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Back to regular toothbrushes in our household.

I just sent an embarrassing email to all the mothers of my daughter’s classmates, letting them know that the electric toothbrush I gave out as a party favor at her birthday last fall is now the subject of a Food and Drug Administration safety alert.

As one of the party activities, we gave each six-year-old a Spinbrush, which comes with stickers for decorating. The girls sat on the floor in their party dresses and painstakingly applied tiny pink-and-purple girly-themed stickers. At the end of the party, the kids took their personalized toothbrushes home.

A vigilant friend whose daughter was at the party emailed me a link to the alert this morning. Apparently the FDA now is warning that the brush head can come off while in use, causing “serious injuries and potential hazards.”

Although it’s not my fault — I don’t manufacture toothbrushes, and the warning came out some four months after the party — I still feel responsible for having put all these children at risk. My own kids have been using the toothbrushes as well. Luckily, we haven’t had any problems, but they’re headed for the trash just as soon as I get home. Back to old-fashioned, child-powered toothbrushes, for them.

This is the first time I’ve had to warn gift recipients to stop using something I’ve given them. Unsure of the etiquette, but worried about the children’s safety, I went with an immediate email. Perhaps that’s not Emily-Post-proper, but it was the best I could do.

Readers, have you ever unwittingly given someone an unsafe gift? What did you do about it? Do you agree with how I handled the situation?

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The first of the two big parties we’re hosting this month went off as planned last weekend.

Seven couples showed up for dinner, kids in tow, bringing the total number of people in our house to 25 that evening.

One guest called to say a member of the family was not feeling well so they would come to the next party instead. It’s good we had offered two dates so they can now come for Round Two!

Most people brought a bottle of wine, which was perfect since we had plenty of food.

The menu was simple. I ordered in two large trays of chicken kebabs and picked up naan, a type of Indian bread.

The afternoon of the party, I cooked rice with mixed vegetables, steamed two cauliflowers and baked them with a cheese garnish, stir-fried some julienned baby carrots with cabbage and made two simple yogurt dips.

I also served a quinoa salad with raisins and a moong-bean salad with chickpeas. For dessert, I set out a tray of cookies and another of strawberries dipped in chocolate.

My daughter decided she wanted to taste the strawberries before the party so she took two of the most luscious and licked the chocolate off before carefully putting the barely-eaten strawberries on another plate. She was going for a third when we realized what she was up to and put an end to the naughtiness!

It was good catching up with everyone. The adults chatted while the younger children ran around and played hide-and-seek. The older boys kept busy with their tech gadgets.

My husband, who had been nervous about the party, is now feeling more confident about the next one. It’s scheduled for the this coming weekend and will be my last multi-guest event of the season.

We are expecting more people than the first get-together and I think that’s just fine. Once in a while, it’s good to meet in a large group.

Readers, do you like hosting big get-togethers for friends? Or do you prefer to keep it small? Do you relish entertaining at your home like I do?

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Thursday is recycling day in my town. At the top of the recycling pile were all of the cards my daughter received from her classmates for Valentine’s Day. I am reasonably sure the cards she made for them met a similar fate.

I’m not really in favor of distributing Valentine’s Day cards to the entire class at the daycare center. At age three or four, the children really don’t know or care about the holiday.

Most of the cards she received had been hastily signed by harried parents. Some came with candy attached. It all seemed a bit wasteful.

To make it more worthwhile, this year, I decided to have my daughter make the cards. It was our Sunday arts and craft project.

She wanted to use “dot” art so we pulled the paint set out and decorated the cards. Some had flowers, some had fruit and others simply had circles and triangles on them. Some had stickers, others had doodles. The biggest chore was writing out her classmate’s names on the envelopes. She carefully copied the names from a list provided by the teachers and while some “s”s were replaced by “z”s, she got most of the letters right.

After writing out Joshua, she asked:”Who is that?” Clearly, she hasn’t mastered recognizing all her friend’s names. Zoe and Mark were easy names to read out, by contrast.

After an hour or so, she got carried away and declared she would make cards for some of her friends in the neighborhood. She made three more cards and then we were done!

