Parents

When Michael Polino's playmates trudge off to school, the 7-year-old stays at home, where the dining-room table becomes his desk and his parents double as his teachers.The Lemont, Ill., youngster has started first grade at home in what has become an increasingly popular but much debated alternative to public school.Dismayed at the troubled state of public education and certain they can do better, hundreds of thousands of parents have begun teaching their children at home. In the last five years, the number of children taught at home has increased nearly fivefold, to between 300,000 to 500,000 from between 60,000 and 120,000 children.

ABOUT one in 50 Americans is adopted, between 6 and 7 million people. We constitute a significant, if largely invisible, minority, and a lot of us are angry at what we see as a deprivation of a fundamental civil liberty: the right to see our original birth certificates.A little background:Adoption is a contract between a birth parent relinquishing her child, a set of prospective parent, and some intermediary, generally an adoption agency. While "the best interests of the child" are supposed to govern the transaction, the child, (or, more precisely, the adult the child will become)

A group of Baltimore County parents whose children participated in an online learning program that the school system did not fund this year has formed an organization to push for access to alternative education throughout the state. The founders of Emerging Minds of Maryland, which is incorporating this week, were among several parents who for months repeatedly urged the school board to find money to continue a one-year pilot program. The online Connections Academy gave their children a chance to learn in ways the conventional classroom did not - and at their own pace, the parents said.

A group of parents plans to lodge a complaint against Anne Arundel County police, accusing officers of roughing up their children during a brawl at Meade High School. The concerns, fueled by images of Friday's melee captured by students' cell phone cameras and posted online on MySpace.com, have spurred at least three parents to begin the paperwork to formally request an internal affairs investigation. At least three of the 11 students who were arrested were treated at area hospitals for gashes and bruises on their backs, arms and legs, parents said, while police said five officers suffered minor injuries, but none required hospitalization.

. The availability and popularity of drugs and alcohol are a reality for many teenagers, including 18-year-old Lauren Barr. "I think there's a ton of pressure," said the Mount Hebron graduate. "Unfortunately, a lot of the adults do not understand or know how to deal with it." HC DrugFree, a nonprofit based in Howard County, aims to change that by educating parents about teenage smoking, drinking and drug use. "HC DrugFree's mission is to empower the Howard County community to raise drug-free teens," said executive director Laura Smit.

Keira McNeill has specific ideas about how to mother her two daughters - cloth diapers preferably - and specific problems, such as her struggle with postpartum depression. With 6-month-old Campbell and 2 1/2 -year-old Teaghan to handle, she finds it hard to go out looking for like-minded moms. So McNeill, who lives in Knightdale, N.C., has found support and advice on the Internet. Her blog, Mom on a Stick, documents her life as a mother. The name is meant to evoke her feeling that she's flying by the seat of her pants as a parent.

. As executive director of HC DrugFree, Laura Smit reaches out to teenagers and parents on a personal level. "She understands the concerns that many parents have, as well as being aware of the issues that teens are dealing with," said Tina Owens, vice chairwoman of the board of directors. HC DrugFree, which aims to help Howard County residents raise drug-free teenagers, has grown under Smit, the mother of a freshman and a senior at Long Reach High School. Her approachability as the face of HC DrugFree has prompted parents to call her directly in a crisis.

For years, parents have complained that report cards skimp on the details and don't go far enough in helping them understand what their children have - or haven't - learned in school. But a new progress-reporting system developed by a longtime Baltimore County educator aims to fill that gap with a computerized checklist that charts detailed objectives and skills. Tested this spring in a few county schools, the system is being made available on a voluntary basis to all of the county's teachers this coming school year, and the superintendent hopes it will be widely used.

In 10 years of fatherhood, I've often observed parent-child relationships in public, in part to gauge how other adults dole out discipline and set boundaries. Some of what I've seen out in the open makes me cringe at the thought of what might be going on behind closed doors. Never mind the preschooler in the department store who hauled back and slapped his mother twice after she vowed not to buy a coveted toy. Or the father in church who just sat there while his toddler dashed up and down the aisle, bumping into parishioners and nearly knocking over chairs.

Another Senior Week at Ocean City has passed, where tens of thousands of high school graduates vacation in the deluxe comfort of seasonal rental units, partake in only the finest of nonalcoholic carbonated drinks and adhere to all traffic laws. Seriously, did your child come home from Senior Week with a purple mohawk? Shaved head? Tattoo? Piercing? Did the public buses unwittingly become clothing-optional? Did your family car come back with new markings usually associated with hitting a pole?

