Parents

Here at ParentDish, we think our parents were awesome (and we like to think that, someday, our kids will think we were, too).

So we love that Eliot Glazer, our neighbor at Urlesque, is coming out with a book based on his blog, My Parents Were Awesome, which features vintage pictures of readers' parents and grandparents. According to the site, "Before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward and super awesome."

The book will be an anthology of essays from writers, actors, musicians, bloggers, artists and, possibly, submissions from readers. So, were your parents awesome? Tell Eliot! Send him a clear picture and a great accompanying story about your own parents or grandparents and an approximately 1,000-word essay to MPWABOOK@GMAIL.COM with "BOOK ENTRY" in the subject line. The deadline for submission is March 26 at midnight.

"No, your butt doesn't look big in those jeans."

"I swear the check is in the mail."

"Sorry, boss, I think (cough, cough) I must have swine flu."

Don't lie, now. We all do it. We fib to our employers, our employees, our spouses, our friends, our lenders. And, let's not forget, our children. In fact, according to a new survey, parents lie to their kids an average of 100 times a year, even though they preach that fibbing is wrong, London's Daily Mail reports.

'It would seem that some parents across the UK aren't necessarily setting the best example to their children," Jacky Brown, of Sheilas' Wheels Home Insurance, which commissioned the poll, tells the newspaper.

And when they're not lying to their children, parents are using their kids as an excuse to tell more lies.

With a young son in need of a bone marrow transplant to beat a deadly disease, doctors urged Laurie Strongin to get pregnant. The goal: genetically engineer a perfect donor for Henry.

Using science to conceive a third child and save her oldest son's life seemed almost "too good to be true," Strongin, of Washington, D.C., recalls. The strategy, which the family and their doctors pioneered, raised ethical debates among researchers and parents, and was dramatized in a best-selling novel.

Henry was born in 1995 with Fanconi anemia, a rare genetic disease that causes bone marrow failure and can lead to leukemia and cancer. Her second son, Jack, did not have the disease but was not a genetic match to Henry. Doctors offered Strongin and her husband, Allen Goldberg, the opportunity to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis to select and implant embryos that did not carry the disease and would be a genetic match for Henry. Strongin underwent in vitro fertilization with the hopes of carrying a child whose umbilical cord blood could be used for a bone marrow transplant for Henry.

"There's clearly a benefit to being in a family that has not experienced the death of a child," says Strongin, of her decision to pursue the procedure.

I gave my 13-year-old son a Playboy magazine and an inflatable sex doll.

And it wasn't even his birthday.

Wow. My T-shirt is right. I am the World's No. 1 Dad.

Some of you don't look convinced. In fact, some of you look like you just got a mouth full of Novocaine. I can see your jaws dropping from here.

Don't judge. Unless you're raising the Boy in the Plastic Bubble, your teenage son has seen pictures of nude women -- if not in Playboy, then in some other magazine or on the Internet.

They were likely shown to him by another hormonal teen. At least I could talk about the images with my son, explain that women in real life aren't airbrushed and given several coats of varnish.

Thank God.

Hold on to your old college textbooks. They may soon be collectors' items.

USA Today reports a growing number of colleges and universities are looking to Kindle and other high-tech gizmos to replace traditional textbooks.

Last fall, the newspaper says, two-thirds of campus information officers told the Campus Computing Project they believe electronic readers will become an "important platform for instructional resources" within five years.

Many officials at major colleges and universities are looking at what students want in their electronic textbooks, according to USA Today. Generally, the paper reports, students want easy ways to take notes. But it may take a few more product generations for the Kindle to become user-friendly enough for students.

Actress Geena Davis noticed a strange thing when she started watching children's TV shows and movies with her daughter Alizeh six years ago: There weren't that many girls and women on the screen.

So Davis tells the Sydney Morning Herald she founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2005. Institute researchers examined the 100 top-grossing G-rated films between 1990 to 2005.

"It was fascinating," Davis tells the paper. "Typically there are three male characters for every one female character. If it's a crowd scene, that ratio goes out to four or five males for every female. And 87 per cent of narrators are male."

Davis says children need to see more female characters in TV shows and movies. Otherwise, she tells the Morning Herald, they grow up thinking of women as invisible or unimportant.

Her institute's motto is: "Kids need to see entertainment where females are valued as much as males."

Congratulations, your child got into college. Now that you're done with all the applications, you think the college paperwork is over. Think again.

When you drop your child in college for freshman year, it's more than the start of a new stage in his or her education. It's a new organizational challenge for you.

"You can't procrastinate, you have to sit down and think of a response," says Marie Carr, author of Sending Your Child to College: The Prepared Parent's Operational Manual (Dicmar Publishing) and mother of three college students. Her three daughters -- Katharine, Ann and Elizabeth co-authored the book with her.

There are steps you need to take before you pack up your freshman off to campus, she told ParentDish in a phone interview:

1. Set up a filing system for all the various paperwork with folders for bank accounts, tuition payments, housing, power of attorney (more on that later) and more. Carr recommends writing down a contact person on the inside each the file folder, their email address and phone numbers.

"I just find it's easier," says Carr. "Very often the phone numbers are buried in the folders."

