Jack Laughlin will start middle school every day with gym class.

What might be a nightmare for other middle schoolers is a dream come true for the 11-year-old Exton, Pa., student and his family. Jack has diabetes and as we reported earlier, he and his parents, David and Cathy Laughlin, argued he needed daily gym classes to recover from his post-breakfast sugar high.

Students at Lionville Middle School usually get gym classes two out of every six days. They spend the rest of their mornings in music and reading skills classes.

School officials initially said there was no compelling medical evidence to rearrange the schedule for Jack and he could get the exercise he needs through a school walking club and intramural athletics.

Now officials have changed their minds.

Students at Lionville Middle School in Exton, Pa. have morning gym class two out of every six days. David and Cathy McLaughlin say their diabetic 11-year-old son Jack needs more exercise than that.

School authorities disagree.

Gym classes rotate with music and reading-skills classes. School authorities tell the Philadelphia Inquirer that the McLaughlins have been offered exercise options for Jack that don't cut into those other classes.

If you're divorced, you might find yourself in the uncomfortable position of having to help your child buy a holiday gift for your ex-spouse -- and possibly a stepparent.

It can certainly test your character.

"Hey, son, I have an idea. Give your mommy a bag of broken glass and your new stepfather a big box of Band-Aids. Tell them you want them to share."

Resist the temptation to expose even the slightest hint of bitterness, Bonnie Ross, an Oregon-based family and child therapist in private practice said in an interview with ParentDish.

"Make the event planning and purchase an adventure of fun," she said.

A father in Texas allegedly forced his 8- and 9-year-old daughters to watch hardcore online pornography. That's not against the law in the Lone Star State.

The girls' mother thinks it ought to be.

She is protesting a law passed by the Texas Legislature in the 1970s that allows parents to show children "harmful material." The law was intended to protect parents using graphic material to teach their children about sex.

"I understand in the '70s everybody wanted the government to stay out of their homes," Crystal Buckner tells The Associated Press. "I don't want to stop parents from having that right to teach sex education, but there's a big difference, and there's a line you shouldn't cross when teaching."

Buckner's ex-husband is not charged with a crime, but he is accused of forcing the girls to watch adults having hardcore group sex on the Internet. Unable to get criminal charges filed against him, Buckner has mounted a public crusade to get the law changed.

"Liberty and justice for all?"

Will Phillips doesn't believe that describes America for its gay and lesbian citizens. He's a 10-year-old at West Fork Elementary School in Arkansas, about three hours east of Oklahoma City. Given his beliefs, he refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, specifically because that one phrase, "liberty and justice for all," he says, does not truly apply to all.

That did not go over well with the substitute teacher in his fifth-grade classroom.

The Arkansas Times reports that he started refusing to say the pledge Mon., Oct. 5. By Thursday, the substitute was steamed. She told Will she knew his mother and grandmother and they would want him to recite the pledge.

Will told the Times the substitute got more and more upset. She raised her voice. By this point, Will told the newspaper, he started losing his cool too, adding: "After a few minutes, I said, 'With all due respect ma'am, go jump off a bridge.'"

Children in New York state stay in foster care longer than necessary, according to a report published Nov. 10 by the advocacy group Children's Rights.

Advocates examined the records of 153 children in foster care and discovered that many children languish in foster homes for years because of a backlogged court system, inadequate casework and a bureaucracy that generally reduces kids to numbers, then files them and forgets them.

"All the elements of the system are working together to produce these bad results," Marcia Robinson Lowry, the executive director of Children's Rights, told The New York Times.

This Christmas Eve, though, the kids are with your ex. After all, you have to take turns. Now it's just you, the TV and those classic Christmas movies, which remind you that you're alone. You always loved watching "Miracle on 34th Street" before. It was part of your family holiday tradition. This year, the characters makes you weep, but not in a good way. There is no joy, just painful memories.

Being a noncustodial parent hurts. Being one during the holidays can be even worse.

Have you ever heard a baby cry with a German accent?

You can -- if you listen hard enough, said Kathleen Wermke of the University of Würzberg in Germany to the BBC. She led a research project which concluded that infants pick up the nuances of their mothers' accents, even while in the womb.

Researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking German and French. Wermke told the BBC that they could detect the French babies crying with a rising accent while German babies cried with a falling accent.

Wermke added that the research, which was published in the journal Current Biology, is more than just a slightly interesting curiosity. It suggests that human beings are influenced by the first sounds that penetrate the womb. Scientists already knew that unborn children could memorize sounds from the outside world in the last trimester of pregnancy, especially music and voices.

A globe-trotting vigilante retrieves children from foreign countries? Why would you need one?

Say you marry someone and you have children. You get divorced. There's a custody battle. You win. Your ex-spouse refuses to accept the decision. He or she takes the children and flees overseas to a country that doesn't recognize your custody rights.

What do you do?

This is not a hypothetical question for thousands of parents who go through this exact scenario every year. Their options are limited.

One option, however, is Gus Zamora.

Brendan Adams' mother didn't want him to play middle school football. She was afraid he might get hurt.

Wait a minute. Brendan is almost 7-feet-5-inches tall -- the tallest teenager on the planet, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. And she's worried about him getting hurt?

The sad irony is it took a lot of work to get Brendan on the gridiron. His mother's concerns are more than justified. The 14-year-old eighth-grader from Ellensburg, Wash., about 100 miles east of Seattle, has health problems as formidable as his height. His body is full of tumors. His joints are enlarged. And doctors recently discovered an arrhythmia in his heart.