At a signing ceremony earlier this month, Gov. Martin O'Malley made official the first-ever contract between the state and family child care providers who participate in Maryland's child care subsidy program. I'm among the people who benefit from this agreement - so are the children in my care and their families. I am a family child care provider, a homeowner and a parent. There are days when I start work at 6 a.m.; some nights my last child isn't picked up until 11:30 p.m. This is the nature of family child care.

" You ain't seen the best of me yet, Give me a chance, I'll make you forget the rest." - from "Fame," by Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford The hardest thing that Alana Bower has had to do in her 15 years on this planet was to tell her parents that their dreams for her future didn't match her own. At the time, she was just 13 years old, and an argument could be made that kids that age are too young to know their own minds. Perhaps Alana wasn't quite as studious as her older sister Ariel, a math whiz who now is studying computer science at the Johns Hopkins University.

My generation of parents obsessed about their children's education, from "What to Expect when You're Expecting" through "A is for Admissions." We have carefully choreographed virtually every stage of childhood. Unsatisfied with unstructured play, we created the concept of "play dates" to make sure the kids were properly socialized. Our children listened to music in utero; once born, the mobiles over their cribs were specially designed to catch their incompletely formed eyes. We drove to a seemingly endless stream of practice rehearsals and travel team matches in unheard-of locations.

President Barack Obama's plans to speak directly to the nation's students Tuesday have sparked a dispute among area parents and politicians, with some expressing concerns that the president could use the speech to promote his agenda - and others calling it a valuable classroom lesson. School systems have been inundated with phone calls this week from both sides. Most Baltimore-area districts are letting individual schools determine whether they will show the noon speech, which the White House says will call for students to take responsibility for their education.

Many parents consider Patapsco State Park a leisure destination. Suzy Provine of Millersville views it as a classroom. As children headed back to local schools this week, she and her four sons explored the park's craggy earth and tossed large and small rocks into standing water to test the laws of gravity. Venues such as Patapsco are why Provine, 38, has never sent her children to traditional school, opting instead for an eclectic approach to learning known as unschooling. A byproduct of home schooling, unschooling incorporates every facet of a child's life into the education process, allowing a child to follow his passions and learn at his own pace, year-round.

Here are two consistent complaints about Baltimore and why it seems to be a city out of control: Punishment rarely fits the crime, and parents don't take responsibility for their children. So what do you do when three boys, ages 7, 8 and 11, steal a scooter, a wagon and bicycle parts from a neighbor's yard in North Baltimore's Medfield community? The angry victim called police, who promptly came, handcuffed the youngest boy, got him to roll on his friends and then handcuffed them as well.

Parents who fear getting separated from their children at amusement parks, beaches and other vacation spots are turning more often to new high- and low-tech safety devices. GPS tracking devices with wander alerts emit beeps or vibrations when a child strays too far. Digital watches and apparel have high-decibel alarms. And there's the SafetyTat, a waterproof tattoo created by a Baltimore-area mom who wanted to attach her phone number to her child; a half-million have been sold. But even as these products allow adults to breathe more easily, experts caution that they shouldn't replace parental monitoring - and common sense.

For many Maryland families, the youth lacrosse season wrapped up this week, and that could only mean one thing. Summer lacrosse is around the corner, fall lacrosse is only a season away - and winter lacrosse? Ah, you can almost smell the stale gym socks. To describe Baltimore and its suburbs as the nation's breeder reactor for hard-core lacrosse enthusiasts is to do a disservice to other hard-core enterprises (and probably breeder reactors). If this sort of radioactive fanaticism could be bottled, metropolitan Baltimore would be regarded as the North Korea of the West, with better roll dodging skills and fewer missile tests.

Some parents expressed outrage. Others said they were fearful for their children. And a couple stressed the many positives of their Howard County school. Close to 200 parents gathered Wednesday night in the cafeteria/auditorium of Wilde Lake Middle School to discuss the reported sexual assault on a 13-year-old student who said she was victimized by two classmates in a school bathroom May 20. School officials and police described the assault as an "isolated incident." This was the first time police had been called to the school this year, they said.

A group of Baltimore County parents whose children participated in an online learning program that the school system did not fund this year has formed an organization to push for access to alternative education throughout the state. The founders of Emerging Minds of Maryland, which is incorporating this week, were among several parents who for months repeatedly urged the school board to find money to continue a one-year pilot program. The online Connections Academy gave their children a chance to learn in ways the conventional classroom did not - and at their own pace, the parents said.