Readers, what did you do with all the Valentine’s Day cards you received? Do you like these sorts of projects or find them to be a waste of everyone’s time?

At an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hearing Wednesday in Washington, D.C., employment and legal experts said that pregnant women and caregivers face everything from harassment and hostility on the job to terminations and decreased work hours. That’s despite a law passed 30 years ago – the Pregnancy Discrimination Act – and other measures like the Family and Medical Leave Act intended to protect workers balancing job and family obligations.

One example shared by an expert panelist at the hearing: A pregnant woman was told she couldn’t alter her uniform to fit her growing belly, but then was forced to take a leave when the uniform no longer fit. There were also tales of men who were punished for asking for time off to take care of sick or elderly relatives, because such labor was considered “women’s work.”

Sadly, stereotypes about who should provide care appear to be alive and well despite the fact that women have increasing responsibilities in the workplace and men are taking larger roles in the domestic sphere.

Low-skilled, low-wage workers are especially vulnerable since jobs like waiting tables, retail sales and other service positions often have unpredictable but inflexible schedules. That makes it harder to plan time off or deal with the kinds of small and large crises – a sudden ear infection, a fall that results in a broken hip – that crop up when you’re caring for a baby or an elderly parent.

Another panelist, professor Stephen Benard of Indiana University, described a “motherhood wage penalty,” where mothers earn as much as 5% less than men for every child they have. Prof. Benard suggested that employers might unconsciously believe mothers are less capable of good work than non-mothers.  It is possible that “the gender gap in wages may be primarily a motherhood gap,” he said.

Readers, have you ever been treated unfairly at work because you were pregnant or had other family responsibilities? Is your employer understanding or accommodating when you need to care for a child or a sick or elderly relative?

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Reporting this week’s “Work & Family” column on people who haven’t take a sick day for decades drove home a truth that working parents know well: Child-care responsibilities can have a big impact on absenteeism at work.

Among the five employees I tracked down who had perfect attendance records lasting from 25 to 64 years, all had rich personal lives and relationships outside work, including community service and church work, or gardening and hobbies. Two of these remarkable people had cared for elderly relatives in their off-work hours for years, while still managing to post perfect attendance on the job. One employee for a cosmetics company teamed up with his wife to care for his aged mother in her home for five years, without marring a 25-year record of perfect attendance. Another, a woman who held a variety of jobs on a hospital staff without taking a sick day for 64 years, cared for her elderly sister for years.

But not one of them was primarily responsible for child care at home. Each of the men I interviewed had a wife at home when their children were growing up, overseeing their care. And of the two women interviewees with perfect attendance, neither had had children.

“My hat is off to those who have families,” said one interviewee, a nurse with a perfect 25-year attendance record. “I don’t know how people do it. I just have to take care of myself, and that’s hard enough.”

This was no scientific study, of course. Nevertheless, these examples shed light on the importance of flexible scheduling for parents; many working parents get just as much done as others, but splice work hours into the evening after the kids are in bed, before dawn or on weekends. Back-up child-care plans are critical. In one important trend, many employers have shifted to paid time-off banks – allotting all employees a specified number of days off for any purpose. And of course, federal and state family-leave laws and measures mandating paid sick days are helpful too, and typically can be used to care for a sick child.

Readers, do you see working parents being absent from work more often than others? If you’re a working parent, are you absent more often than you were in the past? What tactics or benefits are most helpful to you in avoiding absences – back-up care, flexible scheduling, work-at-home privileges?

Associated Press

Not quite as exciting as dinner out on the town…

Once upon a time, when it was just my husband and me and our 57 closest friends, dinner was an adventurous and wonderful thing. We would touch base when the workday was nearing its end and figure out how we wanted to spend the evening. Monday, we might make it a sushi date in Soho. Tuesday, perhaps attend a party and fill up on the little nibbles passed around on trays. And Wednesday, maybe, meet at a specialty market and pick up the ingredients for a Thai noodle soup and pray that “simmer until reduced by half” meant dinner would be ready before 2 a.m.

Now that we have a baby, things have gotten a little more boring (well, dinner-related things). We eat at home every night. And we cook like moms. Our son goes to sleep at 7 p.m. and if food isn’t on the kitchen table within the next half hour, we tend to get a little cranky.

