I need some help gaining perspective on my 15-year-old child’s whiplash approach to gender and sexuality. For the last three years, they have been on a journey with regard to their sexuality, declaring and changing identities one every few weeks or months, even when those identities have been both contradictory (how can one be both asexual and polyamorous?) and hypothetical (my kid isn’t dating and hasn’t dated). They are committed to being anything but cisgender and hetero, and that identity—whatever it turns out to be—appears from their actions and words to be the central part of their sense of self. They spent a lot of time on queer wikis, looking up new possible identities. They avidly “ship” fictional characters into same-sex couples, express anger/disappointment when shows/books have hetero couples, and talk constantly about LGBTQIA issues, representation, etc.

I have been, and want to be, supportive. My kid deserves to be loved and celebrated for who they are, and however their identity settles out is fine with me. But I am also struggling with these rapid changes. In the last two weeks, my kid has changed their name once and pronouns twice, colored their hair, worn exaggeratedly feminine eye makeup, pinned their hair up to look masculine, purchased a bikini and a dress and then asked me to buy them a binder (because they think it would be “fun” to look like a boy sometimes). At this point, it feels like they’re trying on identities like costumes, and that makes me very uncomfortable. None of it feels authentic—it seems more like a bid to stand out in a crowd or perhaps to find the limits of my acceptance.

I have worked so hard to make sure my kids know they are loved unconditionally, but if this kid is looking for a boundary, maybe I should set one? I literally squirmed when I wrote that sentence; setting a random limit on acceptance goes against everything I believe. But at the same time, I am so, so tired of hearing about their identity day after day after day and of trying to keep up with the changes. They’re a great, smart, interesting kid for a dozen different reasons; their gender/sexuality is just one aspect of their personality. Would it be wrong of me to say, in essence, “I love you, and will never not love you. When you figure out your identity let me know, and in the meantime can we maybe stop talking about it all the time?” Also, as the world opens up and my kid spends more time outside of our home, can I/should I ask them to be more thoughtful in how they present themselves? It seems to me that trans and nonbinary people cannot simply change their identities and expression for “fun,” so my kid’s behavior feels a little bit like cosplaying in a way that could be hurtful. Or do I just keep keeping my mouth shut, do my best to remember this week’s identity, and pray that this phase ends soon?

—Tired and Confused

Last summer, 10-year-old Aidan decided he was going to kill the family dog. He lured her behind the sofa with a sausage before putting his hands over her muzzle and around her neck.

"The crazy thing is that he actually loves the dog and me the most out of anyone," says Aidan's mother, Hazel. "But we are the two that he will target and sometimes he will hurt her to get a reaction out of me."

Aidan kicks and hits, and he used to bite. He tells Hazel that he hates her and wants her to die, that he's going to get a gun and shoot her. He's tried to push her down the stairs, and now that he's worked out where her blind spots are - she has a visual impairment - he throws things at her that she can't see coming. Recently it was a kettle, which fortunately hadn't just been boiled - but Aidan didn't know it was cold when he picked it up and launched it.

The record heatwave that ripped through the US's west coast last month forced hundreds of baby birds to jump from their nests in order to escape the blazing temperatures.

The Portland Audubon Society reported that it collected 100 baby hawks in the area in the final week of June when temperatures hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit in regions where these brids call home

Baby hawks arrived at Shasta Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in California in droves, leading specialists to call the rare event a 'hawkpocalypse.'

A 17-year-old can’t believe her sister’s husband refused to take care of his own kids.

“My sister called me saying that her work had an emergency and she needs to get there ASAP and needed me to watch her kids because ‘no one else can.’ I rushed over there just to find her husband locked in his game room playing video games. I asked her why she called me over if he was home, and she said he didn’t want to ‘babysit’ because it was his only day off. [When] I was changing the baby’s diaper and the other kids wanted a snack, I told them to go ask their dad to make them a snack since the baby had a blowout and it was going to take me a while to clean him up. Their dad sent them back upstairs and told them to ask me again. After cleaning the baby up, I made the kids a snack, and their dad came out to eat and told me not to let the kids interrupt him on his day off,”

A Seattle woman said a flight attendant humiliated her mid-flight for trying to dispose of her daughter's dirty diaper in a bathroom garbage bin and later told her that she had been placed on a no-fly list for creating a biohazard.

