiously provocative exercise, the better. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

After listening to today's podcast, you're going to want to go check out the cry playlist we set up a while back, because we're all about the blues. Nicole in particular is lamenting her partially empty nest and resenting all the mom friends who never told her she was going to feel like this when her son moved out. We consider some other things that never seemed to have made it into the parenting manual -- could we have had a heads up about the way sending kids off to school doesn't mean you get your life back, maybe? -- and go on to formulate some advice of our own about motherhood, like "You're going to want sleep more than you'll want anything else" and "It is perfectly acceptable to ignore your mother's advice."

Finally, we made our weekly recommendations of things worth checking out: Catherine liked a Cool Mom Tech list of organizational apps for back-to-school; Amanda appreciated Ellen Seidman's post on people staring at your child; Nicole thought the book Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood by Naomi Wolf tells it like it is; and Terri sugggested reading Robert Rummel-Hudson's post on the R Word, even though it's sad that we're still even talking about that.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for editing our episodes, and to Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music (and for still living at home, so Nicole doesn't come completely unhinged). If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Video games are specifically designed to keep kids engaged and working at the peak of their ability, something that classroom learning often seems to very much not be. Kathy Ceceri -- who writes about homeschooling on the All About Homeschooling Facebook page and her site Crafts for Learning, and has a new book coming out about how kids can design their own video games -- chats with Terri about a recent Games in Education Symposium she attended and what's going on in the field of learning games. Among the topics they touched on were using video games to differentiate instruction, make classroom reports more interesting (with Twitch-like videos), and encourage kids to dive into literature instead of just reading it. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Our weeks for talking about So You Think You Can Dance are running out, with the cast whittled down to six this time around. We wished they'd stop calling attention to Jim's (alleged) lack of "connection" and Virgil's (undeniable) lack of height; felt sorry for Megz being dumped on by the judges; did not feel particularly sad to lose Derek and Neptune; and wondered how the few remaining episodes will pair or pare away our favorites. We also looked ahead to Dancing With the Stars, which Terri will be making Catherine watch with her this season. Then, turning to more literary topics, Catherine gave a book report on Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee's controversial sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. Spoiler warning! She totally ruins the ending. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

When's the last time you went to a wedding? Did you get a paper invitation or an Evite? And did you notice whether the bride and groom were collecting gifts in a cash box, a satin bag, or a dirty shoe? We talked about these and other wedding trends, with a detour into bar and bat mitzvahs, and noticed that we're all in the stage of life where we're sitting back and waiting for our friends' kids (and our own kids?!) to get married.

That led us into a discussion of the swiftness of time, especially in the summer. Ironically, it's our Canadian Nicole who has no sorries at all to offer about her fun summer, which included a visit to the Motherland. Catherine's looking wistfully at blank chore charts and unsent barbecue invitations, while Terri plans to squeeze all her summer fun into her family's upcoming vacation. Amanda moved her entire household this summer so we're giving her a pass on accomplishing anything else.

Finally, we shared our weekly recommendations: Catherine mentioned her new article on adding more vegetables to your family's diet (which is actually a plea for new cucumber recipes); Amanda recommended a piece by our colleague Lexi Walters Wright on the summer movies of 2015; Nicole noted that we would all feel better about our summer accomplishments after we read this list of 50 summer activities; and Terri suggested her resources for family events -- Family Gathering Survival Kit, Family Gathering Bingo, Safe Things to Say to Parents of Kids With Special Needs at Family Gatherings, and the All-Purpose Apology Template.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for editing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

For a special Round 4 this month, Amanda got together with our audio engineer, Jon, to talk about the experience of being a stay-at-home father to children with special needs. Oh, and did we mention Amanda and Jon are married? (To each other.) They chatted about how hard it is to have two working parents when you have kids with special needs and how that led to their decision to have a stay-at-home parent. Amanda talked about a study she’d read about the connection between poverty and disabilities. Jon spoke of the assumptions people make of dads, particularly when it comes to managing appointments, therapies, medications and so forth. And he had sage advice for dads who are trying to break down stereotypes. Listen in for banter, chatter and more. You can also visit Jon's site My Happy SAHD Life. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Susan Adcox, who writes about grandparenting for About.com, joins us on the third Wednesday of every month to chat with Catherine about grandparenting issues. This time, they talk about whether grandparents are really making kids fat, or summer is, and what families can do about that. Check out these articles from Catherine's and Susan's sites for info that might help:
+ Why Susan recommends retro toys for Easter baskets
+ Healthy snack ideas from Catherine and superfood suggestions from Susan
+ Beach ball and balloon games and healthy board games
(If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

This week on So You Think You Can Dance, Terri and Catherine enjoyed the absence of sexy fish and the presence of brief solos from the top 10, as well as some winning routines by our favorite dancers and their All-Star partners. Like the commenters on the Previously.tv forums, we questioned how a professional Broadway dancer ended up on the street team, and we also wondered about the cultural appropriation of Jaja's Bollywood routine and Gaby's geisha-vs.-ninja duel. Then we moved on to other TV talent showcases, like America's Got Talent. We think the Professional Regurgitator would have fit right in on David Letterman’s Stupid Human Tricks segment. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Along with all the shiny new school supplies and stylish new school clothes, every new school year involves a mysterious new teacher, who will either be The Best Thing That Ever Happened for Your Child or The Thing That Dooms Your Child to Academic Failure Forever. So no stress. We chatted about our new-teacher anxiety for this year, remember some wonderful/horrible teachers of the past, and reflect on how good Canadian teachers have it with extra-polite parents.

As much as you hope that your kid gets a teacher that brings out his or her absolute best, we have to confess it's kind of awful when the teacher seems to see a much better version of your child than you ever get to. An article on the parody site Mom News Daily caught our eye this week, and if it had been on Catherine's quiz last week, we don't think we would have guessed that a headline saying "Children Are 800 Percent Worse When Their Mothers Are in the Room" was the fake one. It's funny 'cause it's true, right? We compare notes on our children's annoying-for-mom behaviors and tussle over whether it's okay for teachers to judge parents for such misbehaviors when us moms do a fair amount of teacher-judging ourselves (see: first half of episode).

Finally, we shared our weekly recommendations: Catherine mentioned her new article on "10 Ways to Fix Youth Sports"; Amanda pointed us toward an article titled "Can I Request a Specific Teacher for My Child With Learning and Attention Issues?"; Nicole liked an article on "When to Stand Up for Your Child"; and Terri suggested her series of articles on preparing the school for your child's specific disability.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for editing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

From finding enough options for varied lunches to dealing with kids who only eat one lunch to collecting fairy dewdrops to adorn our Bento Box lunches, Lexi and Amanda are ready to start packing. Packing lunches, that is. Moving from daycare to preschool this year has Lexi in a panic. She talks about the pressure of being the follow-up act to her son's daycare provider's delicious, nutritious hot meals. Amanda's advice is simple: Stop caring. She shares that her daughter ate from the "olive cart" (actually the "a la carte") menu in middle school and is sure the experience of eating only chocolate-chip cookies and churros for three years was good preparation for college life. If you're wondering what to do when your kid only eats sandwich-size pepperoni and superhero CheezIts, we've got advice for you! And, to be fair, we also shared some sound, easy-to-manage recipes from a great Kveller article, "23 Back-to-School Lunch Ideas Your Kids Will Actually Eat." (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

They are fish. But they're sexy fish. Dancers, if you hear those words, you can be pretty sure that your time on So You Think You Can Dance is over. The most ... notable choreography on this week's show was the one seemingly designed to prevent two dancers from getting a Twitter save (see video), but as Catherine and Terri discuss, the whole episode seemed to be more about the business of getting rid of four dancers than the art of, you know, showcasing good dancing. On to the top 10! In other pop-culture discussion, Catherine's review of Into the Woods (Meryl Streep version) moved into a look at other Meryl Streep singing movies, including the new Ricki and the Flash and the older Mamma Mia, and a list that ranks all of her film performances. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Now that you’re all transitioned into and adjusted to the summer routine, surprise! Time to transition back to school. We started our group chat by lamenting all the disruption ahead of us -- kids moving out, kids refusing to enter uninviting middle-school buildings, parents jostling for backpacks, the need to call and harrass special-education administrators daily, and our desire for a more comprehensive Amazon Prime service that would eliminate that kind of hassle from our lives.