We could order in, but it doesn’t take long for Chinese spare ribs to seem greasy, not to mention expensive. So we make our own food. I know it’s not revolutionary, but in our house it feels that way. We don’t have the time to skip to the market every time we want to cook, and we have taken a more survivalist view of cooking: Fast is good; a soufflé recipe calling for pea shoots and cremini mushrooms? Not so much.

Though easier in some ways, our new streamlined life requires a fair bit of organization. Since I’m the “food person” (I am the food editor of the paper’s lifestyles section Off Duty), it falls to me to flip through cookbooks and plan our weekly menu, as well as to maintain a shopping list.

Being Food Czar is fun—I’d rather read the Barefoot Contessa library than look after the boiler or plumbing, as my husband does—yet it takes a modicum of stick-to-it-ness. Since we shop at a food co-op that is insanely crowded at all times except Friday and Saturday nights, there is always one weekend night when I have to force myself to brave the bulk foods aisle. Oh, the glamour!

Coming around to subsisting on super-easy food, like spaghetti with pesto or baked chicken, was easy. I’m learning more about cooking this way than I ever did following recipes whose length and persnickety directions kept me from ever relaxing in the kitchen.

But switching gears to doing a weekly shop has been hard. It takes me ages to settle on a week’s worth of recipes. Do we want salmon or halibut? Do I trust this food blogger to know what she’s talking about? Are chicken and cheese sausages really healthy?

I have yet to figure out exactly how to keep from overbuying cheese with a short shelf life or running out of milk or coffee (heaven forfend!) by Thursday morning.

Hopefully things will start to feel a little more automatic once we have a roster of over-and-over-again weeknight recipes and I know how much of everything our little army really consumes.

When I get it all figured out, here’s how I’ll celebrate: I’ll strap baby into his carrier and treat everyone to a 5:30 p.m. sushi dinner. Hopefully he won’t have outgrown the carrier by then.

How do you organize your family dinners? Does one person hold the reins? Are there recipes you make every week?

Robert Steven Kaplan, author of What To Ask The Person In The Mirror: Critical Questions For Becoming A More Effective Leader And Reaching Your Potential, is an expert in executive time management. He answered reader questions on Feb.14 in a live chat, moderated by WSJ’s deputy editor for Management & Careers, Francesca Donner.  Replay the event.

Full transcript follows:

• Welcome to our live chat with Robert Steven Kaplan of Harvard Business School. We’ll be starting in just a few minutes. Please ask your questions on executive time management: How can top executives be more productive? And what can everyone else learn from them?
  by Francesca Donner 12:03 PM
• See a breakdown of how CEOs spend their time here: online.wsj.com
  by Francesca Donner 12:05 PM
• Ironically, Robert Steven Kaplan, our guest speaker, is stuck in a meeting, but he’ll be with us as soon as possible. He’s a busy man!
  by Francesca Donner 12:06 PM
• As they say, good things come to those who wait….
  by Francesca Donner 12:09 PM
• hello everyone—–sorry to be late!!
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:11 PM
• CEOs of startups wear many hats. Until I can hire more heads to put those hats on, how do I prioritize my time?
  by Mike Lapchick 12:12 PM
• mike, you need to identify the 3 to 5 top priorities that are critical to your business——-then focus on matching your time to those priorities. you can’t do everthing and you shouldn’t try to
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:13 PM
• What tools and techniques do you use to manage your day?
  by ken 12:13 PM
• i rely heavily on my assistant. If you have one, explicitly delegate certain tasks to him/her——–scheduling appointments, travel arrangements, etc. this saves time immediately.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:14 PM
• Wouldn’t be more reliable to CEOs to go to the shop floor instead of going to meetings to get information that’s unfiltered?
  by Thomas 12:14 PM
• Yes, you need to do both. We all spend too much time in meetings——–however, if you plan an agenda in advance, a meeting can be very valuable. Make sure you think about meeting agendas BEFORE you use time on the meeting. What do you want to accomplish———ask folks to be prepared to discuss these topics——–you’ll find you will get more done.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:16 PM
• What habits should one begin to develop in order to be an effective planner.
  by Dsmith 12:16 PM
• Habits include——rely on your assistant, delegate tasks that are not critical for you to do yourself. Most important, learn that your people will still love you even though you say “NO” to marginal requests of your time. Explain to your folks in advance what things they should come to you on and which they should not.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:18 PM
• so, if you are in meetings all day, when to have time to be creative, to figure out what is important and to change how much time you spend in those meetings?
  by Joe 12:18 PM
• You need to avoid being in meetings all day. Bore in on the purpose of these meetings. In my experience, shorter meetings are often more effective and there must be an agenda in advance.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:19 PM
• The Executive Time Use Study found that CEOs spend around six hours a week on their own vs. 18 hours in meetings!
  by Francesca Donner 12:19 PM
• On average, how long are the meetings? at what point do they become inefficient?
  by Kwon 12:19 PM
• I was somewhat notorious for short meetings. I would often start meetings by asking, “what do you recommend we should do?” if they can answer it in 5 minutes and you agree, the meeting is over!
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:20 PM
• What would you say is the key to time management: Prioritization or Multitasking.
  by James Tariq 12:20 PM
• Prioritization first——–certain tasks you are juggling should not be performed by you———they should be done by someone else. Decide in advance what tasks you need to do and which you ought to delegate (and who you want to delegate to)
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:21 PM
• Do we really expect C-suite executives to be task driven? Isn’t their organizational role more about setting vision and working with their teams to drive initiatives that support the vision?
  by rmd 12:22 PM
• They should be focussed on articulating a clear vision and then identifying the 3 to 5 most important priorities critical to achieving that vision. Lastly, they work to align the organization to drive against those priorities. Sounds simple, but many executives do not clearly do these steps. As a result, they waste alot of time.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:23 PM
• In WSJ’s article on how CEOs spend their time, you are quoted, Robert, talking about thinking of time as money… would you elaborate on that?
  by Francesca Donner 12:23 PM
• Yes. Time is your most valuable asset as a leader——–yet many of us don’t act accordingly. That’s why is suggest, thinking about how you spend money———-you measure it, track it and agonize over it. You certainly don’t waste it if you can help it———why don’t you think about your time the same way?
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:25 PM