It probably seemed like Yitta Schwartz would live forever.

And she just might.

Her long life ended Jan. 4 after 93 years. But Schwartz claimed she knew the secret of immortality. "If you leave a child or grandchild, you live forever," she reportedly told her family.

By that measure, the Monroe, N.Y., woman's place in eternity is assured. The New York Times reports she may have left behind as many as 2,000 children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.

The Holocaust survivor was Jewish and a member of the Satmar Hasidic sect. Couples in the sect have an average of nine children. Schwartz had 15. The New York Times reports she had 200 grandchildren. By her family's count, that gives her some 2,000 direct descendants.

Nothing was going to stop Australian mom Samantha Williamson from rocking all night long at an AC/DC concert in Melbourne -- not even labor.

Williamson is such a fan of the iconic heavy-metal group that she refused to leave the Feb. 6 show at Etihad Stadium despite the fact that, well into her ninth month of pregnancy, she began having contractions in the middle of the performance when her impending bundle of joy apparently mistook the head-banging music for a lullabye.

But Williamson wasn't going to let anything stop her from rocking all night long with boyfriend Jason Mitchell.

"[The contractions] got really bad halfway through the show, during "Thunderstruck" and "Hells Bells," Mitchell tells the Sun. But this first-time mom rode the wave, refusing to leave the concert. She hung on until the last dance and then hopped in the car for a speedy 59-mile drive to her local hospital.

When Kristie Moore got the call inviting her to the Olympic trials for the Canadian curling team, it took her awhile to answer -- because she was newly pregnant.

So newly pregnant, in fact, she hadn't even had time to tell her family the good news.

Once she told them about her impending bundle of joy, Moore gladly accepted coach Cheryl Bernard's offer to join the team as an alternate. Now, at five-and-a-half months pregnant, Moore is representing her country in the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. "So far, so good. I'm feeling great," she tells the Arizona Daily Star. "No problems."

Moore has curling in her blood -- her mother curled while pregnant with both her and her older brother, Chad. She tells the Star she hopes the family tradition continues with her own offspring.

"I'm really hopeful it's a curler," Moore says of the baby, due in May.

Related: Hannah Kearney, Gold Medalist at Vancouver Olympics, Talks to StyleList

Chris Scott, a 23-year-old 911 dispatcher in Lacey, Wash., got a frantic call from the mother of a choking victim last week.

On the phone was his wife, Janna. Jacob, their 6-month-old son, was choking on a piece of plastic.

Janna Scott tells The Olympian she was "freaking out" when she called 911. The daily newspaper in Olympia, Wash. reports she heard a familiar voice on the other end of the line.

Chris Scott, an Iraq War veteran, is in the final stages of his training as a 911 dispatcher in Thurston County, just south of Seattle.

"My first words were, 'Chris, he's choking,' " Janna Scott tells The Olympian.

Friendships can turn on a dime in middle school, as a girl named Jamie learned the hard way.

She was part of a group of friends until one of them casually suggested, "Let's hate Jamie." The next thing she knew, her former friends had created an "I Hate Jamie Club." Other than being a preteen, Jamie had done nothing to deserve such treatment. But it was a horrible feeling nonetheless.

Kids can be cruel, even to their friends. But parents need to know that all of these behaviors -- while often mean -- are part of the roller coaster development process of early adolescence, Carl Pickhardt, author of "Why Good Kids Act Cruel: The Hidden Truth About the Pre-Teen Years" tells ParentDish. In the book, he uses anecdotes, such as Jamie's story, as well as his experience as a long time counselor, to help parents coach their children -- whether they are handing out some of the cruelty or on the receiving end of it.

So what if you tried to brush your teeth with shampoo, can't ever seem to find your keys and haven't managed to match your socks for a week? You're eight months pregnant, and "Momnesia" is certainly to blame. Right?

Well, maybe not. Turns out that a new study from Australia denies the existence of the conditions "pregnancy brain" and "Momnesia," the mental confusion and forgetfulness that are widely believed to afflict pregnant women and new mothers.

For years, pregnancy experts such as Heidi Murkoff, author of the bestselling "What to Expect When You're Expecting," have characterized forgetfulness as a true symptom of pregnancy, alongside backaches, bloating and stretch marks.

On Murkoff's Web site, she coaches: "As usual in pregnancy, it's just your hormones having some fun, this time at the expense of your memory," and goes on to explain that brain cell volume actually decreases during the third trimester of pregnancy.

Everyone knows a new baby changes your life, but what parents don't always realize is that it can also change -- and challenge -- your marriage.

Late nights and dirty diapers don't exactly encourage romance, and Dr. Bryce Kaye, relationship expert and author of "The Marriage First-Aid Kit," warns that having a baby triggers actual neurological responses that can make being affectionate toward your partner difficult.

"When a new baby comes on the scene, most people don't plan to manage their emotional states with each other," Kaye tells ParentDish. "They think that merely co-parenting next to each other will get them by. Wrong. It's usually not long before the fighting begins to increase."

But don't panic: Kaye says it is possible to have a romantic, loving relationship even with a newborn in the house. He suggests scheduling a babysitter on a regular basis, leaving the house and avoiding hot-button topics when you do manage to escape for a few baby-free hours.