After such a stressful topic, we took it easy with a fun parenting quiz devised by Catherine to stump the rest of us. We were asked to identify whether a particular parenting quote was from an actual parenting "expert" or a humor site, and later to identify which title in a list of parenting books came out of Catherine's head. Congratulations to Nicole for getting a perfect score in our first test period. Terri and Amanda look forward to getting our revenge in future contests.

Finally, we shared our recommendations. Nicole pointed us toward a post on her website on "10 Ways to Teach Social Skills in Your Classroom"; Amanda also touted her own work, an Understood.org post on "How to Avoid Being Overprotective of Your Child"; Catherine passed on the names of her sources for the humorous selections of her quiz, Los Feliz Daycare, the Onion's After Birth section, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency; and Terri suggested following her list of entertainment Tweeters so you too can follow television critics at the TCAs.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

This week on Round 4, Nicole chatted with Robert Rummel-Hudson about his exciting new business partnership. What started out as bit of an experiment has become a life-changing moment. Rob tells us that recently he was invited to speak at a conference about his book, Schuyler’s Monster, a story about his daughter’s nonverbal world. While Rob has spoken at dozens of conferences before, this time he decided to try something different and ask Schuyler, now a tenth-grader, to participate in the presentation. After Rob spoke, Schuyler came on stage to answer several audience questions using her AAC device. Well, apparently, Schuyler stole the show! Rob was thrilled to watch her confidently engage and interact with audience members and soon realized he had become overshadowed by his own daughter. He tells Nicole that he sees Schuyler’s potential as a self-advocate and is excited about her future. Nicole thinks that Rob could soon be out of job! To follow Rob’s new adventures in public speaking go to www.rummelhudson.com, and to read some of Schuyler's answers, go to her dad's blog. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://www.parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Each month Meghan Corridan, a pediatric occupational therapist, joins Catherine to talk about activities that are both fun and therapeutic for kids (and often their adults too). This time she gives us the lowdown on all the benefits kids get from cooking and baking—everything from fine motor skills to self-esteem and confidence. Meghan also gives us her thoughts on whether kiddie cooking products are worth our time (and our kitchen storage space). Visit Meghan’s blog, MAC&Toys, for more reasons to whip up some cookies with your kids. And if you want your child to surprise you with a homemade Sunday brunch, Catherine suggests letting him watch a show called Man vs. Child: Chef Showdown for inspiration. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience).

Last week, Terri made a wish for a Broadway number and some tap-dancing from Gaby on So You Think You Can Dance, and voila! her wish was granted. Gaby and Virgil's adorable number was enough to get her through all manner of contemporary thrashing, though both Terri and Catherine wondered what was up with all the mental-illness-themed choreography and whether those "Here's what America needs to know about me!" bits had to be quite so all over the place. Of one thing there was no doubt: It was time for Asaf to go home, no matter how good he looks with his shirt off. Also up for brief discussion was Apple Music, the new subscription service that gives you access to pretty much all the songs that Terri has found particular benefit in for parents. (If you're watching this without hyperlinks or access to the video of That Dance, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Have you ever been so invested in a family vacation that you're determined to make your family stay through a hurricane? Or brought an extra set of parent-like adults along with you on a trip? Well, we have. This week we talked about our recent trips and our upcoming trips. Nicole even brought an extra kid home from Canada on her vacation! Find out how that happened and also why Amanda keeps butting in to plug her new book in this conversation.

Then, of course, we made the natural transition from talking about family vacations to talking about sleep deprivation. Have you ever felt so tired you just want to cry? Or wanted to make everybody else stay awake when you have insomnia so they can feel your misery? Well, maybe you haven't, but don't judge us for for being exhausted! We even have a new word for it: Crierd.

Finally, we gave our recommendations for the week: Amanda was interested in the idea that snoring kids who have sleep apnea might be misdiagnosed with ADHD. Catherine wanted you to know that if worrying about your kids' activities is messing up your sleep, she's written about when quitting is for the best, and she also recommended some "Healthy Eating Tips for Travel," while Nicole recommended Field Trip, a cool app to help you find landmarks as you travel. Terri shared "Where to Watch the 2015 Special Olympics World Games" and reminded us that the Americans with Disabilities Act just turned 25, which reminded Amanda of an interview with Rep. Sensenbrenner on Understood. (Did we mention we're sleep-deprived?) Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music.

How do you keep kids learning over the summer without tying them to the table with a pack of workshieets or a copy of Homer? Nicole chatted with Kathy Ceceri -- who writes about homeschooling on the All About Homeschooling Facebook page and her site Crafts for Learning -- about fun ways to keep kids' minds active and expanding, including robotics, outdoor science experiments, life skills, online coding courses, Maker Camp, and maybe just lying about school being out for the summer. For more ideas, read Kathy's article on Summer Enrichment for Homeschoolers. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

So you think you can choreograph something besides contemporary? That's what Terri's wondering about the ongoing rounds of So You Think You Can Dance, which feature about 75% more thrashing about than she's really comfortable with. She and Catherine discuss a fairly meh episode in which Catherine liked Kate and Neptune's number, Terri didn't think Asaf's was so awful, and they both felt bad that somebody thought a dance in which Jim and Moises were supposed to swagger was a good idea. Moving on to Catherine's latest book-club pick, Lisa See's Shanghai Girls, which is as full of tragedies as #SYTYCD is of contemporary emoting, but sparked some interesting conversation about immigration. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Did you see that viral story making the rounds about a diner owner who screamed at a toddler who wouldn't stop screaming, and then kept up a NSFW social-media battle with the tot's similarly unable-to-let-it-go parents? Yeah, us too. Did you refrain from reading the comments that you knew were going to make you feel like everybody is judging you and your family and maybe you should just go hide in a dark room? Yeah, us neither, even though we all know better by now, don't we? We piled on with our own observations about the situation, and wondered why we can't just all live and let live and let dine and let read the Internet without feeling under attack.

Moving from kids who are out of control to other family members who don't always obey, we talked about our beloved and often noisy-at-podcast-time dogs, sharing whether and why we're pet people. Finally, we gave our recommendations for the week: Catherine mentioned an article on "Activities for Dogs and Families to Share" and another on stopping with the parent shaming already; Amanda thought an article on "What to Say When Other People Interfere with Your Parenting" by one of our Round 3 contributors, Lexi Walters Wright, was apropos; Nicole suggested a survey on "What Kind of Pet Is Right for Your Family?" from Parents.com; and Terri passed on articles about taking kids to restaurants and other community trouble spots and creating the best chance for success — as well as a rant she wrote when she got riled about this sort of thing in the past.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music.

For a special Round 3 this month, our two Round 4 podcasters, Robert Rummel-Hudson and Charlie Zegers, got together to talk about the experience of being the father of a child with special needs. They chat about articles on special-needs moms that could just as well be dad-inclusive, stereotypes of special-needs dads and dads in general, the way the father narrative is evolving, and their frustration with dads who do not step up. For more on the subject, read Rob's book Schuyler's Monster and his blog posts on Fighting Monsters With Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, and visit Charlie's site Parent Spectrum.

So you think you can dance more adorably than Jim and Jaja (left) in the lastest episode of So You Think You Can Dance? Probably not; their hip hop routine was pretty awesomely cute. In our weekly chat about Fox's dance competition, Catherine and Terri checked on the progress of dancers they like; worried about dancers who are poorly served by choreography, costumes, or camera work; wondered how West Coast viewers felt about that live Twitter-save business; pondered whether Asaf is as big a jerk as he's being edited to be; and wished Cat would put on some flats already. Next, they took a look at this year's Emmy nominations and asked why Kimmy Schmidt herself is missing from the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt nominations, how exactly Allison Janney is a supporting actress on Mom, and whether we really need to be honoring so darn many reality shows. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience. And if you're watching the SYTYCD special tonight, look for us tweeting about it at @mamatude, @AboutFamilyFit, and/or @RoundAboutChat.)

