Jody Allard

Let me repeat that, just in case you missed it. Bernie Sanders said that a mother "should stay home" with her baby. When I first heard that sentence, I looked at my teenagers, and began yelling, "Mothers?! Should?!" My oldest son, who is 17 now, shrugged and replied, "Well, they should stay home with their babies, right? I mean, isn't that a good thing?"

It took five years for my daughter to be diagnosed with autism. There were dozens of red flags, beginning from the time she was about 10 months old, but her pediatrician always told me that she was fine. "She made eye contact with me," she reassured me. "She can't be on the spectrum." Besides, most children with autism, she reminded me, are boys.

It's easy and painless to poke our noses into the minutiae of other parents' decisions, but it in no way tackles the real epidemic of child abuse.

Here's the thing, though. Seattle teachers didn't want to strike. What they wanted were reasonable class sizes, less focus on teaching to the test, and livable wages. These are fair and reasonable demands, and that is why parents throughout Seattle have rushed to the picket lines to support our teachers.

Most stories involving robots that have been developed to think and feel end with robot uprisings and the near annihilation of the human race.

Science has finally confirmed what moms have been saying forever –– that newborn baby smell is intoxicating.

Wal-Mart, home to broken dreams, poor fashion choices, and a whole lot of guns.

I know what autism looks like, and I understand why people are afraid of it because, at its worst moments, it is desperately, terribly ugly — it is children who can’t communicate, who become adults who are unable to live independently, and who simply cannot cope with the onslaught of sensory input that we barely notice. It is meltdowns that are triggered by nothing and everything, learning difficulties, and services that cost our healthcare system billions of dollars every year.

I was born without fingers on my right hand. No one knows why, even now, 36 years later. It just happened, as these things sometimes do.

I don't believe that you're incapable of treating me and my friends with compassion. Maybe you just need a little help.