Parents

A woman drove from suburban Atlanta to Nebraska this weekend to leave her 12-year-old son at a hospital, making him the 20th child abandoned under a unique state law that has raised questions across the country about overwhelmed parents. Since July, Nebraska has allowed parents to leave children younger than 18 at medical facilities without facing criminal penalties.

First Melyssa Cowburn's 5-year-old child tried to bash in a baby's head with a hammer. Then he set the shower curtain on fire. The next day he plugged all the sinks and toilets in their apartment and flooded the place. Cowburn and her husband had tried unsuccessfully to get their insurance company to pay for mental health treatment for the boy. The difficulty she had keeping him under control had already helped drive her to attempt suicide last year.

The mother whose questioning of a Thanksgiving kindergarten tradition in Claremont resulted in the elimination of the children's handmade pilgrim and Native American costumes last month has received more than 250 hate e-mails, filled with misogynistic epithets, racist jeers and other abuse. One hoped that her daughter, a kindergartner, would get beaten up at school. Another celebrated genocide of Native Americans. Police are providing extra patrols at her home. And Michelle Raheja is at a loss.

Settling a complaint by parents who said they were forced to lavish $100,000 worth of gifts on school personnel to ensure that their severely autistic son received proper care, the Irvine Unified school board voted unanimously Tuesday to spend an unspecified amount of money on the child's educational needs. The Board of Trustees also voted to consider creating a policy restricting gifts to teachers and other employees.

The idea for Vistamar School, a private college-prep academy in El Segundo, began five years ago with an innocuous question posed by a Manhattan Beach mother to a friend over lunch: Where will your daughter go to high school when she grows up? The friends didn't wonder long. Dissatisfied with the options then available, they collected a group of like-minded parents and set to work.

His seventh-grade teacher was discussing family values last month when Jaime Castillo startled his classmates by bursting into tears. They knew that the 13-year-old hadn't seen his father since he left for the United States three years ago and that he was depressed about it, but he wasn't the kind of child to cry in public. The next day, his friends' surprise turned to shock when they learned he had gone home and swallowed a packet of rat poison.

Torrance Unified School District officials say they've clarified procedures to prevent convicted sex offenders from volunteering in schools, following an uproar by parents who learned that a convicted offender was helping out in his child's kindergarten classroom with the school's knowledge.

WHEN Murray Straus was raising his children in the 1950s and '60s, spanking was de rigueur in the American household. The Straus residence was no exception, with the father of two occasionally reacting to their misbehavior with a swat to the bottom. But times have changed, and so has Straus' perception of spanking. "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have spanked them at all," he says. "My research has convinced me that there should be no hitting -- never, under any circumstances."

Parents can break their reliance on corporal punishment, experts say, by learning to encourage good behavior and suppressing counterproductive reactions to misbehavior. "Most parents will say, 'I would like to avoid spanking, but I just don't know what to do,' " says pediatrician Michael Regalado of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. Psychologists and pediatricians recommend: For starters, don't act in anger.

CARRIE Ann Lucas is confined to a wheelchair. She breathes with the aid of a ventilator. She cannot hear and can see only at close range. She begins most days about 4 a.m. with newspapers and e-mails. About 5:30, she wakes her three disabled daughters. She and an aide dress the two who use wheelchairs. The girls cannot feed themselves, so Lucas and the aide plug feeding tubes into their bellies. She pours cereal for the one daughter who can eat on her own.