[This is an encore presentation of a Parenting Roundabout episode originally released on January 14, 2015. If you listened to it the first time, this is your second chance to follow up on all the resources and ideas mentioned that you just never quite got around to. And if you didn’t listen to it the first time -- hey, it's new to you! Either way, please listen and enjoy.]

Seems like once a month or so, our Facebook feeds fill up with links to an article on Why Parenting Is in Crisis and Parents Today Are the Worst. Are they really the worst? Or just parenting in a time when there are more parenting experts trying to produce more content than ever? We talked about the ways different parenting styles, life experiences, and types of kids make it hard both to parent and to judge parenting; how there's still no judging like in-person judging to make you feel awful; the likelihood that the audience for heck-in-a-handbasket articles is parents who want to feel superior to bad parents rather than the bad parents themselves; and the way that Pinterest is in fact the most judgey feel-bad-about-yourself spot on the Internet.

Then we looked at a place where parents are, perhaps, not judged harshly enough: online support groups, with their dedication to being a safe place where anyone can say anything, and their protected environment for saying things that maybe should not be said. As we discussed our personal experiences, it appeared that in-person support groups were less likely to go bad, maybe because you have to actually put on clothes and face people to participate in them. Amanda and Terri attested to the way that online groups can turn into minefields the longer you participate and the more you care about expressing your opinion

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week. Catherine pointed folks toward two articles on sports parents: "9 Signs of a Sports Mom (or Dad)"and "Are You a Crazy Sports Parent?" (no judging, you understand); Amanda mentioned an article she wrote for Understood.org on using praise to build your child's self-esteem; Nicole invited listeners to a webinar she hosted; and Terri offered help in deciding if your support group is toxic.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music.

It's everybody's favorite summertime activity: homework! Or maybe everybody's summertime misery. If your kids aren't just raring to read, write, and do 'rithmetic, you'll need some strategies for dragging those young brains through their summer assignments. For this week's Round 4, Terri chatted with Charlie Zegers, who writes about sports and also about parenting kids on the autism spectrum, about the summer-homework situation for kids both with and without special needs, how parents can organize that work to keep everyone on track and out of last-minute panic, and what accommodations you might want to ask for to keep summer homework from ruining your summer. For more on the topic, read tips on homework help, math worksheets, and reading routines on Terri's Parenting Special Needs site. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Susan Adcox, who writes about grandparenting for About.com, joins us on the third Wednesday of every month to chat with Catherine about grandparenting issues. This time, they talk about ways grandparents may be called upon to help with the grandkids, both fun -- Grandparent Camp to give the kids some outdoor and active bonding time with Grandma and Grandpa -- and serious -- helping out when a family member has cancer. For more on these topics, check these articles on Susan's site:
+ Things to Do at Grandma Camp
+ When a Family Member Has Cancer: Help Grandchildren Cope

(If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

So you think you can dance in the style you're comfortable with for one more week? That's the question asked on this week's episode of So You Think You Can Dance, which Terri dutifully watched and Catherine will catch up with eventually when she is reunited with her DVR. After Terri filled Catherine in on what she missed, Catherine shared a New York Times Magazine article about two pairs of twins separated at birth, and Terri plugged TV critic Dan Fienberg's "Take Me to the Pilots" series of articles that look at each of next fall's pilot episodes and consider whether there's a season's-worth of TV there. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

The US women's soccer victory in the World Cup got us thinking about sports and women's sports and whether our daughters will be inspired by this sort of thing ... and then realizing that out of the four of us, two of us had nothing to say about sports and one had fled the country. So we sent Catherine as our ambassador into Sportsland to chat with our Round 4 contributor and resident sports guy Charlie Zegers about whether this means people are finally going to start caring about soccer and women's sports.

She returned to join Amanda and Terri in a little ranting in the style of Amy Poelher and Seth Meyers' "Really?" rant about the dissing of women's sports. Terri wondered why, really, online job applications for minimum-wage gigs require endless pages of psychological questions; Catherine asked her kids if really, they have to be in her face all summer long; and Amanda marveled that, really, special-education departments can just close over the summer and leave new students with IEPs to scramble at the last minute? 

With all that out of our system, we made our recommendations for the week: Catherine has an article on "How (and Why) You Can Support Women's Sports"; Amanda liked an article by Katherine Lewis on "What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?" (really?); and Terri shared some links to stories about sports programs for kids with special needs and ways to adapt sports for inclusion and start an inclusive sports program. 

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

[This is an encore presentation of a Parenting Roundabout episode originally released on April 8, 2015. If you listened to it the first time, this is your second chance to follow up on all the resources and ideas mentioned that you just never quite got around to. And if you didn’t listen to it the first time -- hey, it's new to you! Either way, please listen and enjoy.]

Are superheroes good role models for little boys? And how much should moms worry about that? Amanda chatted with her Understood.org colleague Lexi Walters Wright about violent comic-book covers, mom-created vulnerable superheroes, and the rite of passage from obliviousness to obsession when it comes to the great wide world of superhero merchandising. What do you do when your child moves on from things like space and rainbows and brown -- things you can understand and share -- to a fascination with a huge and detailed universe you know nothing about? How do you convince him that Batman pajamas don't mean you can fly, dressing up like the Hulk doesn't mean you can hit your friend, and doing the dishes is superhero-worthy work? For more on the topic, follow these links mentioned in the podcast:

+ Marvel cancels two upcoming covers following uproar over new Spider-Woman
+ Violent 'Batgirl' cover pulled after Twitter uproar
+ Mom creates a coloring book to show son that superheroes CAN cry
+ PDF of the coloring book
+ Let Toys Be Toys

What's the superhero situation in your house? Share in the comments, and if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

This week's entertainment episode started with our weekly look at Fox's So You Think You Can Dance, which winnowed the field down from a seemingly huge number of dancers to 10 on Team Stage (including one of our mutual favorites, tap-dancer Gaby, left) and 10 on Team Street. We're glad to be moving on to the real post-audition part of the show, but wondering why most of the folks we got to know and root for have fallen by the wayside. Good luck to all you dancers we kind of maybe recognize! Catherine has also been enjoying Chef's Table on Netflix, and Terri has been wincing over a raunchy song selection on Spike's Lip Sync Battle. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

We started our weekly group chat with a look at a Buzzfeed survey on when kids are the right age for various social milestones, from drinking coffee to getting tattoos. We checked in with our own preferences for our kids on things like pierced ears, staying home alone, walking to school, and dying hair, and applauded Amanda's son for pursuing Facebook membership with the intent of being an annoying little brother prototype for the digital age. 

Speaking of age, we felt ours when we talked about tech that was common in our youth and incomprehensible to our kids. Remember pay phones? Cassette tapes? Turntables? Rotary phone dials? Typewriters? Even just first-generation iPods and cell phones without keys on a screen? You're closer in age to us than your youngsters, then. But some things, like sturdy old Legos and rugged toy trucks, never go out of style.

Finally, we made our recommendations for the week: Catherine suggested a visit to About.com's Kids Food and Fitness section; Amanda's been enjoying the Kids React YouTube Channel, a dial phone episode of which inspired today's second topic; Nicole invited us to her Google+ page; and Terri mentioned Parenting Roundabout's Google+ page and our YouTube Songs That Make Us Cry Playlist.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Pixar's latest offering, Inside Out, has been drawing rave reviews from critics and moviegoers and particular recognition from parents of kids with special needs as a way to make abstract emotions concrete. Robert Rummel-Hudson, who blogs about special needs at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, has seen the film, and shares his thoughts on what's great about it and how it can help you start a useful dialog with your child (and maybe help you understand yourself better too). For more on the subject, read "Unspoken Stories of the Secret Heart" on Support for Special Needs and "Special-Needs Perspectives on Pixar's Inside Out" on About.com Parenting Special Needs.

