As parents, we hold our children's hands as they navigate the world, hoping they will be safe, loved, and valued. We send them to school expecting a safe community to support their academic journey.

Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old non-binary student, attended Owasso High School in Oklahoma, where instead of being received by a safe and welcoming community, their family says they were relentlessly bullied for months over their gender identity.

On February 7, during an altercation with three other students in the bathroom, Benedict reportedly blacked out while they were beaten on the bathroom floor. They died the following day.

Nineteen days later, the Associated Press reports more than a dozen Owasso students walked out of class in protest. They say they want action against discrimination and bullying of transgender and nonbinary students. There have been vigils held in Oklahoma and across the country.

Season 6 of Love is Blind is currently airing, and it's been making headlines for a unique reason: it features the first single mom participant, Jessica Vestal. Early in the initial batch of released episodes, Jessica expressed her fear about revealing to the male contestants that she is a mother.

"I'm super nervous about how some of the guys are gonna receive that I have a child,” she shared with the group.

Co-host of the Netflix show, Vanessa Lachey, asked, “Do you think that that’s something that you’re going to wait to tell someone, or you think that you’re going to come out of the gate, you know, and be like, by the way, I have a kid?”

To that, Jessica responded, "I want to give people the chance to get to know me individually first, because even though I'm a mother, and it's the most important thing to me, it doesn't define me. Like, I feel like I'll just know when the time is right to tell somebody."

As the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seeks to grow and improve maternal and infant health by connecting more people to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC, outreach has been stymied by a Congress that keeps kicking the funding can down the road in six-week increments.

“We’re in a bit of a dilemma where it’s difficult to grow if you don’t have the additional funds,” said USDA Deputy Under Secretary Stacy Dean to the Emerald. “Congress has given us the ability to spend more of last year’s money in the early part of the year, and that’s been very helpful. All states have the resources they need. But we can’t do that forever because we’re going to run out.”

I was overseas when the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict erupted into a brutal October wave. Each morning, away from my community in Seattle, I awoke hours before my family to scroll through an avalanche of social media. Post after post of opinions, rage, graphic images, and downright horror. Information was moving torrentially and shared with similar speed, third-party posters having no time to look into the validity, sources, or evidence of what they were sharing. Major news outlets were moving too fast and making huge errors in the process, and journalists covering disinformation, such as Shayan Sardarizadeh for the BBC, have since been doing the rounds on viral posts containing false claims, conspiracy theories, and hateful content about the war.

As the academic year kicks off, parents and guardians across Seattle fill out last-minute paperwork, pack backpacks and lunch sacks, and remind countless children to set out their clothes the night before. While adults nudge children and teenagers to grab a sweater on their way out the door, many can forget to actively check in and stay engaged with their kids’ mental health.

“Adults often have trouble understanding what students are going through,” said Natalya McConnell, executive board director of the Seattle Student Union and senior at Franklin High School. “We have never had such a widespread pandemic, and this has isolated a lot of students,” she continued, adding that many students are still in a state of crisis. That the past three years have been difficult for students to navigate is largely understood; Seattle recently approved a $4.5 million investment in the Student Mental Health Supports pilot.

Hate and bigotry apparently don't just trickle down, they can rise up as well. Tianna Bastien, a mom and TikTok-er under the handle @thecuratedlobe, lives just outside of Toronto. She recently shared with Parents that the ongoing escalation of anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation and the anti-gay climate rising in the states have had the impact of empowering bigoted voices and are increasing hateful anti-gay sentiments and rhetoric in Canada.

Bastien's newest TikTok features her children and a friend attending the Drag and Brunch show at CommunityResto. "I decided that the voiceover that I was going to do for the video was going to take a sarcastic tone to highlight how ridiculous people who are against drag queens are actually sounding."

I am walking toward the tall wall of seemingly endless rows of barbed wire. I see each step of mine, the foot of a child, exposed, frail and swollen. My fingers graze the fence as I begin a frantic climb. Advancing upward, my hands are shaking as each new grasp cuts abrasions into my skin, widening and deepening with each fresh slice. My head gets light, and blood drips from my palms as I clamp down to muffle screams of pain. I hear shouting in the direction of the guard tower, followed by a gunshot. Then, another. My body freezes, my muscles are shocked. As I fall, everything turns black. Abruptly, I wake up. This is always where I wake up.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, memorialized as such by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005, approximately 24 years after I was born. Before 2005, I remembered the Holocaust in the ways many other Jews of my generation have; from recurring childhood dreams, to the shaking tattooed arms of elders, and comprehensive Hebrew school history lessons. Genocide was nothing one forgot — it was in your bones, in your body, and in your blood.