More than 200 people in 27 states are being monitored for possible exposure to monkeypox after they had contact with an individual who contracted the disease in Nigeria before traveling to the United States this month, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To date, no additional cases have been detected.

“It is a lot of people,” McCollum acknowledged.

The efforts stem from the discovery that a U.S. resident infected with monkeypox traveled from Lagos, Nigeria, on an overnight flight to Atlanta that arrived on July 9; the person then traveled the same day to Dallas. On July 15, the individual sought care at a Dallas hospital emergency room, where the diagnosis of monkeypox was made.

Teachers naturally bristle at the idea, which may be the point. But there’s a bigger problem with this particular brand of helicopter parenting: A camera that picks up everything teachers say to their students would also capture what students are saying to their teachers — and to each other.

Full-time monitoring of teachers in the classroom means full-time monitoring of kids — and their not-yet-fully-formed frontal lobes — in all of their unsophisticated glory.

Anyone who’s ever spent a lengthy amount of time with a tween or teen (or been one) knows that they talk first, think later and barely give any consideration to the next hour, let alone the next decade. They often say and do stupid things, and the tendency seems to compound when they’re in groups.

American parents today are also quick to protect their kids from disappointment and failure. We give participation trophies when kids don’t win first place; we fly into the school to deliver kids’ forgotten homework. But these well-meaning interventions backfire because a child with healthy self-esteem is a child who has learned, through experience, that he can overcome obstacles and disappointment. He’s had the opportunity to fail and has discovered that failing doesn’t preclude him from being loved.

We all messed up the relationship with our parents at least once. Remember that time when dad didn’t talk to you for weeks? What about mom? Did she try to fix it up with a family dinner?

Well, you might not be that young, but what difference does this make. Most adults have a somewhat challenging relationship with their parents. While parents neglect the fact that you are a responsible grown-up, you are hiding behind their wisdom. How many times have you asked your parents for their advice regardless of their experience level? Hopefully, not too many times. We all make that mistake because we neglect that our parents don’t know it all.

Two out of three (66%) of adolescents age 12–17 live with both parents, 24% with their mother only, 5% with their father only, and 5% with neither parent [1]. The quality of parents’ relationships makes a difference to children in many ways. — Act for Youth

Tennessee Republicans' war against childhood vaccinations reached a new level on Tuesday after Tennessean reported that the state's health department "will halt all adolescent vaccine outreach – not just for coronavirus, but all diseases – amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers."

Flying isn’t fun for the flight attendants either.

A flight attendant on a Charlotte-bound American Airlines flight was caught in a TikTok video scolding passengers who mocked the crew during the flight that diverted to Raleigh due to weather.

In the video, a 22-year-old male passenger calls one flight attendant “a fat gorilla” and slings obscenities at her as well.

Elementary schools will receive 250 condoms initially from the Chicago Department of Public Health, while high schools will receive 1,000.

When they run out, principals will be tasked with asking for more from CPS and the CDPH.

'Young people have the right to accurate and clear information to make healthy decisions,' CPS’ top doctor, Kenneth Fox, said in a recent interview, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

'And they need access to resources to protect their health and the health of others as they act on those decisions,' Fox continued.

A Michigan school district has reprimanded three employees after a 7-year-old girl’s hair was cut at her elementary school.

The Mount Pleasant Public Schools Board of Education said Friday in a news release that an independent third-party investigation determined that despite “good intentions” of the worker who cut the girl’s hair on March 26, doing so without permission from her parents and without the knowledge of district administrators violated school policy.

"Let me just be very clear because I find it insulting. They are asking or basically trying to present the idea that Black English or let’s call it what it is, ebonics, is being taken away from the Black community,"...

Terrell said that the Black community rejects Black English because it is "improper."

Bri, who asked The Post to publish only her nickname for fear of being branded a bigot and doxxed by transgender-rights activists, was horrified — not only by the insinuation her teen would commit suicide if she didn’t transition, but also the fact that the general practitioner issued the warning in front of them both.

But some experts now question the threat that they say is commonly used by medical professionals. They believe many doctors are so scared of the label “transphobe” that they automatically present skeptical parents with a doomsday scenario: “Would you rather have a dead son or a living daughter?” or vice versa.

By contrast, a 2011 study spanning three decades by the respected Karolinska Institute in Sweden found that people who underwent sex reassignment were 19 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population. In the US, a yearlong survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality concluded that those who had transitioned were more likely to have attempted suicide than trans people who had not had medical or surgical treatments.