The Fourth of July should be a fun and exciting holiday for kids, with its picnics and parades and fireworks, but for youngsters with sensory issues it can be an unendling onslaught of noise, crowds, and stressful situations. Catherine talks to pediatric occupational therapist Meghan Corridan, who blogs at MAC&Toys, about what parents can do to help kids find a comfort level with all that flash and festivity without withdrawing from it completely. Strategies include noise-canceling headphones, sunglasses, a safe spot a little away from the action, and coloring supplies to provide a distraction. For more on that last idea, read "Coloring ... Not Just for Kids" on Meghan's site, and for some additional Fourth of July thoughts, read "Four Hard Things About the Fourth" on the About.com Parenting Special Needs site. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, go to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience).

In honor of Catherine's recent cross-Midwest drive to deliver a child to skate camp and many of our listeners' upcoming drive to see family for the Fourth, we chatted about road-trip entertainment, from new possibilities like audiobooks and Bluetooth and watching MacGyver on your iPad to old-school memories of melted cassette tapes and listening to DVRs you couldn't see while driving. Catherine recommended three audiobooks her kids enjoyed: Fake Mustache by Tom Angleberger, Lionboy by Zizou Corder, and Jeremy Brown: Spy by Simon Cheshire. Meanwhile, on So You Think You Can Dance, which we're watching and discussing every week, a bunch of sentimental favorites made the road trip to Las Vegas for nothin', as a moving up-close-and-personal wasn't enough to get you through to the next round. Bye, newlyweds! Bye girl who overcame a terrible leg injury! Bye guy whose family never saw you dance! Bye cute ballroom guy with a foot injury who would dance on one foot if you could! Bye all you folks we were encouraged to care about! There's always next year! At least we appear to be done with solo auditions for the next little while. Please? (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

We each have our own particular extroverted or introverted approach to our fellow humans, but what about families — can a family be extroverted or introverted? outgoing or in-staying? people people or homebodies? We discussed whether socializing charges or drains our batteries, whether you should push kids (or husbands) to be something they're not, whether families that do a lot of running around just hate each other too much to hang out at home together, and whether waiting until we're in Nicole's planned retirement home to really get out and socialize is a workable plan.

Next, with the movie Inside Out jerking tears at movie theaters and the season of small children graduating from things upon us, we thought it was a good time to talk about what's making us cry — events, songs, anger, frustration, Hallmark commercials, pretty much everything, it turns out, but the really serious stuff we should be feeling teary over. As promised, I've created a playlist of cry-worthy songs that you can listen to when you're in a mood to weep and add to by suggesting your favorite weepies in the comments here, on the YouTube page, or on our Twitter and Facebook presences.

Finally, we made our recommendations for the week: Catherine promoted the entertainment-themed Round 2 podcasts that we do here every Tuesday, as well as her list of the best podcasts for parents (present company included); Amanda gave a thumbs-up to an article on the value of Inside Out for kids with attention problems; Nicole highlighted an article on raising an introverted child, to which Catherine added a nod to the website Quiet Revolution; and Terri mentioned one article up now on her site, on helping kids recognize emotions, and another that she would have written had she not spent a day listening to sad songs on YouTube.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing the podcast and Kristin Eredics for our happy in and out music, and if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

In honor of the dinosaurs chomping up the box office even as we speak, Terri chatted with Kathy Ceceri, who writes about homeschooling on the All About Homeschooling Facebook page and her site Crafts for Learning, about kids and scary movies. Is it a societal contradiction that we worry about kids playing alone outside but don't mind them sitting in front of shoot-'em-up video games for hours? Should Lego be making playsets for movies that kids aren't technically allowed to go to? Are making-of documentaries a good way to introduce kids to scary fare or just a way to ruin all the fun? What's more scary, slasher movies, zombies, or Fraggle Rock? Listen in for some thoughts on whether horror movies and other scary fare are going to break your kids or help them get into film school. You can find Kathy's article on a birthday-party horror spree on Wired; if you're reading this someplace without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout for the full recap experience.

Catherine's book club had another meeting, and so she's got another book to talk about, in this case The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin. She sets up some of the book's storylines and themes for us -- but don't worry, no spoilers -- and gives it a thumbs-up as a novel tailor-made for book clubs. (Terri's dog, on the other hand, is clearly disturbed by the lack of canines in the narrative.) Next up for Catherine's club and our podcast is Shanghai Girls by Lisa See, so read along if you want to know what she's talking about in a month or so. And watch So You Think You Can Dance if you want to know what we're talking about when we chat about the show every week. Our audition fatigue continued with this last week of try-outs from New York City, and despite some excellent hip-hopping and tapping and duo dancing, we wished a couple of non-contenders could have been allowed to peacefully fail without all the build-up and the, you know, chasing of the shamed out into the snow. We're curious to see where the show goes from here with its two extremely large teams and how cruel the winnowing to a manageable number is going to be. Join us every Tuesday for our entertainment talk, and if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

In honor of summer vacation and the forced sibling together time that comes with it, we started by talking about sibling rivalry -- both in our households now and in our own childhoods. We looked at the effect on sibling relationships of large age differences, different phases of life, family reconfiguration, chore inequality, and parent expectations and experiences. Then we moved on to the natural consequence of sibling squabbles: parents yelling, even when they know they shouldn't. Inspired by an article on yelling and a book urging against it, we considered the value of yelling as a way to let off steam, the comparitive virtues of passive aggression, the way strong and loud emotions discombobulate some kids and have no effect on others, and the fact that often the person we're yelling at is not even the target of our anger.

Finally, we gave some recommendations for the week: Catherine referred us to articles on her site about being a Team Mom (and getting new reasons to yell) and exercises to do at the playground (adding "Workout Mom" to our list of playground moms); Amanda mentioned the Orange Rhino Challenge, which suggests that you might want to stop yelling at your kids for 365 whole days, as if; Nicole invited everyone to join her new Google+ group, Community of Inclusive Practice; and Terri offered articles on turning down the emotional volume in your home and giving yourself a temper tantrum. One final recommendation: If all the sound issues in this week's podcast make you feel like yelling, we recommend turning it into a game! Listen and see if you can find the sounds of script-rustling, note-writing, keyboard-tapping, and mouse-clicking. Most challenging of all, see if you can figure out what Terri was saying all those times her mic playfully removed every other syllable. Fun!

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Summer presents a challenging amount of time to fill for any parent, but when your child needs routine and structure to make it through the day, finding predictable ways to fill that time is a particular concern. Terri chats with Charlie Zegers, who writes about sports and also about parenting kids on the autism spectrum, about strategies for a successful summer, including camps that can accommodate your child, structured time at home, and activities like bowling, fishing, kayaking, going to movies, catching a baseball game, and maybe even taking in some theater. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

We all know kids benefit from outdoor time, but it can be hard for parents to find the time to let kids loose in nature with a degree of supervision they're comfortable with. Susan Adcox, grandparenting expert for About.com, suggests letting the grandparents step in and provide some good outdoor activities in the company of loving grown-ups. She and Catherine discuss options like visiting every park in town, taking advantage of discounts at national parks, creating a wildlife habitat in the backyard, going geocaching, fishing together, tossing out some hula hoops and jumpropes, or even a friendly game of dodgeball. For more on what grandparents can do to get kids outside, read  "Nature Activities for Kids" and "What Grandparents Can Do About the Nature Deficit" on Susan's site and "Nature Play for Families" on Catherine's. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Spoilers have become a big point of Internet etiquette, but is it fair to expect everyone to wait to talk about entertainment they've enjoyed untll you've had a chance to catch up? After a chat about the latest episode of So You Think You Can Dance, which at this point in the audition process isn't particularly spoiler-sensitive, we shared our thoughts on the notion that imparting information on a piece of entertainment to someone who has not yet consumed it is inherently awful and cruel. We discussed the old days when TV Guide was in the spoiler business, the value of stories you already know the ending to (spoiler! things do not work out well for Romeo and Juliet), the buzz-dampening effect of dumping show episodes nobody can talk about yet, and the benefit of knowing you can always look up what happened on a show so you can safely watch while multitasking. Are you a spoiler-phobe or a spoiler welcomer? Share in the comments or look us up on Facebook or Twitter.

