The use of AI in education is uncharted territory. This legal case is becoming a catalyst for discussion about its use in schools.

As artificial intelligence (AI) companies rapidly release new models and major tech firms restructure to accelerate their initiatives, the debate over the use of AI in schools is intensifying.

A Massachusetts family is suing a teacher at Hingham High School, along with district faculty members, after the school claimed their son cheated when he utilized AI on a history project and dropped his grade on the assignment to a "D."

The family’s attorney argues the student had used AI similar to a Google search engine, and only in the outline stages. There remains an open dispute between the two parties as to what the school's AI policy is and whether it was breached. 

The incident brings attention to the use of AI in schools and what's acceptable.

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."

Just as students are getting back into the swing of things post winter break, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced 67 recipients of the EPA’s first Clean School Bus Program’s Grants Competition. The awards were possible thanks to President Joe Biden’s Investing in America initiative, and will allow for more than 2,700 school buses in 280 school districts serving over seven million students.

“It’s an exciting day for us to be able to announce this $1 billion, which will be a shot in the arm to get clean school buses to every community, sooner, rather than later,” Michael Regan, Director of the EPA, tells Parents.

Right now, Congress is vastly divided over a plan to fund the government. And if lawmakers can't get their acts together, the government could shut down this weekend.

The Senate reached a stopgap spending agreement late Tuesday afternoon that would keep government agencies open through November 17. The short-term bill would fund the government at present levels, but it remains to be seen if it will pass through both a Senate amendment process and a contentious House by the time the deadline hits—this Saturday at midnight.

Democrats and Republicans in the House meanwhile are even farther apart in their own effort to come up with a temporary spending bill.

If a shutdown occurs this weekend or is kicked down the road a month from now, parents will feel a strain that many have felt before. Programs affected include those that have a disproportionate impact on parents, families, and children from low-income households. If a shutdown does happen, here is what parents need to know.

I boarded the ferry with my son in my arms, crossing over the Puget Sound to where his father waited on the other side. After handing over our little one, I waited on the dock for the return ferry to begin loading. Back on the ferry, watching the shoreline grow smaller and smaller, I felt as though my heart and limbs were missing. My introduction to co-parenting was less conventional and rather cinematic.

In the beginning years of co-parenting, we all feel the loneliness and pain of not having our child with us every day. While the years have passed, and my son’s father and I have grown and evolved along the journey, I know firsthand just how heavy an emotional toll co-parenting can take on all.

Parents new to this world, are sharing powerful videos on TikTok conveying these challenges. One of the most immediate experiences a new co-parent has is coming home to silence.

A trending TikTok video posted by Max Areeg shows two parents preparing for their son's birthday. The couple in the video playfully blew up balloons, hung decorations together, and the video ends with one tossing a pillow at the other. If it wasn't spelled out, one would never know that the couple was in the middle of a divorce. Areeg is seen on her soon-to-be ex-husband's shoulders, rubbing balloons onto his hair to generate static electricity to cling the balloons to the ceiling. The laughter and fun times shown are certainly not the common narratives of modern divorce.

I can attest to the necessary ingredients of a successful co-parenting relationship, having co-parented for more than eight years. Co-parenting is always a shared journey, whether it is a 50/50 split, or like mine, more of an 85/15. Separated parents who still have to child-rear together need healthy communication, plenty of patience, and the establishment of clear boundaries.

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."

On February 13, 2022, South Dakota became the latest state to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Governor Kristi Noem signed HB1080 into law, making the South Dakota bill the first legislation passed in the country that calls for forced medical detransition of trans youth currently receiving care. Taking effect on July 1, medical practitioners providing hormone therapy to minors will have to terminate care immediately or systematically reduce all care to end no later than December 31. If they don't comply, they risk getting their professional license revoked.

This law places trans youth at risk for both self-harm, as shown by record high rates of suicide, as well as abuse or assault from others. The Trevor Project reports nearly 1 in 5 transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 34 transgender and gender non-conforming people were killed in the U.S. in 2022.

The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) held an emergency meeting Thursday, Feb 9, after receiving significant public blowback to their considerations of making students' menstrual cycle information mandatory on athlete eligibility paperwork. The FHSAA oversees interscholastic athletic programs across the state of Florida and had been considering adopting a form that would have made these previously optional questions mandatory.

The questions, masked under a concern for students' health, would have forced athletes to disclose personal, private medical information about whether the student had a menstrual cycle, when their first menstrual period was, the dates of their most recent period, and the number of periods they had in the previous 12 months. This data would have conceivably been accessible by coaches, school districts, and third-party digital platforms.

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.

Public policy and laws in the United States have not historically supported pregnant people or people who have recently given birth. Pregnant workers have never had the guarantee to be able to continue to earn income and have a healthy and safe pregnancy at the same time. This changed with the 117th Congress this past December 22, 2022 when the most racially and ethnically diverse Congressional body in history, a body made up of just over 25% of women with an additional 11 openly LGBTQIA+ members, made more political history.

Come June 2023, employers will now be required to grant reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers under the bipartisan Pregnant Workers Fairness (PWFA) and Providing Urgent Maternal Protections Acts (PUMP). Both acts were passed in the flurry of amendments to the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill at the end of last year, and are a huge victory for pregnant workers and families.

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?

For the first 3 years of my son's life, I lived in a rural area where community was hard to come by. Like many, I sought out connection with other new moms and parents online, from mom groups to focused mom pages that featured writer moms, artist moms ,and moms who work. Mothers filled pages across screens with acronyms I did not know yet: AI, BD, NIP—all the letters that made me thankful Google existed. They shared stories, they shared problems, and, at times, openly shared judgment.

In my early years of being a first-time parent and a new mom, I realized something else was happening to my mental health and stress levels from certain online spaces. I was seeing and comparing myself, my child, our experience and our lives to other people. I had found myself in toxic online spaces.

A 2019 petition "Demand a same-sex parent family on Peppa Pig" has finally come to fruition, as this week in Britain the episode "Families" aired the first "two Mummy" household on Peppa Pig. This is a first for the popular children's TV show that for over 18 years, 6 series and 250 episodes has largely centered around Peppa Pig's four-person, heteronormative family.

As parents, we want our children to have healthy and happy friendships. We spend so much time driving around to drop off and pick up, coordinating countless playdates, and we even hang out with other adult parents (that sometimes we don't even like) in order to facilitate our children's friendships. We support our children through disagreements, hurt feelings and all the issues that come from hard-to-grasp concepts such as sharing and jealousy. We try to do it all. But sometimes people's biases get in the way.

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

Parents seeking out information and ways to teach their children (or hoping to learn right along with them) about inclusion, sex, and identity, can learn a lot from Emily Roach. Emily Roach (she/her) is a writer, influencer, and parent and dives into sex positive parenting in bite-sized and easy-to-understand videos. When exploring sex, gender, and inclusion, Roach brings the power of intentional and inclusive language into her worldview-building work.

In a recent video, Roach answers this question—among many others on her TikTok page: What is casual inclusivity and how easy is it to do?