“And you want your son to go to Penn State?” Mike asked me the other night as we talked about the news that had just broke.

“Of course I do,” I said (that is, if he wants to, one day). “Scandals and terrible things can happen anywhere. You never know where it’ll come from.”

And that’s the scary thing, isn’t it? No one and no place is immune from terrible things. You can put your trust in a person or place you believe is most trust-worthy, and you’re still taking a leap of faith. We do what we can to minimize the chances of horrible things happening and we fill the spaces in between with the faith that good people, who far outnumber the bad, will rise to the occasion when needed.

In the Penn State story, it seems many good people had the chance to rise to the occasion. The reasons why they didn’t are surely varied and complex and ultimately not important. We all share in our outrage on behalf of the young men whose innocence was stolen from them by one man. And maybe, selfishly, what’s really rattling us is that our own faith was stolen from us by so many men.

Up to this point, Drew has been an amazing eater. He’s eaten pretty much everything I’ve ever put in front of him, and often with gusto. But I’ve been an avid momblog reader for some time, so I know that great baby eaters don’t always grow into great toddler eaters. Any time a friend or acquaintance has commented on how lucky I am to have such a good eater, I enthusiastically agree and then follow up with an aw shucks, “for now!”

For all the prepared I thought I was, I was somehow ill-prepared for the moment when I proudly forked some grilled squash into my boy’s mouth and he promptly pulled it BACK OUT of his mouth and threw it across the restaurant floor. “No?” I stammered. “You don’t, you don’t like it?” He looked at me with pure challenge in his eyes, a sort of ‘just try me, Mom’ that I did not want to mess with in public. Well, I thought, I’ll just give him the wrap. At least it’s whole wheat! Guess where that ended up? Right next to the nutritious, only-option grilled veggies! A busboy-man walked past right after the veggies got tossed, and I knew he saw, so I sheepishly apologized. I feared he was irritated at the growing mess he’d eventually be responsible for if I didn’t take care of it.

So, friends, what did I do next? I pulled out Mommy’s Magic Stash of Goldfish Crackers! Why, when such nutritious fare was on offer? Because I didn’t want a food fight in a restaurant, I didn’t want to hear (and presumed no one else did either) any more cranky whining from the littlest food critic, and I didn’t want my boy to be hungry. I scarfed down a nutritious (and BORING!) grilled veggie wrap while Drew noshed on Goldfish. Next time, I’m making us both grilled cheese sandwiches from the privacy of our own home and not worrying about the inevitable mess on the floor or any potentially judging eyes.

I’ve gone back and forth over whether or not I’m overreacting. The commenter was joking amongst friends, bitching about their job as so many of us do. I completely understand the need to bitch and moan about work; I think we can all agree it’s sort of a pastime. Isn’t that how we find common ground with other colleagues, fill the awkward elevator silence? And teachers, to be sure, have a more stressful job than most. They are with our snotty, often misbehaved children day in and day out. I find spending a day with one child mildly exhausting. With 20 or 30? Yeah, I can imagine that there would be much to complain about.

As much as I can understand where the sentiment might come from, I’m of the firm belief that job griping should be done out of the public sphere. Sure, the commenter posted to her friends. But it’s Facebook. Anything you say is not necessarily limited to just your friends. Friends of friends of friends can often see your posts, your pictures, your videos. You really never know. And what if one of those friends of friends of friends is a parent of one of that teacher’s students? What if you were one of those parents? Would you feel good about sending your kid to that teacher for the rest of the year? Would you feel confident that he/she was doing all they could do to help your child learn, and not just throwing their metaphorical hands up in disgust?

I’ve had a blog for several years and I’ve always been extra careful not to complain about work issues or even mention where I worked. You just never know who’s reading and what repercussions may come from something you thought you were just getting off your chest. And I’m sorry, but teachers in particular should be held to this standard more so than others. If for nothing else than to help maintain the illusion that the people we send—and entrust—our children to for the better part of their waking hours really do care for them and want to help them grow. Everyone’s entitled to gripe about work, that I firmly believe. But the place for it is not the Internet. Try your car, your living room, or the bar. And if you’re really that miserable about your job? Maybe it’s time to find a new one.