• As a CEO, how do you avoid being ‘behind bars’, removed from the operations of the company. How do you find time to see how the business is performing and being perceived by the consumer?
  by Kevin Ahnert 12:25 PM
• If you’re in a customer business, spending time with customers needs to be one of your top priorities———and you therefore need to spend your time on it! This is not only good for business but it sets an example for all your employees. Hard to assert customers are critical if you never seem to have time to see them yourself.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:26 PM
• I have an issue of feeling like I have to attend certain meetings, even though I know it will be a waste of time. i would prefer to send someone on my team, but I want to avoid the perception that I delegate everything
  by Foreman 12:27 PM
• Can you assert some control over whether these meetings should be held at all? go to the organizer and say, “you set up all these meetings to attend——-i don’t think they’re a great use of time. can we whittle them down and get more focussed re what we do in these meetings. Otherwise, i just don’t have time to attend all of them.”
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:28 PM
• What are some of the biggest time management weaknesses or counterintuitive actions you have observed in C-Level Executives?
  by James Tariq 12:28 PM
• “i have to do it myself”——–”i don’t have anyone to delegate to”———-
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:29 PM
• People make these statements because they havent thought carefully enough about their key priorities, they haven’t over-communicated these priorities, they don’t coach their people and they have never learned to delegate
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:30 PM
• How does one manage their email in-box and how much time does that take out of your day.
  by Ted Anderson 12:30 PM
• Good question———-luckily email is fast if you’re simply copied. If you’re the primary recipient and expected to respond——maybe you’re not delegating enough? maybe you have too many direct reports? maybe folks think you want to be the one to get these emails? you need to rectify this by setting priorities and setting expectations with your people about what to ping you about
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:31 PM
• What’s an effective way to approach a start-up CEO who has a difficult time delegating tasks?
  by Casey 12:32 PM
• Push him or her to write down their top three priorities for running their business. For everything else, can they delegate to someone else? if not, they need to think about building their team or questioning their assumptions about being able to delegate.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:33 PM
• As an undergraduate about to begin a career, or as a young member of the workforce, what advice or recommendations would you have for an aspiring leader and CEO.
  by Ryan 12:33 PM
• Remember that you need to identify your top priorities——-the key success factors that will help you and your company succeed. Some you can do, some you can delegate———-but avoid spending time on tasks that aren’t critical——get in habit now of delegating them. Learn to coach others ———-to help them accomplish delegated tasks.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:35 PM
• Balancing health and exercise seems to be a perennial problem for busy executives…
  by Francesca Donner 12:35 PM
• What are you guidelines for managing health so that a CEO’s has high energy and cranking? (nutrition, sleep, family life, etc.)
  by Kathy Kiss 12:35 PM
• Yes. Agree. You have to be rested (sleep) and feel good to perform at a high level. Everything takes twice as long when you feel lousy——-and you do a poor job. So, i always block out time to sleep, eat properly and exercise. Get in the habit of it——-it saves a ton of time and also allows your brain to work.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:37 PM
• According to the Executive Time Use Study that WSJ looked at, CEOs worked an average 55 hours a week. Robert, does that sound like a lot or a little to you?
  by Francesca Donner 12:37 PM
• Sounds about right to me. Assuming folks take sunday off and maybe work for a few hours on saturday, this means about 10 hours per day. If you’re delegating appropriately, this makes sense. Also, while people talk about 70 hours week, if have found that your effectiveness deteriorates because you get run down. Judgment is a key element of leadership——-hard to do when you’re worn out.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:39 PM
• How do successful CEOs handle personal tasks (kids and home) during the work day?
  by Efraim Berkovich 12:39 PM
• By instinct and values———loved one calls in a middle of a important meeting, take the call if you think it’s important. You can’t over due this but your people will understand (and probably respect you more!!)
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:40 PM