Do kids still have sleepovers? Terri and Amanda remember all sorts of slumber parties from their youth, but "kids today" with their social media and their personal phones maybe don't need to sleep at each other's houses to get that kind of large-group together time anymore. We discussed our kids' sleepover experiences and sleepover aversions, our own anxiety about kids being away all night, and the pros and cons of having young people spread out all over your living room.

Picking up after sleepovers is a chore no parent looks forward to, so we turned our attention to what kind of chores we expect our kids to take care of, what we've managed to get our spouses to do, and what we insist nobody can do but us. We admit to a general lack of chore-charting and a tendency toward not making chores a battle we fight, but our kids still seem to find ways to contribute.

Finally, we made our recommendations for the week: Amanda pointed us toward a blog post from Motherlode entitled "Age-Appropriate Chores for Children (and Why They’re Not Doing Them)"; Terri had articles to share on chores for kids with sensory processing issues (courtesy of the book Mixed Signals) and questions to ask before you send your child on a sleepover; Nicole would really like you to check out her site The Inclusive Class, which is full of educational material, podcasts, and information on inclusion done right; and Catherine mentioned an article on sports summer camps. Speaking of recommendations, Catherine is making a list of health and fitness–related podcasts and she'd like you to recommend your favorites. Contact her on Facebook or Twitter or in the comments section of this blog to let her know what she should include.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

With a summer full of superheroes and superhero merchandising ahead, Lexi Walters Wright chats with Amanda about the challenge of getting through a supermarket or a Target without accumulating a cart-full of pricey licensed items that really do not have superpowers no matter how much your kid believes. They talk about the lesson kids learn about advertising when the branded stuff disappoints and the financial challenge of finding the name-brand stuff your kid just has to have, and recommend these sites for parents fighting the good fight against licensed everything:

+ Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood
+ Commonsense Media
+ Center on Media and Child Health

If you're reading this someplace without hyperlinks, visit http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

After live-tweeting the Tony Awards telecast Sunday night, Terri and Catherine got together for a Round 2 review, with discussion of co-hosts Kristin Chenoweth and Alan Cumming (and the impossibility of topping NPH's opening number from a few years ago), the general dissing of plays, the "awesome" online red carpet, the relegation of too many awards to commercial-break time (including a lifetime achievement for Tommy Tune, who you really want to put in front of a mic on your broadcast, CBS, c'mon), and the need to maybe move the ceremony to a cable channel where it could be less devoted to putting people you recognize from TV and movies on your screen. From there, we tap-danced over to Fox's So You Think You Can Dance for a chat about the surprising lucidity of Paula Abdul, the reason girls are dancing in their underwear, the winnowing that must get done between the line and the stage, what Jason Derulo brings to the table, and when we can be through with all this auditioning already. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Inspired by a fairly hilarious fundraiser in which TV writer Wendy Molyneux dared people to make her go see the hated Entourage movie by donating to children's cancer research (read more in the Hollywood Reporter article Terri cited), we got to thinking about school fundraisers, those conspiracies to fill every nook and cranny of your home with gift wrap and cookie dough. Could schools find a way to put the fun in fundraising by banning packet programs with cheap prizes and inspiring us to want to put up our bucks? We brainstormed ideas, commisserated about the shrinking pool of people to sell to in the no-door-to-door age, and celebrated alternatives like restaurant meals, supermarket scrips, and the option to opt out.

Next, we looked at what happens to all that stuff we bought from all those awful sales: layers of clutter that only get excavated when we move. A New York Times article suggested that we all have a clutter set point that we will return to however many times we clear things out, and so we discussed our own personal set points, the value of having friends whose set point is much more cluttered so that we can feel better about ourselves, and the wonderfulness of big nice-looking storage bins.

Finally, we made our recommendations for the week: Catherine reviewed Gretchen Rubin's new book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, and found an article on "UnBake sales"; Amanda passed on an article she wrote for PopSugar on refusing to do (most) school fundraisers; Nicole shared an article on creative school fundraising ideas (and also talked earlier in the episode about a presentation on inclusive education at UC Davis, downloads from which you can check out on her site); and Terri suggested some questions you can ask about whether your child is a hoarder. We'd also like to invite everyone to join us for a Tony Awards live-Tweet on Sunday night; we'll be using the hashtag #TonyPRP.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

You'd like to think that once the school has some success with your child with special needs, that success will be heartily adopted and built upon and made a permanent fact of your child's life. Yet too often what you get is individual support rather than institutional support, and things change year to year and school to school in heartbreaking ways. Terri chatted with Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster: A Father's Journey with His Wordless Daughter and blogger at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, about how much we value the people who get it and do everything they can, and how frustrating it is to start every year wondering if such an individual will be part of our child's program or whether he or she will be at the mercy of educators who feel that kids with special needs are Not Their Job. We talk about the way options get limited for learners with special needs in the most seemingly well-meaning way; how fear of failure translates into never getting to try; the need for inclusion to involve expectations as well as environment; and the value of homework as a sign that someone, somewhere is trying to educate your kid. For more on the subject, read Rob's post "The Faith of Monkeys," and if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

You want your kids to be able to wind down and regroup during summer vacation, but you also don't want them to lose hard-won skills. Pediatric occupational therapist Meghan Corridan, who blogs at MAC&Toys, talks to Catherine about ways parents can work with kids who are tired out by camp and uninterested in being tied to a desk. She mentions the apps Letter School, Toonia Differences, and Little Bit Studios, plus the use of a stylus as useful for fine-motor skills. For toys, she suggests games from Blue Orange Games, Discovery Putty from Fun and Function, and OgoDisc from Ogosport. For more on OT-approved summer fun, read Meghan's articles on "Summer hAPPiness" and "Screen Free Summer Fun." And if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://specialchildren.about.com for the full recap experience.

The sparkly baton of talking about dance shows is passed from Terri to Catherine, who is planning to follow the new season of Fox's So You Think You Can Dance. The idea of DVRing that show and finding a time for your whole family to watch led into a chat on why there is still a half-season of Fringe on Terri's DVR, why she'll probably catch up on those 13 episodes of NCIS:LA first, and how whole-house DVRs force you to notice what your child is watching (and maybe even watch American Ninja Warrior now and then). Terri also mentioned an appearance by Haley Joel Osment on Marc Maron's podcast that will give you faith in the possibility that child actors can turn out OK. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience, and visit us on Facebook and Twitter too.

With weather getting warmer, school rules about flip-flops and spaghetti straps and short-shorts are getting parents' attention, and so we started our chat with a look at how kids dress at school and how much we ought to care. Is the right to wear crop tops and miniskirts a legitimate feminist concern? Could shorts bans force boys to wear pants in the dead of winter? And what exactly would you have to Google to find an eighth-grade dance dress that is not excessively skin-baring?

Dress codes and uniform policies tend to get people up in arms, but of course, arms get up pretty easily these days in an online culture of over-the-top shaming snark. We talked about the ways that Amanda is, according to commenters, single-handedly ruining the Internet; Nicole's extremely polite way of rousing rabble; Catherine's policy of never writing anything people could care enough about to get angry; and Terri's plan to issue everybody a reality-check buddy to prevent postings you'll regret later.

