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 Plus, we all think you need to follow @SavedYouAClick and @HuffPoSpoilers on Twitter, though sadly @AvoidComments is no longer active.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.)