Teachers, I’d love to hear what you think…

BPA, parabens, carcinogens, pesticides, phthalates (wtf is that?), allergens, and on and on and on you get my point. For everything you try to do right, there’s a media outlet, press release, blog or sanctimonious parent ready to let you know you might in fact be doing it very, very wrong.

Let’s start with bottles. Setting aside the whole breastfeeding/formula feeding debate (because seriously, that’s been argued to death), does your baby take a bottle? Yes? That’s great! Not a bottle containing BPA though, right? Whatever this chemical is that companies put into plastic bottles, apparently it can cause great harm to babies. Oh, and its also in the linings of formula cans. So parents who are already made to feel guilty for giving their babies formula in the first place have the added delight of worrying about whether the container holding their babies’ formula is going to somehow stunt or severely damage their development.

How about skincare? We all know that babies have delicate skin. We must protect the baby skin! Put lotion on every day! Put sunscreen on before you set foot outside! But hold on. That lotion doesn’t contain parabens, does it? Parabens are THE DEVIL! I, too, bought into the paraben craze. And then one day I paused and realized I didn’t even know what parabens were. I was just blindly following the other sheep who were running away from the paraben monster. I did some research Google searching. Parabens are a preservative that are put into cosmetics to keep them fresh. Hmm, sounds reasonable to me. I did some more researching Google searching. Studies have shown no conclusive evidence that parabens are bad. But then the conspiracy theory monster settled into the crook of my shoulder and started whispering in my ear. That’s because the cosmetics industry lobbyists have convinced the government to leave parabens alooooone. Of course they’re bad! They seep into your pores and wait until the day they decide to band against you and give you cancer! How could you even think about putting a paraben-containing product onto your baaaaay-baaaay’s preshus skin?! Next thing you know, my Johnson’s & Johnson’s products were tossed in the trash and baby was covered in all natural, botanical, free-of-everything skincare products. I am convinced he’ll be illness-free for the rest of his life. And yes, I’ll buy that bridge in Brooklyn that you have for sale.

Should we talk about household cleansers? We are supposed to be proud when we have a clean house, right? Especially with a baby underfoot. Floors are swept, furniture is dusted. No dirty surfaces for baby to touch! But wait a minute. There are chemicals lurking in your cleaning products that could KILL! Yesterday, my house was cleaned from top to bottom. On the kitchen counter sat our full arsenal of cleaning supplies: Pledge, Mr. Clean, Clorox Clean-Up, Comet, Soft Scrub. And yet. I’m being told that these products could be doing more harm than good.

Healthychild.org says: “we encourage you to try non-toxic alternative cleaning products… any alternative to the standard brands, whose manufacturers do not consider the health and environmental impacts of their products, is a good one…avoid unnecessary exposure to fragranced products that can trigger asthma and allergic reactions. Use unscented or naturally lightly-scented products for cleaning…beyond what they do to our health, chemical-based cleaners pollute whole ecosystems too proving toxic to aquatic animals and fish.”

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m now going to retreat to my basement lab and mix up a few mild cleansers using vinegar, baking soda, cornstarch and water. Because if I don’t, when the world’s ecosystems go to shit and my baby’s speech is impaired, who else will I have to blame but myself?

I know there is merit to many of the claims out there. Many of the manufactured, overly processed products out there are probably not good for us. And the recommended alternatives are less revolutionary and more a return to the way things used to be done: drink your water in a glass, from the tap; put as few products on your skin as possible; clean your house with baking soda and water. I mean, it just makes common, logical sense: less is more. But are guilt trips, taglines of doom and all-out scare tactics the right approach to get us all to change our ways? Don’t we have enough to worry about as parents? We’re all just trying to do the best we can.