Finally, we made our (non-snarky, completely upbeat) suggestions for the week: Catherine likes the Sports section on Understood.org; Amanda directed us to a dad's opinion on dress codes on the Scary Mommy blog; Nicole thinks everybody should study up on essential Facebook etiquette; and Terri recommended a book she recently blurbed, Going Solo While Raising Children with Disabilities by Laura Marshak, who was a co-author of an earlier book she liked, Married with Special-Needs Children. Plus, we all think you need to follow @SavedYouAClick and @HuffPoSpoilers on Twitter, though sadly @AvoidComments is no longer active.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

College graduation marks the end of many long years of getting your child through school and homework and testing and adolescence. What it doesn't end is your need to parent and worry and figure out what's next. Terri chatted with Kathy Ceceri, who writes about homeschooling on the All About Homeschooling Facebook page and her site Crafts for Learning, about independence and whether it's the top priority for every single young adult; the need for a support system even when you're off working a fabulous job; the value of living at home and saving money; and the fact that current young adults can't necessarily count on getting the kind of job that will allow them to have their own individual out-of-the-nest lives in the first place. Read the Washington Post article that Kathy found to make Terri feel better about her advance-stage helicopter parenting, and if you're seeing this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

For their weekly entertainment chat, Catherine talks about her latest book-club selection, Me Before You by Jojo Moyes; Terri talks about David Letterman's last late-night episode; and they both talk about the phenomenon of following the end of a series like Mad Men solely through the tidal wave of tweets from critics and TV writers we like. To check out some of the links we talked about:
+ You can view That Amazing Letterman Montage in the video at left, find out more about each tiny clip in the fantastic Facebook round-up by Adam Nedeff, and view the whole episode on CBS.com for as long as it's there (and if it disappears, Gothamist has a live-blog with clips). 
+ Wondering what the dispute was about Million Dollar Baby and disability rights? Terri has a round-up of opinions.
+ The Mad Men scene with Stan and Peggy is available on YouTube, but beware: if you were of a certain age in the '70s, Stan's outfit may give you upsetting flashbacks.
Reading this somewhere without hyperlinks? Come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

A tweet this week from Catherine about a 14-year-old in her carpool lamenting "where did my life go?" inspired this week's first chat topic -- because where did our lives go, and why do kids seem to feel their lives are moving as fast as ours? We talked about the aging properties of seeing the edgy entertainers of your youth becoming cherished institutions (happy retirement, David Letterman!) and, in your own youth, finding out that the pop singers you enjoy are younger than your own young self (it's tough being the same age as Taylor Swift). At any rate, we agreed to all meet at Nicole's retirement fantasy home for bingo and bocce ball real soon.

One way to mark the passage of time is annual traditions, and we talked about one that's common at the high school behind Terri's house: a "don't drink and drive at prom" pageant involving a cracked up car, ambulance, body bags, staged teenage wailing, and a guy on a loudspeaker. Do presentations like this really convince kids who intended to drink and drive to stop, or do they just freak out the kids who would never do anything wrong but are easily spooked? We chatted about after-graduation events, the need to talk about not texting and driving as well as not drinking and driving, and the importance of "do what I do" over "do what I say."

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Catherine has an article on 22 outdoor activities to do with your family (because it's Memorial Day weekend, ready or not); Amanda thinks you should use the weekend to go geocaching (on which Catherine has two articles); Nicole suggests visiting the website www.donttextdrive.com; and Terri has gathered links to all of Noah Galloway's dances on Dancing With the Stars for those who want to view them again or learn more about the army vet who danced with one arm and a prosthetic leg.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

On the one hand, as parents of kids with special needs, we're desperate for them to do the things their age peers are doing. We want them to be adept at the tools of the world today and fluent in the language of our times. On the other hand, don't lie and stop cursing and don't make secret social media accounts, and get away from that computer and stop playing video games and put down that phone. Amanda chats with Charlie Zegers, who writes about sports and also about parenting kids on the autism spectrum, about how you tease out what's the condition and what's the age, and how to discipline without stamping out important developmental progress. Are we expecting more from kids on the autism spectrum than we'd expect from typical kids, as About.com's autism expert Lisa Jo Rudy asked in an article on her site? Or should we be expecting more from typical kids? Listen in for some good food for thought on parenting on and off the spectrum (and if you're interested in getting your kids coding, the sites referred to are Scratch and Game Salad). If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Who do you feel is more judgey about your parenting -- your kids' grandparents or Pinterest? According to Susan Adcox, grandparenting expert for About.com, your parents and in-laws may actually be trying to free you from that 500-crafts-you-must-make-for-your-baby's-birthday-party ideal. Susan chatted with Catherine about the things grandparents want to tell their children — like enjoy life, eat healthy, put down the screens, stop spending money on meals out and cars, and more wisdom picked up through experience — but may stop themselves from saying because both parents and kids need to learn things on their own, and keeping the lines of communication open is sometimes more important than being right. For more on what your parents would like to tell you about your parenting, read "8 Things Grandparents Would Like to Say to Parents" on About.com Grandparenting; and for the article Catherine mentioned on dinner planning, read "5 Ways to Deal with Dinner Time (When You're Never Home at Dinner Time)" on About.com Family Fitness. Reading this somewhere without hyperlinks? Come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience. 

Catherine has two movies to talk about -- three if you count her homework for seeing Pitch Perfect 2 of watching Pitch Perfect. In addition to catching the new a capella comedy with a gaggle of 13-year-olds, she caught up with the much smaller but still entertaining Chef thanks to Netflix, and came away most impressed by its youngest star. Meanwhile, Terri spent the week watching very very short movies: the trailers created by networks to sell their new series. She gives thumbs up to this trailer for Supergirl (find the Glen Weldon post defending the show's rom-com-iness here), thumbs sideways to the one for Code Black, and thumbs down to Quantico, and in general figures that six or seven minutes is too long of a trailer for a sitcom and may be enough to un-sell her on a drama as well. What's looking good to you in the upcoming season? Give the comments here a try, or talk back on our Facebook page or @RoundAboutChat on Twitter. And if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Are you ready for the summer? We're not so much ready for the summer as ready for the school year to END. In an early-morning podcast recording that had us saying "energy up!" on a regular basis, we talked about end-of-the-school-year field trips, end-of-the-school-year burnout, and end-of-the-school year exams upon exams that have Nicole ready for her daughter to graduate the University of Middle School. While we're light on actual constructive advice, do listen in to find out how to make it look like you didn't really sign all those lines of the reading log in one sitting.

Of course, once you have that glorious TGIthe-end-of-school moment, you have to figure out what to do with your kid during those structure-free months. We talked about camps both exciting (tall ships!) and not (typing camp!), the hopeful pursuit of a modest minimum-wage McJob, educational and sports programs for serious summertime progress, and the dreadful prospect of no structure when kids and parents must have it to function.

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Catherine wants to keep you moving with her articles "How to Stop a Fitness Backslide" and "Have an Active Summer"; Amanda thinks you should look at that IEP (eek!) over the summer with her article "Reinforcing IEP Goals Over the Summer"; Nicole suggests checking www.summercamps.com for lots of fun summer camp options; and Terri commisserates with your end-of-year woes with "10 Things to Hate About the End of the School Year" and your routine-and-structure needs with "Camp Mom" and "DIY ESY."

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Fresh off hosting 75 people for a four-year-old's birthday party with a theme of "Space, Ranbows, and Superheroes," Lexi Walters Wright chats with Terri about present protocols, color-coordinated superhero cupcakes, backyards vs. bowling alleys, how birthday parties have changed over the years, and why you won't find a pinata at her house. For more advice on birthday parties, read Lexi's articles on Understood.org:

+ 3 Reasons Kids May Struggle With Birthday Parties
+ 8 Ways to Make Your Young Child’s Party a Success
+ Common Party Pitfalls for Grade-Schoolers With Learning and Attention Issues

(If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Before TV networks started showing off their shiny new series to critics and advertisers at the upfronts this week, they cleared the decks of a whole lot of shows you may have hoped wouldn't get canceled. We started our chat with a different sort of canceled -- the kind where you get beheaded, as Anne Boleyn was at the end of this first season of Wolf Hall (500 year old spoiler alert!) -- and then took a brief spin past the Dancing With the Stars semifinals before landing in the TV show graveyard for a look at whether anything we cared about was lost in the carnage. (Wondering if your favorites still have a pulse? Mashable has a list of the dearly departed.) We also tipped a hat to shows that have survived in creative ways, by jumping to other content providers, getting a final year as a victory lap, or getting a gimmick (good luck with that all-live season, Undateable!) Are you mourning the dead, celebrating the living, or looking forward to something new? Share with us on Twitter at @RoundAboutChat, on our Facebook page, or on the comments here if you can get them to work. And if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

What promises would you make to your child if you had the opportunity to do so publicly, on Twitter, for everybody to see? That's the question asked by an Understood.org campaign, #ParentPromise, to inspire parents to demonstrate their devotion with a selfie and a commitment. Amanda promised to see the world through her children's eyes and put them before the laundry (literally, judging by her photo); Nicole promised to help her children survive and thrive, and earn college degrees they won't have to lease out later; Catherine promised to help her kids grow up to be their own persons, and to not complain too much about the cost of skating equipment; and Terri promised not to make big promises, but maybe some small easily achievable ones like "I promise to let you watch TV at least five hours a day."