• Do you ever bring your work home with you? Is it unhealthy to do so or is it more productive?
  by Stan 12:40 PM
• It can’t be helped. I don’t usually bring a brief case home——-but i always get alot of phone calls at home——–if someone has the nerve to call you at home, you probably need to hop to attention and be at your best. Of course, people shouldn’t abuse that but i’m more concerned that they don’t make that call if there’s a big problem. Part of the job.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:42 PM
• So you have delegated, and you are using e-mail effectively, and things seem to be set up for efficiency, but in some of the e-mails your delegates are Cc’ing you on, you see some things not being handled the way you expect. When do you let go and let your delegate handle it the way they see fit and when do you jump in? Tough balance?
  by Kosoy 12:42 PM
• Avoid jumping into the middle——–however, you should “coach” the person you’ve delegated to and give them advice on some things you notice that they could consider doing differently. main point is ———coach them but don’t jump in the middle of it.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:43 PM
• In terms of time management, what’s the most difficult challenge you have faced so far? How did you overcome it? How would you recommend others prepare for unexpected challenges?
  by Henry Carrero 12:43 PM
• The biggest challenge i have faced is evaluating and coaching people———-you feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders and you’re not sure your key lietenants are handling a situation properly. This is where previous coaching and relationship development really pay off. I have had to learn to stay with them, keep coaching them and even take a bullet for them if they screw up. By and large, people tend to pleasantly surprise me———-but you will absolutely have nervous moments. And yes, at times—if it’s important enough——–you have to step in.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:46 PM
• What are some outstanding qualities that directors/companies look for when searching for the right CEO?
  by Stan 12:46 PM
• Ability to articulate a clear vision, set priorities, communicate and build a team to accomplish all this. High integrity, adherence to ideals and ability to be a role model and magnet for employees.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:48 PM
• When the time allows and a vacation is finally available, how do you decompress & disengage from the day to day to get the most out of a vacation?
  by Glenn Eubinag 12:48 PM
• Still trying to figure this one out. I do know it takes more than 48 hours———one week really makes a difference and you have to try to stay out of the middle of work if possible.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:49 PM
• What time do you wake up and start your day? On the same token, what time do you find yourself going to bed on average to maintain a healthy sleep schedule and still have enough time in the day to accomplish all you need to?
  by Stan 12:49 PM
• Get up at 6:30 ish and go to sleep at 11ish——try to get 8 hours.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:49 PM
• How does one figure out what is important and what is not important?
  by mod11210 12:50 PM
• Keep a journal, write down your values and personal priorities—–on the personal side.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:50 PM
• On the business side, you need to figure out your key distinctive competence and how your company adds value to customers———the priorities are the key things you need to do well to drive against those distinctive competencies and add value
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:51 PM
• We’ll be wrapping up shortly. We have time for just a couple more questions.
  by Francesca Donner 12:52 PM
• How do you justify the increasing disparity between CEO and ordinary workers’ pay?
  by Henry Fallon 12:52 PM
• I can’t——it’s a cultural shift that has happened over the last 10-15 years——and probably getting worse. Probably needs to be even more soul searching at boards and among CEO’s about what kind of country and community we want to have.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:53 PM
• Any good books or other resources that have been helpfull on the topic?
  by FS 12:53 PM
• Well, i like biographies and other narrative books———–john wooden on leadership, william manchester (the last lion, american caesar), david halberstam———how do leaders do what they do? always interesting to me
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:54 PM
• How often do you meet with employees outside of scheduled meetings? For example maybe a simple meet and greet or just to show face? Are employees more appreciative of the effort and how much of a difference does it make?
  by Stan 12:55 PM
• Your effectiveness will depend heavily on your ability to build your team. This means attracting, retaining and developing key people. This is job number one——–and should be prioritized as such. Hence, i will always set aside time to meet one on one with people and also leave enough slack time for them to approach you with issues. People are the key——-and i try to act accordingly.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:56 PM
• In a couple of sentences, what makes you invaluable to your firm?
  by Sharp 12:57 PM
• Adding value to customers or those who are trying to serve customers. There are lots of ways to do this——–building client relationships, coaching others, innovation/idea generation etc
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 12:58 PM
• A final question from Travis Metz…
  by Francesca Donner 12:58 PM
• What steps can a CEO take to best influence change in an organization?
  by Travis Metz 12:58 PM
• Articulate a clear vision, identify 3 to 5 top priorities———-over communicate this. Then match your time to those priorities———and coach your people against those priorities. Align compensation and promotion against those priorities. Be a role model for achieving this vision and attacking these priorities.
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 1:00 PM
• All right! That’s just about all we have time for. (Time! There’s that word again!)
  by Francesca Donner 1:00 PM
• Thank you for your time
  by Dsmith 1:00 PM
• Thank you. This was great. I have to go…to a meeting.
  by Foreman 1:00 PM
• Thank you!! I really enjoyed talking with you!!!
  by Robert Steven Kaplan 1:00 PM
• Thank you for your time.
  by Henry Carrero 1:02 PM
• Thank you for your time! We are outta’ time!
  by Bill Cartwright 1:02 PM
• We plan to do more of these live chats in the future, so stay tuned. Thanks for joining.
  by Francesca Donner 1:02 PM

