| He's twice her age!
Most parents have developed a game plan for disciplining a 13-year-old daughter who takes up smoking, gets her belly button pierced or starts a fight at school. But few moms and dads are in any way prepared for their teenage child to enter a romantic relationship with a much older man. A trial in Medicine Hat, Alta., heard this week that a 13-year-old girl accused in the murder of her parents and younger brother had been seeing a 23-year-old man last year, when she was 12. .
After having children, work decision is personal
My first workplace column, in 1998, was about how single people got stuck at the office more often than those with kids and how they could defend their time. Now, my final column before I go on maternity leave for six months is about how parents decide whether to work and how they handle it after a child is born. .
The downside of paradise
Actually, I don't believe that any place is heaven on earth -- though I've been to my fair share of purgatories, or worse -- but some readers are disappointed that I don't always highlight the lowlights of Hawaii. What about the sluggish traffic on Kauai's Coconut Coast or in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island, they ask. What about the helicopters that crash during sightseeing tours? And, did I know that many Hawaii residents oppose the coming interisland ferry service? Two answers: Either I already addressed these concerns in other venues in The Chronicle, or the complaints weren't germane to the issue at hand. But, for the record, I heartily approve of visitors being aware that they're going to a real place, with real people in real situations, and not a manufactured Disneyland safely engineered for your pleasure.
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