From promises to keep, we moved on to promises we often see people break, like, "I promise to respond promptly when you send me an e-mail" and "I promise to leave a voice-mail message if I expect you to call me back." We discussed such digital dilemmas as accidentally replying-all, posting to the wrong Twitter feed, properly using social-media slang, and knowing when you can stop saying "Thank you" at the end of an e-mail conversation.

Finally, we gave our recommendations for the week: Catherine thinks you should get out and enjoy National Bike Month, Bike to Work Day, and the National Bike Challenge, which might score you the coveted prize of a year's supply of TP; Amanda has not yet read Emily Post’s Manners in a Digital World, but she thinks we should all look it over and compare notes; Nicole mentioned another online-comportment resource, Kindness Wins by Galit Breen, for parents who are new to social media and want their kids to behave; and Terri recommended her articles on putting together your own Camp Mom do-it-yourself day camp (in case your #ParentPromise was, "I promise to forget to enroll you in a summer program until school is almost out and every deadline has passed.")

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Although embarrassing children has long been a specialty of parents, the addition of social media to the options for spreading stories about that thing your kid did has raised privacy issues and caused concern over the way parents of children with disabilities in particular portray their youngsters and to what purpose. Terri chatted with Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster: A Father's Journey with His Wordless Daughter and blogger at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, about the value of parents sharing their stories, the importance of balancing bad with good, the danger of pity parties, the hope of preparing a platform from which kids can launch their own adult advocacy, and the sneaking suspicion that a generation that's grown up online doesn't have the same conception of "privacy issues" that their pearl-clutching elders do. Listen in, and check back the first Thursday of every month for more conversations with Rob about raising kids with special needs.

Is the weather finally nice where you are? If you're looking for fun things to do outdoors with your kids, pediatric occupational therapist Meghan Corridan, who blogs at MAC&Toys, has some ideas for you. She and Catherine chat about simple and fun activities like riding a scooter, doing some gardening, drawing with sidewalk chalk, and blowing bubbles that are simple springtime pleasures and also provide lots of opportunities for motor planning, proprioception, fine- and gross-motor skill-building, attention focusing, sharing, problem-solving, and family fun. On the topic of wheeled conveyances, they both recommend the Razor RipRider 360, a three-wheel bike that both older kids and grown-ups will enjoy pedaling around. What are you doing outdoors with your kids these days? Share in the comments or by tweeting us at @RoundAboutChat, and if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Mother's Day is almost here, and so it seemed like a good time to talk about mothers in books, movies, and TV, particularly since Catherine's latest book-club read is Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. We chatted about that book and two others focusing on mother-daughter relationships, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan and Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry, and then moved on to discuss moms in movies like Freaky Friday, The Parent Trap, and Almost Famous (see video clip for mom Frances McDormand putting the smackdown on rocker Billy Crudup), and TV shows including Mom, Brothers and Sisters, Parenthood, Modern Family, and My So-Called Life. Who are your favorite moms in pop culture? Share in the comments, tweet them to us at @RoundAboutChat, or talk back on our Facebook page. And if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

An e-mail about a campaign to get Cosmo treated like a porn magazine because its dicey sexual content is harmful to minors got us thinking about magazines in general, whether minors think of them as a bad-for-you delivery system when they can get cable TV for free, and how much attention we ourselves even pay to magazines anymore. We chatted about the relative dangers of sexual content vs. unrealistic expectations of beauty and body image; our own experiences with magazines' promises of coolness and perfect dried-flower arrangements; whether anybody understands what wrapping something in a brown paper wrapper even means anymore; and the way that a world in which entertainment can be delivered instantaneously and in greater quantity than we can possibly consume makes waiting for an issue of a magazine to be delivered seem impossibly quaint.

One of the things we used to depend on magazines for was telling us how to dress (even though Seventeen deeply betrayed young Terri's trust), and now we're more likely to turn to Twitter for interpretations of dress codes and occasion-appropriate attire -- as both Catherine and NPR's Linda Holmes recently did. We shared our preferred freelance uniforms, our exhaustion at the prospect of dressing up, our search for perfectly comfortable footwear, and our trust in Pinterest to provide guidance for women of our particular demographic.

Finally, we mentioned our recommendations for the week. Catherine pointed us to an article titled "What Training for the Boston Marathon Taught Me About Fashion, and Myself" for further thoughts on the meaningfulness of what we wear; Amanda told everyone to go online shopping for clothes that you don't have to go somewhere and try on in front of a nasty mirror (to which Terri added that the website Mode-sty will help you find things that won't show your underwear like you're a twentysomething Cosmo reader); Nicole gave us her Pinterest search formula; and Terri talked about a "podcast upfront" she attended featuring NPR podcast hosts and a lot of talk about the significance and future of podcasts, commentary on which you can find by looking up the #HearItUpfront hashtag on Twitter, where you may come upon this photo of the back of Terri's head and the green shirt she chose to wear).

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Once you've committed to a particular way of parenting or educating your kids, can you admit to having struggles or making mistakes without inviting people to assume that your whole approach is wrong? Terri chatted with Kathy Ceceri, who writes about homeschooling on the All About Homeschooling Facebook page and her site Crafts for Learning, about the value of parents sharing their experience, the riskiness of setting yourself up as an expert, the difficulty of always putting a positive spin on things even though others might benefit from a more honest account, the way homeschoolers and free-range parents and people who are neither of those things feel judged by the other side, and the likelihood that those who try to see both sides will get judged by everybody. Enjoy today's conversation and look for chats with Kathy the last Wednesday of every month.

Our current favorite shows and some old favorites coming back from the dead were on our minds for this week's Round 2 chat. Catherine provided an update on Wolf Hall, and we talked about the pop-culture proliferation of the property with a book, a TV show, and a two-part play that got eight Tony nominations shortly before our chat. Terri gave a review of where Dancing With the Stars is at the moment, with a goodbye to young Willow Shields (doing her final age-appropriate dance in the video here) and the continued participation of Noah Galloway (who Terri is rooting for) and Chris Soules (who she is not.)

From there, we took a look at some TV shows from the '80s and '90s that are poised to return to our screens, including former Dancing With the Stars contestant Candace Cameron Bure reprising her role as DJ Tanner in the Full House sequel Fuller House. What does it say about the state of current TV that things like Boy Meets World, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Coach (Coach?!) are getting a second life (Terri mentioned Dan Feinberg's take, which you can read on Hitfix.com)? And what shows should be joining in the revival? We shared our thoughts, now you give us yours in the comments. And if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

An earlier podcast on schools grading parents led to this week's discussion of whether schools should even be grading students. Are grades a needlessly judgmental and limiting system for assessing student progress? Do we really need stiff standards and the teaching-to-the-test that goes with them? Is there some more free-form and holistic way to help young minds thrive? Or does every uplifting possibility have a downside? We talk about some of the options and variations, and dream of things that might work if there was unlimited time, money, and ability.

From grading students, we move on to grading those activities we involve our kids in to try to round them out, like figure skating and dance classes and marching band and social-skills group and guitar lessons. Which activities have we felt to be worth the trouble, and which do we regret? Sometimes, as it turns out, those are the same activity. We talked about such discouraging factors as cost, time, age-inappropriateness, and overabundance of bric-a-brac.