The type 2 diabetes drug, Ozempic, has become a household name for weight loss because of social media. Here's what you should know about this dangerous trend and example of toxic diet culture.

Social media trends come and go, and sadly, so do weight loss trends. Allied Market Research valued weight loss sales in 2019 at $192.2 billion, with projections set to reach $295.3 billion by 2027. The diabetic medication Ozempic, developed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, is currently making headway in the weight loss category with an average retail price of over a $1,000 a month for the weekly injection.

Jellyfish parenting is back in according to social media trends and is battling for top parenting style next to tiger and dolphin parents. So, what is a jellyfish parent?

Writer Emma Brockes calls the style "boneless, diaphanous and endlessly flexible." Kristene Geering, director of education at Parent Lab, describes it as "practicing the art of really tuning into your kid." The Internet warned me that jellyfish parenting is "too permissive" and can lead your confused children into nefarious activity and promiscuity. That's quite the range! So what does it mean to be a jellyfish parent?

My grandmother looked me in the eyes and said, "There is no sex after 40." I was young enough that I had not experienced my first kiss yet, let alone sex, but old enough that the statement registered as grave and sad. Over the years, as I steadily climbed toward 40, I often thought back to this moment. How many women have closed the sex chapter of their life by middle age? Perhaps for many of a certain generation, my grandmother's comment might have been true.

Grandma gets an important lesson on how to love kids for exactly who they are and how they want to express themselves.

In a world of mixed messages ranging from peer acceptance to political hate, LGBTQIA+ youth are finding ways to celebrate who they are.

Pride 2022 starts as ongoing anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation continues across states, yet queer resilience, as always, rages on no matter the time of year. In Florida, Zander Moricz, the first openly gay class president at his Sarasota high school, is the youngest public plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against the state of Florida to strike down the Don't Say Gay Bill. "All of me is threatened by this legislation," Moricz testified at the state senate

When the world shifted online at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, millions of Americans were introduced to Zoom— and to "Zoombombing." Uninvited internet trolls slid into all kinds of public Zoom events, taking over the screen-share function and subjecting users to porn and racial slurs.

Zoom fought back, encouraging users to take their group meetings private and adding obstacles like authentication for users to join, passcodes for access, and a waiting room. (In August, the company settled for $85 million in a class-action suit that claimed it didn't do enough to prevent Zoombombing. As part of the settlement, Zoom agreed to further increase security measures.)

Kate McKinnon joined Colin Jost on Weekend Update to comment on Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' Bill, HB1557, as it passed its final state Senate committee last week.

McKinnon sets up the segment with blissful ignorance, "I heard about this law, and I think it's amazing!" She spins to her middle school experience and the impact of hearing "that's so gay" or "ew, you're gay," exclaiming how wonderful it is that Ron Desantis has taken a stand to say "No, you cannot say gay in school anymore."

For many of us parents, the pandemic forced us to face our children's relationships with math by addressing our own. From collective Google searching of "what in the hell is common core" to seeking out ways to make math fun, we have had to ask, "Is math just a drag?"

Now, it really is. Meet Kyne, the world-class drag queen math communicator. Kyne (the creation of Kyne Santos) began her drag career while studying Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, completing her major in Mathematical Finance, all while appearing on the wildly popular Canada's Drag Race. The idea to finally bridge her two loves of math and drag came to her when the global pandemic swept us all into many hours stuck in our homes.

"There's a natural similarity between reproductive rights and transgender rights," said Mercedes Sanchez, director of development and community education at Cedar River Clinics in Washington State. "It's all about autonomy, bodily autonomy, and being able to make the choices for ourselves." Sanchez sees the fight for reproductive rights and transgender rights as intertwined. And, in fact, they are.

It is essential for healthcare providers to be aware of intersections of oppressions from race, socioeconomic status, sex assigned at birth and current gender status, so patients can potentially feel safe and included in these spaces. By stating that abortion services are cis people's health concern are excluding trans and nonbinary people's experience.

We put our toddler to bed and cozied up alongside the fireplace illuminating our small trailer in the woods. If you aren’t ready to have another child, then we have to change what we are doing. You can’t keep coming inside of me. He had protested the idea of a vasectomy (too emasculating). I tried an IUD, but the pain and heavy bleeding following its insertion led to its removal. My period had been irregular since giving birth, and between taking care of a toddler and healing from postpartum depression, I was never successful at tracking my cycle.