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Blending work with romance can be dicey, but we spend so much of our lives with co-workers that intra-staff relationships are all but inevitable. Are some jobs more conducive to them than others?

The job-search site CareerCast.com has just come up with a list of seven jobs that offer workers a good chance of meeting a mate. Among them are hotel guest-service agent (“you’ll be exposed to many single professionals who may be there for business”) and flight attendant (you’ll “have at least a couple of hours to make an impression as you work the aisles”).

The other occupations on the CareerCast list: bartender, fitness instructor/personal trainer, retail sales specialist, pharmaceutical representative and dance instructor.

I suppose I can add journalist to the list. As I mentioned in a post a few years back, my wife and I met when we were both working at Dow Jones Newswires. We became friends but didn’t start dating until I left for another job—not out of concern about dating a colleague, it just worked out that way. And work out it did: Next month we will have been together for 16 years, and we’ve been married for 11 1/2.

Readers, is your profession a magnet for couples, or is dating frowned upon in your workplace? Did you meet your significant other at work—or would you be open to doing so?

Laura Kreutzer

Playmobil en masse

Today is my daughter’s 100th day of school. To commemorate this momentous occasion (ha!), her teacher has asked her to bring in a hundred similar things or a photo of a hundred similar things.

But that’s not all that easy to find in our home. Books, maybe. But, that’s almost too obvious and who wants to lug those  into school?

“How about a hundred hairballs?” my husband offered up. “I bet the cats have left at least that many for us over the years.” (I know what you’re thinking ladies, but, sorry, he’s taken.)

“Hey, how about the 100 lbs that I’ve collectively gained and lost and gained again over the past six years?” I countered.

One hundred hours of lost sleep? One hundred gray hairs? We were on a roll.

“Mom, I could bring in a hundred stuffed animals” our daughter chimed in, clearly unimpressed by the ideas that we’d floated thus far.

Although it often feels like my daughter has a hundred stuffed animals, I knew without even counting that we would come up short. That’s when it hit me.

“What about your Playmobil people?” I asked. “We might have a hundred of those.”

We had found a winner.

I have been blessed with an aunt who had the foresight to save every Playmobil item that my now 20-something cousins ever collected during their childhood. A couple of years ago, we became the beneficiaries of this legacy, when  she handed me three or four giant plastic totes full of Playmobil sets.

Since then, our daughter has spent many hours constructing castles, western frontier towns and circuses, or an eclectic combination thereof.

We were galvanized into action, combing through the plastic totes. We hit 20, then 30, then 40.  It was around the 80 mark that we realized we were going to have to dig deep on this one.

Like a pack of bomb-sniffing German Shepherds, we combed the house in search of more people.

“I found five in the closet,” my husband called from deep in our daughter’s bedroom.

“Check the tub toys in the bathroom!” I shouted, remembering the Playmobil mermaid family I purchased on deep discount last summer.

“Hey look, I found a chimpanzee,” my husband said coming into the living room holding a tiny plastic monkey. “Can we include this?”

After about 20 more minutes of digging, we had assembled a virtual United Nations of Playmobil, complete with Santa Claus and a one-armed clown. I think the final count may have topped out at 102 or 103 but to be perfectly honest, once we hit 100, I stopped counting.

But, sadly, for my husband, no chimp.

Jugglers, did your child bring anything in for the 100th day of school? If so, what did he or she choose? What do you think of this school assignment?

Nicolas Héron for The Wall Street Journal

First it was Amy Chua’s article on the superiority of Chinese parenting. Now Pamela Druckerman weighs in on the superiority of French parenting.

I like to think I hold a fairly open world view. I spent six years living and working in China and Japan and I had the opportunity to travel to a number of different countries and observe a variety of parenting styles both at home and abroad.

In Japan, I met some children who behaved like they’d stepped off of the pages of “Lord Of The Flies” and others who behaved like they were the direct descendents of Emily Post. I’ve seen a Malaysian mother discipline her toddler with a tiny dab of hot sauce to the tongue, a move that would probably land American parents a courtesy visit from Child Services.

But there’s something about these cultural assaults on parenting that gets my Irish up, along with my English, Scottish and German: I find it hard to stomach the premise that any style of parenting is somehow culturally superior. In my opinion, parenting is a highly personal process, a function of influences that extend far beyond one’s culture.

At any given time, my daughter’s good or bad behavior may stem more from a combination of our respective fatigue levels and sugar intake than what I deem to be cultural influences.

Certainly, there are aspects of Druckerman’s article that resonate with me, particularly the more forgiving lifestyle of France’s mandatory 35-hour work week, public preschools and better vacation. Who wouldn’t want that? But those things seem to be more a function of public policy to me than culture.

In my opinion, American children may at times seem sassy and strong-willed, which may be no fun to parent, but sometimes sassy breeds new ideas. Independence. Innovation. Of course, if left unchecked, it can also breed narcissistic pills, but, I’m not so sure that America, or any country for that matter, completely corners the market on those.

In the world of parenting, I think I’ll take my chances, even if my own approach—whether American or not—is far from perfect.

Ten years from now, I hope that my daughter won’t end up on Teen Mom or hurling chairs at me on some hideous talk show. But I also hope that she doesn’t end up in a dead-end situation that she hates, because she wasn’t courageous enough to take calculated risks or question the status quo.

Readers: Agree? Disagree? What’s your take?