Finally, we made our recommendations for the week: Catherine mentioned two stories on her site relevant to the activities topic, "Youth Sports Leagues: Questions to Ask Before You Sign Up" and "The Best Kids' Sports Facility Ever"; Amanda had two on her site relative to the grading topic, "Checklist: Know Your Child’s Strengths" and "Recognizing Your Child’s Strengths and Weaknesses"; Nicole shared her new obsession with the app Periscope; and Terri invited everyone to check out the collection of quotes from these podcasts on Facebook and Pinterest, because we are a meme machine.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Most parents can use an extra set of hands from time to time, but when that assistance comes from our own parents, there may be strings attached. Catherine chatted with Susan Adcox, About.com's expert on grandparenting, about how grandparents should behave when they're stepping in to help out and how parents can graciously accept that help (and maybe a little advice). They talked about why grandma shouldn't monopolize the "good baby" time; the need to avoid disagreeing in front of the children; who gets the last word on behavior management and food issues; and the need for Grandma and Grandpa to overcome that urge to just fix things.

For more advice on the topic, read the following articles on Susan's site:

+ How Grandparents Can Help When a Grandchild Is Born
+ How Grandparents Can Help When a Parent Is Ill
+ Do Some Grandparents Have Problems With Boundaries?
+ How Grandparents Can Help Time-Poor Parents

If you're reading this recap somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Are you the kind of person who reads People Magazine to find out what the British royal family is up to? Catherine admits to such an interest, and quickly devoured The Royal We, a new book by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan of the blog Go Fug Yourself, which also has its fair share of royal-watching content, plus recaps of Wolf Hall, which Catherine watches for a look at royal life before there were paparazzi and the worst a royal had to worry about was ... well, losing her head, so maybe things were worse. Since Terri is not a royal-watcher, she had trouble coming up with some royal-themed entertainment to contribute to this week's theme, and made do with the royalty-adjacent 2003 film What a Girl Wants. She spoils the (happy) ending without ever really explaining what the movie's about, but if you're not familiar with it, you can learn everything you need to know from the trailer, including the fact that there is quite a lot of Colin Firth being adorable and/or soulful.

Share your own opinions of royal-related pop culture in the comments. And if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

An endless series on anxiety in children in Terri's local paper makes it clear that parents should worry more about worrying, so we thought we'd take stock of the anxiety levels in our own families to see if we're on-trend. We chatted about the many ways that anxiety can manifest, the hardiness of the worry gene that even gets passed down in adoptive families, the wisdom of blocking WebMD on your browser, and the parfait of anxiety we whip up when we worry about our children worrying about our worries.

In search of a little relief, we looked at the life-improvement advice our own mothers passed down to us. Among the recommended remedies: Go for a walk, drink more water, eat more alfafa sprouts, and preemptively worry about every bad thing that might happen so as to magically prevent it.

Finally, we passed on our own advice about what you should be checking out this week. Catherine recommended the book and CD Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (and Their Parents) by Eline Snel as a serious anti-anxiety strategy and the song “Rub Some Bacon On It!" as a silly one (to which Terri added Ron Swanson's solution to dealing with disappointment); Amanda celebrated Understood.org's nomination for a Webby and asked us all to vote; Nicole suggested the book The Behavior Code Companion: Strategies, Tools, and Interventions for Supporting Students with Anxiety-Based or Oppositional Behaviors by Jessica Minahan for its help in identifying the many different ways anxiety may look in different children; and Terri gave a testimonial for The Anxiety Cure for Kids, a book with a cognitive behavioral therapy approach that helped her daughter slay the anxiety dragon, or at least shut him up a little.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Remember the story that was going around Facebook about a young athlete with special needs whose mom bought him a varsity letter jacket and whose school made him stop wearing it? Amanda had a chat with Charlie Zegers, who writes about sports and also about parenting kids on the autism spectrum, on whether buying a kid a letter to honor participation on a non-varsity team is something parents ought to be doing, however well-meaning and understandable such an effort may be. They talked about the meritocracy of sports, what a varsity letter signifies, how appropriating such a symbol may stir bad feelings along with good ones, and why there may also be unintended consequences to extending eligibility so that students in special education who get to high school a little older than their peers and stay longer can keep playing.

How do you feel about using a varsity letter as kind of an A for effort? Share your opinion in the comments, and if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience. (And if you share Amanda's very basic level of sports understanding, listen to Garfunkel and Oates's "Sports Go Sports" right along with her.)

Congratulate Catherine! She finally made it through all seven seasons of 30 Rock—well after those who watched it on a weekly basis when it originally aired, but completely and enjoyably nonetheless. Her out-of-sync consumption of a pop-culture favorite led us into a discussion of other times we were not stepping in formation with our fellow consumers of culture, whether because we were missing something everybody else was raving about (bye, Mad Men!) or loving something that was otherwise apparently universally reviled (Terri is feeling you, Studio 60! ending of Lost! John from Cincinnati!) We talk about the three categories of rejecting mass adoration; roller-coaster shows that are all about the ride, not the ending; and our appreciation of having so many things to choose from that we can pick the quirky things we like.

What do you love that everyone hates and hate that everyone loves? Share in the comments, and if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience. (And if you're now wanting to watch that John from Cincinnati motel speech Terri mentioned, you can watch it here on YouTube. And the scene with Cissy and the pistol. And the opening credits, the one part of the show that everybody seems to dig.)

A story about a school district that rated parents for their level of cooperativeness got us thinking where we'd fall on that 1 to 3 scale, and whether we'd feel bad if our kids' school gave us a U for "Ugh, it's That Mom" or wear it as a badge of honor. We discussed our various phases of accommodating and unaccommodating behavior, whether "cooperative" should really mean the same thing as "willing to do whatever school personnel want," and the importance of finding administrators who are willing to budge themselves out of their own uncooperative rut.

From schools rating parents, we turned to parents rating each other, as happens so often on the playground and the schoolyard. Using "the types of moms you see on the playground" articles from Cafe Mom and Huffington Post as our guidebook, we identified our own particular types, the types we steer clear from, and a few types we'd add to the list, including "Know-It-All Mom," "Playground Spy Mom," "Grouchy Mom," and "Nobody Wants to Talk to Her ‘Cause She’s a Pain Mom."

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Catherine identified with an article on The Mid entitled "The 9 Circles of Youth Sports Hell"; Amanda mentioned an article she just wrote for Undertood.org, based on recent vacation experience, on "9 Tips for Taking Kids With Sensory Processing Issues to Theme Parks"; Nicole directed you to Meetup.com to find groups going on in your area (including, perhaps, a group of like-minded playground moms); and Terri invited you to take a quiz to determine your own level of advocacy orneriness and read some tips on starting your own playgroup and having a happy time at the playground.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Are superheroes good role models for little boys? And how much should moms worry about that? Amanda chatted with her Understood.org colleague Lexi Walters Wright about violent comic-book covers, mom-created vulnerable superheroes, and the rite of passage from obliviousness to obsession when it comes to the great wide world of superhero merchandising. What do you do when your child moves on from things like space and rainbows and brown — things you can understand and share — to a fascination with a huge and detailed universe you know nothing about? How do you convince him that Batman pajamas don't mean you can fly, dressing up like the Hulk doesn't mean you can hit your friend, and doing the dishes is superhero-worthy work? For more on the topic, follow these links mentioned in the podcast:

+ Marvel cancels two upcoming covers following uproar over new Spider-Woman
+ Violent 'Batgirl' cover pulled after Twitter uproar
+ Mom creates a coloring book to show son that superheroes CAN cry
+ PDF of the coloring book
+ Let Toys Be Toys

What's the superhero situation in your house? Share in the comments, and if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Television giveth, and television taketh away. On this week's Round 2, Catherine talked about a new show she's trying out — Wolf Hall on PBS — and Terri talked about an old show she's saying goodbye to — Cougar Town on TBS — and we met in the middle for a discussion of how we decide to stick with a new show that maybe doesn't immediately suck us in. With Wolf Hall, there's a concern that there might be a little more work and homework involved in this story of Henry VIII than we're really looking for in this always-something-new-on-the-next-channel age. With Cougar Town, it was a case of so many people being turned off by the title and the quickly ditched premise of Courteney Cox dating young dudes that they never gave it a second or even a first chance, and never found out what a warm, goofy, endearing, and comfortable weekly visit with pals it turned out to be. 

What new TV are you tuning in to? Share in the comments, and if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.